A Year In the Life of an ESL (English Second Language) Student: Idioms and Vocabulary You Can't Live Without

I've bought this book because I wanted to create more interesting lessons for my advanced students and found that introducing idioms would be a nice start. I really like the way the author approaches the new subject and think the exercises are effective when it comes to learning vocabulary, idioms, slangs and expressions. The discussion questions are well planned showing the students how the idioms learned are used in real-life conversations. It is an excellent tool for every advanced ESL teacher or student!

Great book,

it helps you a lot to sound more natural in conversation. Structure of the book, with bold idioms in lessons and exercises which follow, really works.

The only downside is that book needs a audio CD to practice pronunciation but it's still very useful without it.

I hope Edward J. Francis make more books with same principle and some new idioms and expressions.

I've been teaching ESL in Brazil for 6 years and I know what it's like to search for quality material to use in class, especially when we teach advanced level students.

When I read A Year in the Life of an ESL Student I was thankful for the source found. The book by Edward J. Francis presents everyday vocabulary and idioms which help ESL students feel more comfortable when communicating with native speakers. Because of the approach used - real life situations - it's easier for students to understand and absorb the new information in a natural way.

The exercises found in each chapter allow students to check their understanding and use the language they've just seen in many different ways, leading to the mastering of the topic.

Teachers from all over the world are able to use this book with large groups or private lessons making classes more interactive and fun.

This text is an invaluable resource for people who are English language learners. Each chapter begins with a dialogue between two characters in the book, in settings such as arriving in the city, picking up a friend at the airport, and catching a movie. Each dialogue contains American English-style expressions such as "long gone", "right up your alley", and "cold turkey" - expressions that are difficult to understand for English language learners.

Following the dialogue, each chapter contains a list of definitions for the terms used in the dialogue. Matching exercises, sentence completion work, dialogue rewriting, and word puzzles give the ESL student multiple opportunities to work with the content.

This text is a very effective learning tool for English language learners. It follows sound instructional practices for language arts learning, and it should be a primary source for vocabulary and idiomatic instruction for people who are learning conversational American English.

I purchased this book based on the product information and all the good reviews, so I was surprised to find it disappointing in a couple ways. But first the positive.

The author chose some excellent real-life situations for framing the idioms and language. He also includes plenty of repetition and reinforcement through follow up worksheets based on the introductory dialogue for each unit. This is sometimes a weakness in other idiom presentations.

The disappointment lies in the over abundance of idioms in each dialogue and the sense that too many of them are consequently forced into non-natural usages. Those of us who teach English have all experienced the over zealous language learner who wants to sound natural and tries to do so by throwing idioms into every other sentence. That is how some dialogues in this book sound. By doing so, it feeds the non-native speaker's belief that idioms are used constantly in speech rather than aiding them in sounding more like a native speaker by using them only in true context and sparingly. Take the first dialogue for example; there are 25 idioms / slang words used in a 2-minute dialogue. Unless I'm just a really boring person or I've been working too long with low level speakers, my natural conversations are not filled with half that many unusual expressions. And a couple examples of 'forced usage'. Chapter 3 in a student to student discussion about a teacher: "Actually, the course materials are pretty good, but the teacher certainly isn't the cream of the crop. I'm sure his days are numbered." Chaper 6 in a conversation at a shopping mall: "What about this pair of pants? They're right up your alley, don't you think?" (I don't remember ever talking about clothing with this idiom??)

All in all, there's some great language in the book for the basis of creating a lesson, and I would still recommend buying it. But I will be taking the dialogues and re-writing each one to eliminate at least half the idioms / slang words. Not only is the over usage a little annoying, it's also poor pedagogy to introduce so many pieces of social language that are so context-dependent.