We are currently using ‘Succeed in English’ (OUP) for our ESO students at school (books 1 to 4). I am going to focus on Succeed in English 4 (Vantage B2+), UNIT 2 Cities. One of the good things about this method is that it has a teen-friendly-topic based approach, it emphasizes functional language and it offers constant recycling of the language.
Even though we know that the course offers a high level compared to other methods in the publishing market, we have always supported the idea of ‘the more the better’, and that means that the book has a wide range of activities teachers can choose from. We never teach the whole syllabus as we decided some years ago that we would work on basic competences…since we teach the same structures every year and they keep growing in difficulty, we decided to leave the difficult structures (Reported Speech, the Three Conditionals…) for the older kids, but then we wouldn’t teach Present Simple and Present Continuous again in 4 ESO.
Tasks are graded; there are always activities for the fast finishers called either Extra activities or activities for fast finishers and also Revision material that offers further consolidation for weaker students who need more practice of the grammar and vocabulary. The digital support OUP offers meets the needs of the modern classroom and kids enjoy doing them either in the class or at home. The workbook has skills exercises at three levels. For the kids who need more revision there are explanations and further practice exercises in the Workbook. I always use those before term exams. There are also end of unit, end of term and end of year tests we can use to revise or for extra practice. Those are really very useful.