Your Words

Your Words is a new study support tool for upper secondary students by the authors of the much appreciated anthologies of English Literature Amazing Minds and Amazing Minds NEW GENERATION, as well as of the new culture book Your World - #Bethechange: Mauro Spicci and Timothy Alan Shaw.
Always particularly sensitive to the needs and requirements of students in today’s rapidly changing world, in this new booklet the Authors aim at providing the students with the necessary skills and strategies to communicate and interact successfully, both orally and in writing.
In order to do so, they offer strategies, practical tips, models and guided activities to develop the most relevant writing skills - such as summarising, writing emails and posts, creating digital documents and writing essays - and oral skills both in everyday life and in academic contexts.
A specific section is dedicated to develop the necessary skills and create confidence to help students face the written test in the Esame di stato for Liceo Linguistico.
The operative approach, the practical involvement for the students, the great quantity of models also in the form of videos make this slim booklet a reliable companion for students and a valid support for teachers.
You can read more about this and future projects from the words of the Authors themselves.

One of our major responsibilities as language teachers today is to help our students cope with today’s complexity, giving them the words, the communication strategies and the most advanced competences to make sense of a world that is changing at unprecedented speed. It is with this in mind that we have generated Your Words, a slim, essential booklet that will help your students to a better understanding of and greater expertise in the various aspects of language production in the contemporary world.
The volume tackles “literacy”, illustrating how to read critically and intelligently and how to take notes and write summaries; how to exploit digital writing and editing tools; how to prepare, structure, write and perfect an essay and how to engage in creative writing, developing plot and characters.
This section is followed by four further units devoted to “oracy”, guiding the students through presentation skills, participation in dialogues, discussions and debate, how to tell an impactful story or anecdote and how to perform well in interview situations.
A further section, especially addressed to the Liceo Linguistico, offers an overview of the skills needed for writing in the context of the second paper of the school-leaving exam at the end of their five-year course.
Two key words characterise this volume: effective and confident. Aware of the stress that producing texts, written or spoken, in various ambits, we have focused on providing practical tips, indications and models that will help our students to a clear understanding of how to organise their ideas, materials and final production to the best of their ability and in line with the expectations and assessment criteria of their addressees, be they teachers, examiners, fellow students in their present scholastic reality as well as colleagues, managers and professional contacts in a future work setting.
The various units offer exercises and activities that will expand relevant vocabulary alongside texts in many different formats offering opportunities to analyse, reflect on and exploit paradigms of “professional” and proficient communicators.
In order to help students cope with the risk of performance anxiety, we trust that the guidance offered in these volumes will improve the students’ “technical” competences and, consequently, enable them to acquire greater confidence, and even enjoyment, when they engage in significant communication activities in the world of today and tomorrow.
Creating Your Words is the first preliminary step towards completing a bigger, fascinating plan: right now, while we are writing this letter to you, we are actively working on a brand new literature coursebook for launch in 2025 that will continue to juxtapose literature and the infinite languages of the contemporary world by providing you and your students with new tools to read the modern world and make sense of its fascinating complexity through the lenses of literature.
Looking forward to receiving the precious and welcome feedback that you have so generously supplied in the last few years and to “seeing” you all again soon in future online and in-person events, we wish you all “buon lavoro”!

Referenze iconografiche: Pixel-Shot / Shutterstock