Foundation English Vocabulary Workbook now available online.
This is one of three books recently published by D. Nkwetato Tamonkia for everyone learning English as a second language. You can find the book at all major online bookstores like Amazon, Lulu, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, AppleBooks, etc. All you need to do is type the full title of the book: Foundation English Vocabulary Workbook into your search engine or the name of the author. The search results will who you which bookstore is most convenient for you to buy a copy.
Here is an example of a link to a bookstore where you can actually buy all the books whether you want them in ebook or paperback format. Click here.
Synopsis
Foundation English Vocabulary Workbook is a classroom supplementary textbook for students aged at least 13, learning English as a second language, to build excellent vocabulary skills on a wide variety of topics, usually found in their English textbooks but treated lightly. In addition to users in school settings, the book also serves independent learners of English with hundreds of exercises with which they can better practice using the words provided in each Unit.
To boost listening and pronunciation skills, each Unit of the book comes with an audio file of the word list, read by a native English speaker at normal speed in a real life setting. This is to help learners get familiar and pick up the pronunciations of words the way they would if they were living among native speakers of English. In that light, the audio files vary from male to female voices, children to adult voices, and most importantly, cover a variety of accents such as American, British, Irish, Australian and Canadian accents. This is an attempt to expose the learner to as many clean native English accents as possible. Access to the audio files is made easy by simply providing a QR code for each list of words. A learner can therefore access the audio files from the smartphone, tablet or computer at anytime anywhere, even when the textbook itself is not available. This is an attempt to encourage repeated listening to the audio files which easily leads to pronunciation improvement as well as sudden unconscious memorization of more and more words.
There are 45 Units in the book designed in a way that they can be studied in any order and separately. A teacher or learner does not necessarily need to start from Unit 1. Depending on the need at hand, a teacher or learner can skip to a particular Unit towards the end of the book and still come back to previous Units later when the need arises. In this way, users of the book can better supplement what they are currently studying in English at the time they get a copy of the book.
Each Unit is laid out in three main sections. Section one is a list of words (100 of them in most cases) all connected to a chosen topic. The words are arranged in alphabetical order and numbered to facilitate the picking out of specific words. Section two is a list of activities (5 at least in most cases), for teachers and groups of learners to play with the words given in section one of the Unit. These activities include putting words in categories, searching for information on the internet, group work, class projects, games, puzzles, etc. The overall objective is to push learners to work with the words given, get familiar using them and use the internet as a learning tool. Section three of each Unit is a set of exercises (5 at least in most cases) to allow the learner work independently and develop personal skills. These exercises sometimes touch on important aspects of grammar. At the end of each Unit, there is a reserved area for Personal notes. The learner is expected to write down some key points retained from the Unit. It is where the teacher can easily check students who are making good progress.
The key point about the book is the fact that it is a workbook. It is designed to keep students actively searching for answers from their mates, teachers, parents, dictionaries or the internet. This is an attempt to make learners find fun in the learning of English vocabulary and turn tools like cellphones, laptops and the internet into useful learning tools instead of distractions as commonly considered by some institutions, teachers and parents. Learners can better enjoy learning English if they see these tools as learning tools. Therefore, in many instances in the book, students will be given tasks to accomplish by searching for information on the internet. Teachers and parents are advised to encourage, supervise and guide this practice instead of banning students from using phones or accessing the internet. They will access the internet anyway.
Foundation English Vocabulary Workbook is written by D. Nkwetato Tamonkia, a veteran, ESL teacher and education consultant. With decades of ESL teaching experience and ESL teacher training, he easily knows what activities tickle English learners. ESL teachers with this book in hand will find lesson planning fun and tons of ways to keep the English hour full of learning activity.