Contemporary Topics 2 Third Edition
This interactive listening-speaking series prepares students for the challenges of college lectures with a wide range of listening, speaking, and note-taking strategies and skills. The lectures are drawn from a range of academic disciplines and reflect authentic lecture settings, featuring engaging instructors and live student audiences.
New to This Edition
- New subject areas, presented as one-on-one academic lectures, emphasize professional applications such as software engineering, multimedia design, information technology, urban planning, and social psychology.
- Learning Outcomes listed at the outset of each unit let students know the goals of each unit and what their learning experience will be.
- New audio interviews with topic experts provide context for the upcoming unit lecture.
- Bottom-up listening and pronunciation exercises emphasize important principles and improve realtime perception.
- An oral presentation activity, supported by specific preparation and delivery strategies, concludes each unit and includes the opportunity for peer evaluation.
- Proficiency assessments composed of short academic audio lectures and multiple-choice exams simulate TOEFL-style test format for practice on high-stakes tests.
- New Essential Online Resources include audio, video, and teacher materials (assessments, teaching notes, answer keys, audioscripts, presentation points, and more).
Other Highlights
- Corpus vocabulary drawn from the Academic Word List ensures that students are exposed to core academic vocabulary.
- Collaborative activities with presentation strategies and peer evaluations allow students to make connections and develop critical thinking skills.
- Unit comprehension tests assess students’ grasp of key concepts presented in the unit lecture.
- Mapped to the Global Scale of English