Four Point

Four Point is a four-volume series designed for English language learners whose primary goal is to succeed in an academic setting. While grammar points and learning strategies are certainly important, academic ELLs need skills-based books that focus on the four primary skills of reading, writing, listening, and speaking in a realistic, integrated format, as well as the two primary language bases of vocabulary and grammar. To this end, the Four Point series offers a unique combination of instructional material and activities that truly require students to read, write, listen, and speak in a multitude of combinations. The lower-level volumes will be published winter 2009-2010.

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. The goal of this series is to help students improve their ability in each of these four critical skills and thereby enable the students to have sufficient English to succeed in their final academic setting, whether it be high school, community college, college, or university.

More important, these books focus very heavily on vocabulary because ELLs realize that they are way behind their native-speaker counterparts when it comes to vocabulary. Each book highlights between 125-150 key vocabulary items, including individual words, compound words, phrasal verbs, short phrases, idioms, metaphors, collocations, and longer set lexical phrases. In learning vocabulary, the two most important features are frequency of retrievals (i.e., in exercises) and the spacing between these retrievals. Spaced rehearsal is accomplished in two ways. First, after words appear in a textbook, they will reappear multiple times afterward. Second, interactive web-based exercises provide more than ample opportunities for ELLs to practice their vocabulary learning through spaced rehearsals at the student's convenience.

	Reading-Writing 2, Advanced: Interactive vocabulary activities/quizzes
	Listening-Speaking 2, Advanced: Interactive vocabulary activities/quizzes Video Clips for Units 3-6 Unit 3: Group Discussions and Holding the Floor | 1:18 Unit 4: Handling Informal Classroom Interactions | 1:53 Unit 5: Finding the Speaker's Point of View | 2:09 Unit 6: Listening in Groups | 2:14 Audio and Video Transcripts (PDF)