Dear English language learner!

Welcome back to school! This year you are going to study an academic course of English.

We want you to enrich your knowledge in the subjects across the Curriculum as well as to speak and to write their content. We hope you will enjoy practising your English through learning more from history, geography, social studies, literature, computing, music, etc.

You can start with the revision of what you have learnt previously, using the introductory lessons “Getting Started”. In each of the six forthcoming units, you will find contemporary academic and conversational English materials which will enable you to develop your communicative competence in listening, reading, speaking and writing. The conversation warmups “Go Ahead!” and the pronunciation warm-ups “Rhyme and Reason” can help you to brush up your English on the basis of everyday situations, quotes and poems.

“Your Helping Hand” will truly appear your helping hand in revising your grammar and learning new grammatical items. To upgrade your lexical competence, you are recommended to use the higher-level vocabulary practices in the parts “Enrich Yourself!” and “Work your Wisdom!”. Make sure you pay attention to the differences in meaning and form between some British English (BrE) and American English (AmE) words. Your Language Portfolio is meant to assist you in developing your reading, listening and writing skills in different domains (personal, public, educational and occupational). Try your hand at creating projects in various formats ranging from a poster to a brochure, from an SMS exchange to a house model. You can make them from the point of view of your future profession(s) — that of a historian, a geographer, a psychologist, a computer programmer, a philosopher, and the like.

Reading makes a full man, you know. With this coursebook, you will certainly benefit from reading all sorts of authentic materials (popular and scientific articles, manuals, announcements, journals, etc.). To analyse them thoroughly, please, use the tasks “In-depth Language Study” in your workbook.

There is ample opportunity for you to learn both language and culture in the sections “Culture Comparison”, “Across Cultures” and “A Cross-cultural Reader”. Importantly, it may prevent you from behaving like a bull in a china shop abroad.

Do you want to test yourself in order to find out your level of language acquisition? Then go to the “Test Yourself” section at the end of each unit.

Hopefully, this coursebook will help you to get a good command of Academic and Conversational English.