NTRODUCTION
Thank you for selecting Listening to Learn (L2L)
Listening to Learn is the first of a series of specifically designed listening materials for use in secondary ESL and EFL classrooms here in Taiwan and the larger Chinese community (mainland China, Hong Kong, etc.). The authors of this particular series are myself, co-Project Director for English Education Resource Center (EERC, the ESL arm of Taiwan’s Ministry of Education for secondary language instruction) and Richard Roshay, EERC’s American ESL consultant and a career ESL materials developer specialist.
The source of listening material for Listening to Learn is based on selected video clips from English Central (EnglishCentral.com). Each of the five units is theme-based and we have selected themes which we believe will be of interest to both you and your students.
As with the other books in the listening series, Listening to Learn is developed around the three core sections called Think Ahead, Let’s Listen, and Learning More. The Think Ahead- section introduces the theme and seeks to activate prior or background knowledge. The Let’s Learn- section presents the core listening both with and without the video segment (thus allowing students the opportunity to listen only). The Learning More-section, encourages students to reconstruct some of the content of the video with theme-based follow up activities and a wide range of vocabulary practice of the lexical items selected in Vocabulary Practice Review. Each of the three sections has within it a number of activities which are designed to support the listening.
The authors of Listening to Learn
 believe the development of good listening skills a life skill
 consider listening as an effective means of vocabulary development and acquisition
 hold that listening is an active and demanding skill that all students can develop
 see listening as collaborative and not a skill practiced solely in isolation
 value learning as a life-long pursuit

Some of the key features of Listening to Learn are
 a wide range of vocabulary support activities and tasks
 the introduction of Visual Dictation and Visual Dictionaries to the series
 the inclusion of mini- Problem-Based-Learning activities
 highly visualized texts to enhance and encourage learning
 critical-thinking based tasks

Regards,
Pearl Chang & Richard Roshay