COURSE PLAN

To The Top (TT) is a nine-book series consisting of three stages: Elementary, Intermediate, and Advanced. (To The Top 1-2 is the one-volume condensed version of Books 1 and 2.) The To The Top series was designed with two main objectives in mind:

a) To prepare students for the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL®), the most widely recognized international test that evaluates nonnative speakers’ level of competence in English.

b) To facilitate students’ understanding of the spoken English of modern American media, principally TV, and enable them to use its expressions and speech patterns. In this way, students develop the ability to communicate naturally and effectively in current American English.

The main sources used in the selection of the basic vocabulary of To The Top were:

a) Paul Nation’s adaptation of the classic high-frequency word list known as the General Service List (GSL), which contains the 2284 most commonly used words in the English language.

b) The Academic Word List (AWL) consisting of 570 words selected because of the frequency with which they appear in a broad range of academic texts.

The following table* illustrates the importance of these words for the understanding of various types of speech and writing.

WORDS

CONVERSATION %

FICTION %

NEWSPAPERS%

ACADEMIC TEXTS %

First 1000

84.3

82.3

75.6

73.5

1001 to 2000

  6.0

  5.1

  4.7

  4.6

AWL

  1.9

  1.7

  3.9

  8.5

92.2

89.1

84.2

86.6

* This table is an adaptation of Table 1.7 in I. S. P. Nation, Learning Vocabulary in Another Language, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001, p. 17.

In order to accomplish the second main objective, CCLS has prepared a special list of 6253 words and expressions most frequently used in everyday speech and incorporated this vocabulary in the TT series. This list was extracted from CCLS’s extensive corpus of approximately 6000 minutes of transcriptions of current American sitcoms.

Clearly, mastery of the vocabulary presented in TT will guarantee the learner an exceptional level of communicative competence in both general and academic English.

It should be pointed out that, at all levels of TT, the vocabulary presented is accompanied by the grammatical structures essential for communication. All of the material is presented in a dynamic, engaging way that respects the cultural aspect of the English language and ensures that the students’ experience is a pleasant and enjoyable one.

BOOK 3

To The Top — Elementary Stage — Book 3 is designed for teenagers and adults who have some previous knowledge of English.

Each lesson in this book contains a number of dynamically presented real-life situational dialogues. These dialogues familiarize students with the carefully chosen high-frequency vocabulary on the word frequency lists already mentioned. This is the vocabulary students need to know in order to be able to communicate effectively in English. Both the formal and everyday American speech introduced in the dialogues serve as the basis for all subsequent classroom work.

This book contains the following sections:

  • Words in Action

  • Text (Situational Dialogues)

  • Reading Text

  • Going Further

  • The Grammar You Need

  • For Your Information

  • Using What You’ve Learned

  • Fixed Expressions

  • I Know How To . . .

After the grammar explanations in this Textbook (TB), simple grammar exercises have been included. These exercises are intended to help students make sure they have fully grasped the grammar point(s) introduced in the lesson and must be done and corrected in class. There is a Key for these exercises at the end of this TB.

In the Fixed Expressions section, students review the fixed expressions (e.g., to hang around, black and white, to stop by) they have learned in the lesson or in previous lessons.

At the end of each lesson, there is a section named I know how to, which sums up the communicative objectives that were taught in the lesson. Here students have a chance to check their understanding of the material in the lesson and identify any specific point(s) they should practice further.

At the end of this book, there is a list of all the new words and expressions presented in the situational dialogues as well as a list containing all the verbs learned during the Elementary Stage in their infinitive and simple past forms.

To The Top — Elementary Stage — Book 3 contains 321 new words.