When we first wrote Touchstone, we wanted to do something that was truly groundbreaking – use corpus research to inform a language syllabus, so that the language being taught is the language people really use. Our aim was to combine this language research with an effective methodology that would guarantee that students would become better users and also better learners of English.
We have been thrilled to see that the course has connected with so many teachers and students. Teachers continually tell us of the great results they achieve with Touchstone and how their students sound more confident and natural when speaking English. We are delighted to hear that it has worked so well in classes over the last few years and that students all over the world love using it.
In preparing the Second edition, we conducted extensive research with teachers and students and listened to all your comments and suggestions. As a result, we’ve added some great features, including:
- Extra grammar practice for use in class or as homework
- Can-do statements for each lesson to help students understand the learning outcomes and rate their own performance
- Common error information from the Cambridge Learner Corpus to help students avoid making basic errors and improve their test scores
- Reading tips that help students become better readers accompany completely new reading texts with engaging, topical content
- Additional pronunciation activities focusing on individual sounds and spelling issues
Of course, we’ve kept all the popular features of Touchstone:
- Corpus-informed language that is natural and realistic
- Conversation strategies giving students the language and skills to interact naturally and confidently - and we’ve added even more practice in the second edition
- Inductive learning to encourage students to notice how language is formed and used
- Vocabulary notebook with learning strategies to encourage learner autonomy
- Personalization helping students to learn by talking about their own lives and their ideas
The Second edition also has a great new design with updated photos and illustrations. We love it and we’d love to hear what you think – whether you have taught with Touchstone before or you are new to the course.
