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Ecology and the Environment: A Look at Ecosystems of the World encourages high-intermediate students of English as a second language to improve their English skills while learning about ecology and its application to the environmental problems facing the world today. Students learn about the earth's ecosystems—forest, ocean, tundra, grassland, and desert—and their characteristics and dynamics. Topics include recent ecological issues such as the Exxon Valdez oil spill. The chapters proceed in a logical order both from a content standpoint and a language standpoint, yet the book gives teachers considerable freedom to choose the topics and language skills most appropriate for their students. The program is easy to follow and can be used by teachers who have not previously used content-based textbooks.

This comprehensive teacher’s manual is designed to introduce intermediate to high-intermediate ESL/EFL students to the fundamental principles of ecology and environmental science. Developed for educators of all levels of experience, including those with no prior background in the sciences, the manual provides detailed lesson plans, vocabulary development strategies, and practical classroom activities.Structured around a content-based approach, the book explores major world ecosystems—including forests, oceans, tundra, grasslands, and deserts—while highlighting pressing environmental concerns such as deforestation, global warming, and pollution. Each chapter integrates scientific content with targeted language objectives, fostering critical reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills. Activities promote student engagement through group work, real-life observations, and interactive projects, while review sessions consolidate new concepts and vocabulary.Thoroughly piloted and praised for its balance of language and content, this manual is an accessible and invaluable resource both for teachers new to the topic and for those seeking fresh approaches to environmental education in the ESL/EFL classroom.

Community colleges in the United States are the first point of entry for many students to a higher education, a career, and a new start. They continue to be a place of personal and, ultimately, societal transformation. And first-year composition courses have become sites of contestation.

This volume is an inquiry into community college first-year pedagogy and policy at a time when change has not only been called for but also mandated by state lawmakers who financially control public education. It also acknowledges new policies that are eliminating developmental and remedial writing courses while keeping mind that, for most community college students, first-year composition serves as the last course they will take in the English department toward their associate’s degree. 

Chapters focusing on pedagogy and policy are integrated within cohesively themed parts: (1) refining pedagogy; (2) teaching toward acceleration; (3) considering programmatic change; and (4) exploring curriculum through research and policy. The volume concludes with the editors’ reflections regarding future work; a glossary and reflection questions are included.

This volume also serves as a call to action to change the way community colleges attend to faculty concerns. Only by listening to teachers can the concerns discussed in the volume be addressed; it is the teachers who see how societal changes intersect with campus policies and students’ lives on a daily basis.
 

English Pronunciation: Exercises in Sound Segments, Intonation, and Rhythm, authored by Robert Lado, Charles C. Fries, and the Staff of the English Language Institute, is a comprehensive guide for mastering the intricacies of English pronunciation. This book is designed to improve the learner's ability to recognize and produce the sounds of English through a series of well-structured lessons and practical exercises. Starting with an introductory lesson designed to familiarize students with the phonemic alphabet and intonation markings, the book then progresses through a series of lessons that address both vowel and consonant contrasts, intonation patterns, rhythm, and stress. Each lesson includes drills for both recognition and production, emphasizing the importance of practice in achieving accurate pronunciation. The material is particularly focused on the needs of Spanish-speaking learners, with numerous aids and detailed articulatory descriptions to facilitate learning. Teachers will find tips on classroom atmosphere, individual differences, and specific teaching techniques that ensure effective learning. The latter part of the book continues to refine pronunciation skills, introducing more complex consonant clusters and combinations and providing supplementary information on English pronunciation irregularities and dialectal variations. By the end of the book, students are expected to have a solid grasp of English sound segments, intonation, and rhythm, enabling them to speak accurately and fluently.

English for Dispute Resolution shows intermediate to advanced-level ESL students and professionals how to negotiate and mediate in English. Following the approaches often used in US law and business schools to teach Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), the book balances readings on ADR theory and strategies with activities, practice role plays, and self-reflection. It provides complex information and step-by-step instructions in plain English, clearly explains key ADR terms and idioms, and highlights cross-cultural communication issues that readers may encounter.

Whether they are using English for Dispute Resolution as a self-study resource or a course textbook, readers can use the book to develop their own unique negotiation and mediation styles in English and improve their professional-level English skills and soft skills for any purpose. Chapters introduce Alternative Dispute Resolution, negotiation ethics, competitive and collaborative negotiation, negotiation game theory, apologies, drafting written agreements, and mediation. After an engaging hypothetical case that introduces the chapter’s key points, each chapter provides warm-up questions, readings about dispute resolution theory and strategies, language tips, and activities and sample phrases to practice applying chapter lessons to real-world disputes. Chapters also invite readers to explore topics of interest, such as dispute resolution in their home countries, personal and professional lives, and current events, and the growing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in ADR. Readers will simultaneously build confidence in their English and cross-cultural dispute resolution skills.

English for Dispute Resolution offers readers:

• Lessons that explain the theories behind Alternative Dispute Resolution, negotiation ethics, competitive and collaborative negotiation, and mediation
• Activities that help them develop their own unique negotiation strategies and styles along with critical thinking, problem-solving, reading, writing, listening, and speaking.
• Step-by-step guidance, sample sentences, and practice activities for applying chapter lessons to real-world disputes.
• Opportunities to explore topics of interest, such as dispute resolution in their home countries, personal and professional lives and current events, and the growing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in ADR.
• Key ADR terms and idioms in plain, accessible English.
• Specific tips to improve cross-cultural communication for negotiating and mediating in English.
• A companion website with downloadable checklists, forms, and sample language that can be used for classroom role-plays and real-world negotiations and mediations.

ESL and ESP instructors can use this book along with The Teaching Guide for English for Dispute Resolution to supplement Legal or Business English courses, teach new standalone negotiation or mediation courses, build students’ soft skills, or to add engaging activities and role-plays to ESL courses.

Exploring Options is designed to help student writers develop their knowledge and use of academic language to meet the demands of college- and university-level writing assignments. It draws on the research identifying lexical and grammatical patterns across academic contexts and provides authentic reading contexts for structured vocabulary learning. Recognizing that vocabulary choices in writing often require consideration of grammatical structure, Exploring Options focuses on specific kinds of lexico-grammatical decisions—that is, the ones involving the interaction between vocabulary and grammar--that students face in shaping, connecting, and restructuring their ideas. The book helps writers learn how to effectively use resources such as learner dictionaries, thesauruses, and concordancers to improve academic word knowledge.
 
Following a unit on using resources for vocabulary development, the contents are divided into three parts: Showing Relationships within Sentences, Connecting and Focusing across Sentences, and Qualifying Statements and Reporting Research. Part 1 focuses on verbs and modifiers that express increases and decreases, verbs and abstract nouns that describe change, connectors and verbs describing causal relationships, and parallel structures. Part 2 explores the words that help connect ideas and add cohesion. Part 3 discusses how to express degrees of certainty and accuracy and the use of reporting verbs.