Each unit “activates” students` knowledge of a topic before they listen, giving them a frame of reference to make predictions about what they will hear. Building skills for Understanding, the low-intermediate to intermediate level, offers students 20 engaging, task-based units, each build around a topic, function, or grammatical theme. Students learn to listen through a careful balance of activities including listening for gist, listening for specific information, and making inferences.
Major features:
•A “Before you begin” unit to develop awareness of listening strategies
•Prelistening schema-building activities
•A carefully balanced variety of listening tasks
•Natural recording with a range of accents
•Short readings to provide cross-cultural information
•A speaking activity in every unit