Ventures 2 Student's Book with Audio CD [Paperback]

Gretchen Bitterlin (Author), Dennis Johnson (Author), Donna Price (Author), Sylvia Ramirez (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 052154839X | ISBN-13: 978-0521548397 | Publication Date: November 5, 2007

Ventures is a six-level, standards-based ESL series for adult-education ESL. Each Student's Book with Audio CD contains 10 topical units composed of six lessons each. The two-page lessons are designed for an hour of classroom instruction. Culture notes as well as speaking, reading, and writing tips enrich and support exercises. Review units include sections focusing on pronunciation.

Editorial Reviews

Book Description

Each Student's Book with Audio CD contains 10 topical units composed of six lessons each. The two-page lessons are designed for an hour of classroom instruction. Culture notes as well as speaking, reading, and writing tips enrich and support exercises. Review units include sections focusing on pronunciation.

Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (November 5, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 052154839X
• ISBN-13: 978-0521548397
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #30,311 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #29 in Books > Education & Reference > Dictionaries & Thesauruses > Science

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good Book, November 1, 2011

By 

Daniele Tucci - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Ventures 2 Student's Book with Audio CD (Paperback)

It is a good book for learn basic english, I recommended this book for all people need to start learn english, I hope if you buy this you learn english.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great for ESL students/instructors, September 26, 2009

By 

Iryna "Iryna" (Seattle, WA, USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Ventures 2 Student's Book with Audio CD (Paperback)

I highly recommend the book for ESL teachers. Great exercises, real-life topics, natural language,lots of listening, well organized, CASAS standardized.

4 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Series is so bad I have to make all my own materials, March 8, 2010

By 

naware (san diego) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ventures 2 Student's Book with Audio CD (Paperback)

I absolutely hate this series. Using it is more work than it is worth. The teacher's manual is extremely thick with all of the work it expects the teacher to do. If you want to spend all of your (unpaid personal) time doing nothing but prepping for your class, then this series is fabulous. But if you want to have any kind of a life at all, avoid Ventures. How does Ventures meet all the Casas requirements?...By being able to say that in the teacher's manual it told the teacher to do this and do that.

Plus, most of the best worksheets/activities in Ventures that don't require a lot of work by the teacher are not reproducible so you must have a consumable copy of the book for each student.

Ventures is worthless if you are teaching absolute beginners, especially if they are poorly educated in their own countries. In other words, Ventures is worthless for teaching your average illegal immigrant from Mexico or Central America who doesn't know 10 words of English. If you have to teach beginning students who don't have high school diplomas in their own countries, then this will be the curriculum from hell.

There is one manual that has some reproducible pages in it but you definitely cannot support an entire class with these materials. You will still have to make most of your own unless your employer is providing you with a consumable manual for each student. And even then, poorly educated beginners will not be able to use it.

Amending review: Someone in a comment asked that I describe why I felt this series was not good for absolute beginners so here goes.

Point one: This book does not teach reading. It barely skims the alphabet before moving on to complicated tasks like filling out job applications and other difficult tasks. Absolute adult beginners from Mexico (especially the illegal immigrant population) tend to have only a first to third grade education in Mexico. In other words, they are barely literate or nearly illiterate in their own language. Thus they don't even know their own alphabet very well. In addition, they do not understand how to complete worksheets or do things on paper that most of us would consider common knowledge. This series does not take this type of learner into account. The majority of my learners had no idea what to do as far as filling out a worksheet as they had literally never in their lives done it. This book required the students to complete many book and worksheet tasks that were not within their frame of reference. Therefore, I had to compensate for that by creating my own materials and lessons that ignored the book.

Point two: The book does not place enough emphasis on vocabulary. My learners knew almost no English words. They didn't even know the most basic English words. Vocabulary is the absolute first thing that my learners needed to begin learning. I went out and bought many flashcards with pictures so that the students could visually see different vocabulary ideas. This book mostly wanted the teacher to rely on pointing at objects in the room. That only worked for objects actually in the room.

Point three: Illiterate native English children usually need a comprehensive program to learn to read. Often this would incorporate phonics type teaching. Illiterate beginners who are adults also need this. This book provides nothing like this.

Point four: Many people teaching English to adults will be doing so as part of some program that is tied to CASAS or some other official program. Program funding is often dependent on the students performing at a certain level at end of term on CASAS or other official tests. This book claims to follow CASAS and any number of other programs. However, it doesn't do it well. Because it is claiming to match so many different curriculums, it follows none of them in a dedicated way. Therefore, the teacher must do a lot of modification to make the book work for their particular requirements. It would be like buying a refrigerator that claims it is simultaneously an oven, microwave, dishwasher, and dehydrator. Do you really believe one appliance can do all of those things well. It reminds me of the math textbooks that are put out that have to meet the requirements of every state's education department. To do that, the textbooks end up being 500 page, 10 pound horrors of convoluted and inefficient instruction. As an example of the type of work the book wanted me to do, it wanted me to find authentic applications for the students to practice filling out. I did. However, I should not have had to do that. Maybe it doesn't seem a big deal to drop by a store or library to grab a stack of applications for my students or to look on the internet for applications for them to fill out, but when you are constantly doing things like this as well as having to modify or create lessons because of the book's deficiencies, it becomes more than an annoyance. By the way, it is really fun trying to follow the book that has illiterate students filling out complicated applications for employment and such. That was sarcasm. Actually, it made me want to beat my head into a wall.

Point five: In the old days, an instructor could mainly just follow a textbook and plan a few of their own basic projects or instructions for the students. However, nowadays, the textbooks all come with complicated teacher reference manuals that come with a ridiculous number of ideas for the teacher that involve the teacher having to create a lot of materials and basically do cartwheels to comply. This is one of those books that does that. The book came with videos for the teachers to watch. We were made to sit through hours of these boring videos showing some "master instructor" using the book in some prescribed manner. That instructor had pretty advanced students though. Not only would what he was doing not work with my level of students, but additionally, any book that can't be used by a teacher without them watching hours of instructional videos showing them how to teach with it has something wrong with it.