Synopses & Reviews
The Contemporary Topics Series prepares students for the challenges of college by presenting a wide range of listening and note-taking strategies and skills. Targeting corpus-based vocabulary drawn from the Academic Word List, Contemporary Topics ensures that students will be familiar with the most frequently used academic terms. The twelve lectures at each level are drawn from a range of academic disciplines, and are recorded to reflect natural interaction between professor and students.
Each level offers these features:
- Realistic lectures on topics of current interest.
- Pre-listening activities designed to activate prior knowledge, to introduce key vocabulary, and to provide notetaking tips, models, and practice.
- A wide range of listening strategies including predicting, inferring, listening for the main idea, and listening for details.
- "Using Your Notes" lecture review activities.
- Projects including in-class discussions, presentations, contact assignments, and research projects.
- Listening quizzes for each unit.
- Teacher Packs for each level, including photocopiable quizzes, answer keys, and audioscripts for both lectures and quizzes.
Sample audio
Listen to a sample from the audio program:
Unit 1: Slang
Talking (Selection from complete lecture) (5:14)
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www.longman.com/contemporarytopics
Synopsis
The Contemporary Topics Series prepares students for the challenges of college by presenting a wide range of listening and note-taking strategies and skills. Targeting corpus-based vocabulary drawn from the Academic Word List, Contemporary Topics ensures that students will be familiar with the most frequently used academic terms.
Table of Contents
Unit 1 Slang: Talking Cool Topic: Communication Studies
Note-Taking Tip: Organize main ideas and supporting detail
Unit 2 Murphy's Law Topic: Statistics
Note-Taking Tip: Note numbers and statistics
Unit 3 Types of Memory Topic: Cognitive Science
Note-Taking Tip: List and number items
Unit 4 Actions Speak Louder Than Words Topic: Psychology
Note-Taking Tip: Use abbreviations and symbols
Unit 5 Marriage: Traditions and Trends Topic: Sociology
Note-Taking Tip: Make charts
Unit 6 Black Holes, White Holes, and Wormholes Topic: Astronomy
Note-Taking Tip: Draw sketches
Unit 7 Animal Talk Topic: Cognitive Linguistics
Note-Taking Tip: Note descriptions
Unit 8 Gender Differences in Language Topic: Language and Communication
Note-Taking Tip: Note comparisons and contrasts
Unit 9 Fashion and Status Topic: Fashion Design
Note-Taking Tip: Note definitions
Unit 10 The Making of Genius Topic: Behavioral Science
Note-Taking Tip: Note processes
Unit 11 The New Global Superculture Topic: Sociology
Note-Taking Tip: Note examples
Unit 12 Computer Security Topic: Computer Science
Note-Taking Tip: Note causes and effects
Appendix A: Academic Word List
Appendix B: Affix Charts