Academic Encounters 4 : Human Behavior (Reading & Writing) /
Bernard Seal.
- 2nd ed.
- New York : Cambridge University Press, 2012.
- xv, 216 p. : ill. ; 26 cm.
- Academic Encounters .
Includes index.
Introduction To the Student UNIT 1: MIND, BODY, AND HEALTH Write an essay on health risk factors. Chapter 1: THE INFLUENCE OF MIND OVER BODY Content: Reading 1 - What Is Stress? -- Reading 2 - Coping with Stress -- Reading 3 - Stress and Illness Reading Skills: Thinking about the topic -- Predicting -- Reading for main ideas -- Thinking about what you already know -- Scanning -- Thinking critically Writing Skills: Parallel sentence structure -- Hedging Vocabulary Skills: Guessing meaning from context -- Dealing with unknown words -- The Academic Word List Academic Success Skills: Highlighting -- Preparing for a test -- Answering multiple-choice questions -- Taking notes using arrows Chapter 2 LIFESTYLE AND HEALTH Content: Reading 1 - Heart Disease -- Reading 2 - Smoking -- Reading 3 - Healthful Behavior Reading Skills: Personalizing the topic -- Skimming -- Thinking about the topic -- Increasing reading speed -- Comprehension after speed reading -- Scanning -- Thinking critically -- Scientific terms -- Reading for main ideas Writing Skills: Comparing -- Understanding paragraph structure Vocabulary Skills: Describing change -- Describing experimental results Academic Success Skills: Answering true/false questions -- Preparing for a short-answer test -- Writing short answers to test questions UNIT 2 DEVELOPMENT THROUGH LIFE Write an essay comparing and contrasting two adjacent periods of life. Chapter 3 THE TEEN YEARS Content: Reading 1 - Defining Adolescence -- Reading 2 - Physical Change in Adolescence -- Reading 3 - Cognitive and Social Development in Adolescence Reading Skills: Personalizing the topic -- Previewing art -- Reading for main ideas -- Previewing art and graphics -- Skimming -- Reading for details -- Thinking critically Writing Skills: Understanding paragraph structure -- Understanding text structure -- Hedging -- Gerunds as subjects Vocabulary Skills: Word families -- Synonyms Academic Success Skills: Definition answers on tests -- The SQ3R System (Part 1) -- Taking notes in the margins -- The SQ3R System (Part 2) Chapter 4 ADULTHOOD Content: Reading 1 - Early Adulthood -- Reading 2 - Middle Adulthood -- Reading 3 - Late Adulthood Reading Skills: Personalizing the topic -- Previewing art and graphics -- Reading actively -- Thinking about the topic -- Applying what you have read -- Examining graphics -- Increasing reading speed -- Comprehension after speed reading Writing Skills: Using data from a graphic -- Journal writing -- Paragraph topics -- Paragraph main ideas -- Supporting main ideas -- Paraphrasing Vocabulary Skills: Collocations -- Guessing meaning from context -- Describing change Academic Success Skills: Synthesizing -- Group projects UNIT 3: NONVERBAL MESSAGES Produce a handbook that will help someone who is not a member of your culture understand how your culture uses body language. Chapter 5 BODY LANGUAGE Content: Reading 1 - Gestural Communication -- Reading 2 - Facial Communication -- Reading 3 - Eye Communication Reading Skills: Thinking about the topic -- Thinking of your own examples -- Thinking critically -- Skimming -- Personalizing the topic -- Increasing reading speed -- Comprehension after speed reading Writing Skills: Defining language -- Signaling examples -- Paraphrasing Vocabulary Skills: Words related to the topic -- Guessing meaning from context -- Ways of looking Academic Success Skills: Outlining practice -- Highlighting -- Taking notes -- Exploring key concepts -- Writing short answers to test questions Chapter 6 TOUCH, SPACE, AND CULTURE Content: Reading 1 - The Meaning of Touch -- Reading 2 - Spatial Messages -- Reading 3 - Nonverbal Communication and Culture Reading Skills: Thinking about the topic -- Skimming -- Reading for details -- Gathering data -- Predicting Writing Skills: The passive voice -- Summarizing -- Using adverbs -- Generalizations about groups of people -- Transitional expressions Vocabulary Skills: Word families -- Collocations Academic Success Skills: Making a chart -- Answering a short-answer test question -- Exploring key concepts -- Synthesizing UNIT 4: INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS Write an essay in which you analyze one or two of your personal relationships. Chapter 7: FRIENDSHIP Content: Reading 1 - What is Friendship? -- Reading 2 - The First Encounter -- Reading 3 - The Internet and Relationships Reading Skills: Thinking about the topic -- Predicting -- Personalizing the topic -- Previewing art -- Skimming -- Reading for details -- Increasing reading speed -- Comprehension after speed reading Writing Skills: Efficient sentence structure -- Understanding paragraph structure -- Journal writing -- Paraphasing -- Summarizing Vocabulary Skills: Using new words in context -- Words related to the topic -- Collocations Academic Success Skills: Outlining practice -- Exploring key concepts Chapter 8: LOVE Content: Reading 1 - Attraction Theory -- Reading 2 - Love -- Reading 3 - Gender Differences in Loving Reading Skills: Personalizing the topic -- Reading for main ideas -- Reading for details -- Thinking about the topic -- Predicting -- Thinking critically Writing Skills: Journal writing -- Using quotations -- The passive voice Vocabulary Skills: Prepositions -- Words related to the topic -- Similar and different Academic Success Skills: Mnemonics -- Preparing for a test -- Taking notes
"Academic Encounters is a sustained content-based series for English language learners preparing to study college-level subject matter in English. The goal of the series is to expose students to the types of texts and tasks that they will encounter in their academic course work and provide them with the skills to be successful when that encounter occurs. At each level in the series, there are two thematically paired books. One is an academic reading and writing skills book, in which students encounter readings that are based on authentic academic texts. In this book, students are given the skills to understand texts and respond to them in writing. The reading and writing book is paired with an academic listening and speaking skills book, in which students encounter discussion and lecture material specially prepared by experts in their field. In this book, students learn how to take notes from a lecture, participate in discussions, and prepare short presentations. The books at each level may be used as stand-alone reading and writing books or listening and speaking books. Or they may be used together to create a complete four-skills course. This is made possible because the content of each book at each level is very closely related. Each unit and chapter, for example, has the same title and deals with similar content, so that teachers can easily focus on different skills, but the same content, as they toggle from one book to the other. Additionally, if the books are taught together, when students are presented with the culminating unit writing or speaking assignment, they will have a rich and varied supply of reading and lecture material to draw on. The Academic Encounters series adopts a sustained content-based approach, which means that at each level in the series students study subject matter from one or two related academic content areas. There are two major advantages gained by students who study with materials that adopt this approach. Because all the subject matter in each book is related to a particular academic discipline, concepts and language tend to recur. This has a major facilitating effect. As students progress through the course, what at first seemed challenging feels more and more accessible. Students thus gain confidence and begin to feel that academic study in English is not as overwhelming a task as they might at first have thought. The second major advantage in studying in a sustained content-based approach is that students actually gain some in-depth knowledge of a particular subject area. In other content-based series, in which units go from one academic discipline to another, students’ knowledge of any one subject area is inevitably superficial. However, after studying a level of Academic Encounters students may feel that they have sufficiently good grounding in the subject area that they may decide to move on to study the academic subject area in a mainstream class, perhaps fulfilling one of their general education requirements." (Introduction, p. 8)
Level 4 in the series focuses on psychology and human communication. The books are designed for students at the low-advanced to advanced level.