Over the past year, there have been numerous occasions when we at English Central were looking at a book and genuinely thought, “I wish my teachers had used this with me.” Now it is too late for us, but it is not too late for your students. Nicole, Calin and Anahita want to tell you about what would have been on their wish lists if the books had existed when they were students.
Calin Stefan, Sales & Marketing Coordinator, writes:
When I started university, I quickly discovered that high school had not prepared me for post-secondary academic writing or the expectations of my professors. Hamburger-style essays and unsupported claims simply would not do in this new context—this is why I truly wish I’d been given Contemporary Academic Writing (CAW) to use a resource both before and during my undergraduate degree.
CAW is a hard-hitting, concise crash course in academic writing. For me, it checks all the boxes, including those that aren’t necessarily visible in the finished written product. Most importantly, it frames writing as a process; and as every student eventually learns, typing words onto the page happens at the end. How to research effectively, how to plan the structure of an essay, how to craft a thesis statement—these were hard-earned skills for me, but they don’t have to be for new undergrads!
Anahita Eftekhari, the newest English Central team member, writes:
It’s only every day that I struggle against the ever tricky zip, unzip, load, code, and all the sharing of mischief that pops up online. At work, at school, and in all areas of life, ICT skills are key. Need to make an items inventory? Easy… If you’ve got sharp Excel skills. Presentation on Leonard Cohen? If you want it memorable and catchy, you’ve got to know your PowerPoint down to a T. And everyone’s got hobbies. Us Millennials use ours as side gigs to help pay the rent. But to be a professional anything nowadays, you need a fancy website. Plus the navigation skills to do online commerce and advertise. Not easy.
Now imagine a December oh so many years ago when I could boost my performance at school and at work, and get my side gig to hit a boom. All I need is one wish—cue Mariah Carey’s famous words—all I want for Christmas is… Binary ICT Skills.
(Email us for more information on our computer skills books.)
Nicole Graham, the lady who has been chained to English Central for 15 years, writes:
When Garnet Education published the first edition of the Transferable Academic Skills Kit (TASK) a few years ago, it was such an unusual publication that I decided to work through the book myself to better understand it. It wasn’t too far into the Critical Thinking module that I was overwhelmed by the realization that I would have gotten so much more out of my university studies if I had worked through TASK before hand.
TASK does not teach language skills (though I probably could have benefitted from that too); instead it teaches the academic skills – such as critical thinking, researching and referencing, numeracy, teamwork and presentation skills – that all students need in order to succeed in their post-secondary studies. TASK was written with the international student in mind, though, and takes into consideration the extra hurdles that they face. In the second American edition, the publisher was also kind enough to take on board a number of changes/adjustments that English Central had to make the book particularly relevant to the North American context (that’s why our logo is on the cover!). If you teach EAP (or native teenagers planning to go on to college or university), you really would be doing your students a favor if you introduced them to TASK.
