COURSE PLAN
To The Top (TT) is a nine-book series consisting of three stages: Elementary, Intermediate, and Advanced. Books 1 and 2 are also available in a one-volume condensed version. The To The Top series was designed with two main objectives in mind:
* 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 7 To The Top — Advanced Stage — Book 7 is designed for teenagers and adults who have already attained intermediate-level proficiency in English. In Book 7, some lessons contain a number of dynamically presented real-life situational dialogues. Real-life dialogues are also present in Lesson 4, which contains a humorous video clip, in Lesson 6, which features young Americans narrating a personal experience, and in Lesson 8, which presents a public-service announcement as part of the lesson text. The scripts of the video clips shown in class for Lessons 4 and 6 appear in the students’ CALL Workbook in a section called The Video Clip. In this section, students will listen to the clips and fill in missing words or sentences in the scripts. All of the above-mentioned material has been selected to 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 material serve as the basis for all subsequent classroom work. This book contains the following sections:
After the grammar explanations in this Textbook (TB), simple grammar exercises have been included in most lessons. 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 Talking Like an American section, students review the fixed expressions, collocations and idioms (e.g., I couldn’t care less, believe it or not, hold a person’s horses) 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, the video clips and the public-service announcement as well as a list containing all the verbs learned since the beginning of the Elementary Stage in their infinitive, past, and past participle forms. To The Top — Advanced Stage — Book 7 contains 350 new words.
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