The "Four Point" series is designed for English language learners whose primary goal is to succeed in an academic setting.""The series covers the four academic skills of reading, writing, listening, and speaking while providing reinforcement and systematic recycling of key vocabulary and further exposure to grammar issues. In order to participate in academic settings, ELLs need focused activities to develop and then maintain their use of vocabulary and grammar. Each book in the series focuses heavily on vocabulary in particular, highlighting between 125-150 key vocabulary items including individual words, compound words, phrasal verbs, short phrases, idioms, metaphors, collocations, and longer set lexical phrases. Each unit in "Reading-Writing 1, "includes two reading passages on the same topic within a field of academic study: Psychology, World Civilizations, Astronomy, Literature, Civil Engineering, and Political Science. Each reading is accompanied by a before reading, during reading, and after reading strategy and practice activity. The goal is to provide students with a variety of strategies/tools to master whatever academic texts they may encounter. In addition, exercises have been designed to develop vocabulary, paraphrasing, summarizing, and synthesizing skills. By addressing the breadth and depth of reading and writing tasks required in academic settings instead of only reading for pleasure or writing for research projects, this volume truly prepares students for the variety of reading texts and writing projects they will be assigned in colleges and universities.Interactive vocabulary activities are available on the book's companion website.

In "Vocabulary Myths," Keith S. Folse breaks down the teaching of second language vocabulary into eight commonly held myths. In debunking each myth, he introduces the myth with a story based on his 25 years of teaching experience (in the United States and abroad), continues with a presentation of what empirical research has shown on the topic, and finishes with a list of what teachers can do in their classrooms to facilitate true vocabulary acquisition.
The goal of "Vocabulary Myths" is to foster a paradigm shift that correctly views vocabulary as fundamental in any second language learning process and demonstrates that research supports this goal-that in fact there is a wealth of empirical evidence to support these views. In addition, an important theme is that teachers have overestimated how much vocabulary students really understand, and as a result, the so-called "comprehensible input" is neither comprehensible nor input.
The second language vocabulary acquisition myths reexamined in this book are:
*In learning another language, vocabulary is not as important as grammar or other areas.
*Using word lists to learn L2 vocabulary is unproductive.
*Presenting new vocabulary in semantic sets facilitates learning.
*The use of translations to learn new vocabulary should be discouraged.
*Guessing words from context is an excellent strategy for learning L2 vocabulary.
*The best vocabulary learners make use of one or two really specific vocabulary learning strategies.
*The best dictionary for L2 learners is a monolingual dictionary.
*Teachers, textbooks, and curricula cover L2 vocabulary adequately.

Great Authors, Great Writing Models, Great Teaching Support - Great Series!