Putting It Together: A Conversation Management Text

This innovative text is designed to develop a variety of specific speaking skills and strategies rather than to simply provide an opportunity to speak. Students who complete this text will become more effective and more confident conversationalists. Putting It Together is aimed at students who have already mastered basic grammar, but are reluctant to participate in situations involving real communication. The first four chapters of Putting It Together focus on such conversation management basics as Coping with Communication Breakdowns, Opening a Conversation, Avoiding Silence, Keeping a Conversation Going, and Closing a Conversation. Later chapters alternate between a focus on high-interest conversational topics and on Weather, Music, Life, Jobs, Food, Weekends), Skills and Strategies Chapters (Explanations, Reduced Forms, Non-words, Conversational Expressions, Storytelling). All chapters emphasize vocabulary an idiom development in real conversations on real topics.