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Learn
More about Picture
This! (Part 1)
Oliva Fernandez, Marketing
Director, Adult and Higher
Education
(This article is excerpted
from a review by Carol Martin, who
Carol Martin teaches
ESL for Garden Grove, California Adult Education and Computer VESL for
Huntington Beach, California Adult Education. She is an ESL Technology
Specialist and has worked as a curriculum developer, certified mentor
teacher, and consultant.)
Picture This!, by Tim Harris and Allen Rowe,
is a two-level multiskills course for beginning students who need
effective communication in English. The course uses innovative
strategies to teach the fundamentals and provide opportunities for free
expression. Picture
This! places your students on the fast track to fluency.
Stories and conversations are presented using common, often humorous,
life experiences that students can relate to. There is a strong
emphasis on oral skills including listening, speaking, conversation,
and pronunciation.
Each chapter begins with a conversation
between characters or a short cartoon story that presents new
vocabulary and grammatical structure. Students repeat conversations and
apply vocabulary and grammar to produce their own conversations after
guided practice to master language basics. Written practice reinforces
grammar, conversational structure, and life skills.
Basic vocabulary
and grammatical structure
are presented before being practiced. Sometimes the subject matter
meanders within a chapter, as in Book 1, Chapter 6, where the topics
listed are apartments, furniture and rooms, food, and eating habits.
The grammar
in each book is presented and practiced through controlled listening,
speaking, reading, and writing practice, as well as less-structured
open-ended activities which prepare the student to use those structures
in daily life. The grammar in Book 1 is very basic — mostly
present tense and present continuous, as well as teaching basic
adjectives, nouns, and prepositions. Book 2 reviews the structures
presented in Book 1 and presents future "going to" and past tense.
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