Ventures 4 Evaluation
Posted on September 26, 2024
Here you will find an evaluation for Ventures, 3rd Edition, Student’s Book, Level 4
Cambridge University Press, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-108-44958-8
Ventures 4 textbook is being reviewed and considered for adult ELL students at an advanced level of English proficiency. The text is part of the Cambridge Ventures series, including six proficiency levels. By clicking on the links below, you will find:
Evaluation Overview
Evaluation Sample Unit/Chapter
Overview
Ventures 4 is a well-organized, user-friendly textbook for both teacher and student. The text contains ten units, each covering a relevant topic of interest to adult ELLs, and are designed to be covered in a one-hour class. The student book begins with a useful Scope and Sequence section that gives a bulleted outline for each unit, and serves as a comprehensive table of contents. Below is an exerpt that includes contents outlined for the sample unit evaluated:
The unit’s title topic and function and the seven skills areas addressed for each unit, i.e., listening and speaking, vocabulary, grammar focus, reading, writing, life skills, and pronunciation, are outlined. Within each unit, there are six stages or lessons, beginning with review/warm-up exercises that lead into the unit’s introduction and clearly stated goals. Each lesson also displays a 10-word, level-appropriate vocabulary for the unit. The second and third lessons in the unit present grammar points or rules and practice exercises. Next, reading skills and strategies are offered with an interesting, short article on current topics, followed by reading comprehension and vocabulary expansion exercises. Lesson five of the unit give ELLs warm-up writing exercises, writing tips, and a writing sample prior to a writing assignment. Finally, lesson six pulls the unit lessons together in review with life-skills content presented to advance academic and workplace problem-solving skills.
What's to like about this textbook
The third edition of Ventures 4 has a modern, up-to-date format and content with current topics, colorful pictures to accompany text and exercises, and easily accessible online resources, such as audio and video files and worksheets, to supplement unit activities. In addition, scripts of the audio files are located at the end of the book. Each unit concludes with a section that extends unit lessons with college and career readiness goals; additional activities, exercises, and more complex reading materials; additional grammar rules and exercises; academic vocabulary; and prompts to advance critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Below is a sample of the final unit lesson that illustrates extended grammar with cultural connections and examples, VR code connecting to a video demonstrating the grammar concept, and paired exercises accompanied by color picture prompts.
This text provides a good balance in addressing listening, reading, writing, and speaking skills, and each unit provides opportunities for ELLs to work individually, paired, and in groups to strengthen the unit focus. Directions and goals for each unit’s lesson are clearly stated, and the uniform unit format makes it possible for novice teachers to comfortably navigate and instruct. Although each unit is designed for a one-hour class, supplemental teaching materials can easily be incorporated for longer sessions as needed.
Textbook weaknesses
Ventures 4’s articles, exercise narratives, and audios are composed around topics of interest that can be useful for ELL adults. However, conversation examples sometimes seem a bit too formal, and fail to capture the flavor of spontaneous, real-time conversation. The result can feel somewhat too scripted and unnatural. This can be addressed by the teacher, and could provide an opportunity to elaborate on situation/culture-specific uses of informal vs. formal speech.
Although Ventures 4 does a good job of making comparisons to the target culture, it is understandably lacking in directly addressing comparisons between English and L1 for ELLs. For that type of comparison to be a practical textbook consideration, L1 would need to be the same for all students, which is not always possible. Teachers may want to supplement material for these comparisons as time permits.
While skills related to technology are addressed in Ventures 4, focus is primarily on general life and career skills with an occasional reference to health science and business/economics. Connections to other arts and science disciplines, e.g., history, chemistry, seems somewhat scant. Teacher’s may want to supplement activities/projects to strengthen this area.
Conclusion
Overall, Ventures 4 is a well-designed and organized tool for ESL teachers. It offers clearly stated goals, ample activities and exercises that build logically on each other, interesting and useful topics for adult learners, and practical learning strategies and techniques for advanced students. Novice teachers will find its structure extremely helpful, while more experienced teachers can utilize the many additional resources, including assessment instruments, workbooks, additional practice worksheets, and instructional materials that are available to accompany the text.
Sample Unit/Chapter Evaluation
Ventures 4, Unit 8, focuses on the topic, “Work”. This unit follows the standard format for each of the other units in the text and consists of 12 pages. As in the sample shown here, the unit begins with a semi-controlled warm-up and review activity asking students to describe six photos. The unit's clearly stated goals are to identify work/school problems, describe hard and soft skills, and provide solutions and their consequences. The grammar foci are on verb tense contrast between present perfect and present perfect continuous and participles used as adjectives, with four pages of the unit that include examples in animated video and audio tracks.
The unit contains colorful and current pictures related to the unit topic; audio files for listening comprehension; and individual, pair, and group activities/exercises provide students ample practice opportunities for each of the seven skills areas outlined in the Scope and Sequence of the text, e.g., reading, writing, pronunciation, etc. Questions and prompts that foster learning skills and stimulate critical thinking are included throughout the unit in controlled, semi-controlled, and free communicative activities presented in a graduated sequence of difficulty. In the example below, the unit’s grammar focus is on verb tense contrast, in which students are first asked to use the appropriate verb form in sentences by filling in the blank, and listen to an audio track to check their answers.
Next, paired students first talk about, then write, sentences applying the appropriate verb choices to questions about a work schedule chart. Again, students work in pairs to interview each other about their own work schedules while using the verb tenses being learned. Finally, students report the information they have collected about their partner’s schedule. The activities enable students to practice and improve their interpersonal, interpretive, and presentational communication skills on culturally relevant topics.