GUIDE TO THIS SECTION:
	• Introduction to the series • Format • Current availability • Sample unit

Introduction to the series

The Real Lives, Real Listening series is an exciting new approach to training our students in listening. It is designed series to reflect the latest academic theories on the importance of authentic listening in language acquisition. The series also reflects our new awareness of the huge differences between spoken and written English raised by recent research on spoken English corpora.

The RLRL series will eventually feature over 100 native and near-fluent non-native English speakers, including speakers from all the main regions of the British Isles, Australia, Canada, the USA and South Africa, along with speakers from Africa, China, The Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, Norway, Russia, South Korea, Sweden and Turkey.

The first three volumes are My Family, A Typical Day and A Place I Know Well. Subsequent volumes will include Health Issues, Careers, Life Changes and Leisure.

Each volume is divided into three levels: Foundation (KET/PET, Skills for Life Entry Levels 1 and 2), Intermediate (FCE, Skills for Life Entry Levels 2 and 3) and Advanced (CAE/CPE, Skills for Life Levels 1 and 2).

Unlike the listening passages typically found in coursebooks, each passage in RLRL is 100% unscripted. This means that students are exposed to the features of authentic spoken English which they encounter outside the classroom and generally find so daunting. These features include assimilation, elision, hesitations, false starts, redundancy and, of course, colloquial expressions.

The first three listening passages in each book are accompanied by a large number of exercises which the teacher can select from, depending on their students’ needs. In addition to standard, non-threatening listening comprehension exercises, there are listening exercises on minimal pairs, sentence stress, intonation patterns, etc. These are followed by language development exercises which reinforce the lexis found in the passage.

The final two listening passages are for revision purposes. Here the speakers recycle naturally the lexis and grammar found in the previous three passages.

There is a transcript at the end of each unit, together with a useful glossary in the Teacher’s Book.

Language students of all languages and at all levels experience a huge sense of achievement when they find they can understand a native speaker speaking at a natural speed. The aim of the RLRL series is to provide busy teachers with ready-made listening materials which will effectively train, rather than just test, their students in listening.

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Format

The Real Lives, Real Listening book contains five units featuring native and non-native speakers of English.

The first three units are graded from easy to more challenging according to accent, speed of delivery and complexity of language. Each of these three units follows the same format:

Part 1 Pre-listening
This section gives students the opportunity to familiarise themselves with the speaker’s voice – a process known as ‘normalisation’.

Part 2 Listening comprehension
These non-threatening exercises require some degree of language processing. Wherever practical two sets of listening comprehension exercises are provided. The first are for students with literacy problems and the second are for students without literacy problems.

Part 3 Interesting language points
This optional section appears in the Teacher’s Book only. Here attention is drawn to interesting grammatical, lexical and phonological points which have occurred in each passage.Part 4 Further listening practice. The focus of these exercises is on listening training. Exercises include minimal pairs, identifying sentence stress, word recognition, weak forms, dictation, etc.

Part 5 Language development practice
This section recycles useful lexis from the listening passage.

Part 6 Transcript
The Teacher’s Book contains a transcript followed by helpful explanations of key lexis. The transcript in the Student’s Book deliberately omits a glossary in order to give students the opportunity to work out the meaning of unknown words for themselves and to use their dictionaries or ask their teacher for definitions.

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Current availability

There are currently three titles available: A Typical Day, My Family and A Place I Know Well. These are all at Foundation Level (KET/PET, Skills for Life Entry Levels 1 and 2)

Each title has a Teacher’s Book with CD and a photocopiable Student’s Book. The costs are as follows:

Teacher’s Book with CD £15.00
Photocopiable Student’s Book £20.00

Orders are dispatched within 48 hours.

To view a typical Teacher’s Book unit, DOWNLOAD HERE

To view a typical Student’s Book unit, DOWNLOAD HERE