A Beginning Look at Canada is a text for post-literacy to high-beginner ESL students who wish to learn about Canada while improving their reading skills. It is also useful for students in the secondary school system and as a supplementary text for adults preparing for Canadian citizenship.
Seventy readings describe fundamental facts and concepts of Canada's geography, history, people, and government in an easy-to-understand, sequenced format. Each reading is accompanied by several exercises to check comprehension and to develop reading skills such as skimming and scanning for information, categorizing, and reading charts and maps.
Features
Open, accessible format supported by numerous maps and functional illustrations bolsters understanding.
Key terms with glossary build vocabulary.
Clear, simple sentence structure allows students to concentrate on meaning.
Frequent comprehension exercises give practice and confirm learning.
Special features of the book
Each of the four parts begins with a page of questions titled ‘Get Ready,' which allow students to reflect on their prior knowledge of the topic as well as stimulate their interests before they read it.
Each part ends with a glossary, in which key vocabulary words are defined.
The readings of each unit are composed of clear and simple sentence structures, accompanied by maps, pictures and charts, which give the beginning learners more visual aids.
Each unit reading is followed by a number of different comprehension exercises including matching word to word meanings, multiple choices, filling in blanks, correcting false sentences, crossword puzzles and discussions, which reinforce learning and develop reading skills such as skimming and scanning for information, categorizing, and interpreting charts and maps.
Has a large number of photographs, charts and maps
The Teacher's Manual is available online, at no cost.
Teacher's Manual Now Online!
The Teacher's Manual, available online, includes pre-reading suggestions for introducing each unit, reproducible classroom activities, masters for making flashcards, and answer keys for the comprehension exercises.
What's new in the 3rd edition?
More than twenty charts, graphs and tables have been updated with information from Statistics Canada to show current numbers for high and low temperatures, population growth and distribution, immigration trends, languages, distribution of labour and wages, employment, voting trends and government finances, both nationally and provincially.
Changes in political parties and government, both on the national and provincial levels have been made current.
Out of date photos have been replaced by new ones to show current political situation in Canada.
Test questions have been revised to reflect changes in the text.
Errors in factual information have been corrected or updated.
New terms have been added to the glossaries.
What people have to say about A Beginning Look at Canada!
“A Beginning Look at Canada... interested me in particular because of my experiences teaching English as a Second and Foreign Language... and continued interest in teaching material relevant to students' lives.”
—Donna Patrick, International Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue internationale d'études canadiennes
“A Beginning Look at Canada... is very practical for ESL beginning learners, particularly for those new Canadian landed immigrants who lack basic knowledge about Canada and are also at a relatively low English level. For them, reading this book can be regarded as their first step to get to know Canada.”
—Yao Peng, Second Language Research Institute of Canada/Institut de recherche en langues secondes du Canada
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