An English Zone Review: The Real English® Video & Video Workbook Michael Marzio of the Marzio School in Istres, France, was kind enough to send me a copy of his wonderful video, Real English® Video 2 to try out with my students, and I must say that we are enjoying it immensely! In many English-learning video programs, the speaking style is artificial, and the dialog comes across as overly contrived, but not in the Real English® video! The speakers come from all over the world, and they all have accents your students will encounter while interacting in the "real world" outside of the classroom. In Real English®, they actually speak just that - real English!  The Marzio School did a wonderful job of going out into the real world and eliciting interviews from passers–by, tourists, businessmen, and couples on the streets of England, Scotland, Ireland, and the United States. The responses are natural and at times quite humorous! At the end of unit 5.4, when asked where she lives, Helen replies, "Everywhere!" The students weren't expecting that and they all broke up laughing. The responses are terrific because you just never know quite what someone will say when you catch them off guard with a question on the street! The variety of accents is wonderful, because in a classroom situation students usually get only the teacher's version of English. In Real English®, there are English accents from all over the world. I particularly enjoyed Lorna saying, "I live in Glasgow." in her beautiful sing-song Scottish accent. My students and I took turns mimicking her and laughing at our silly attempts! Bob from Essex is another favorite. The video comes with a *reproducible* video workbook - it's a nice treat to be allowed to make photocopies for the students! Many English-learning video programs require that an individual workbook be purchased for each student in the class - a costly venture to say the least, but with Real English®, the video workbook is included in the price, and it's not a copyright violation to photocopy it! Thanks for that, Marzio School! The video workbook exercises sequencially relate to the scenes on the video. The instructions are clearly written, and the questions are not too difficult. There are listening exercises of course, but there are also grammar lessons as well. There are also transcripts of the videos and an answer key in the back of the workbook.  Real English® is great as an in-class video, as a complementary  tool to the Real English® Interactive CD-ROMs, or it could be used by a student at home as a self-study program.  I highly recommend the Real English® video program!  Kaye Mastin Mallory, TESOL English Instructor Webmaster: English-Zone.Com http://english-zone.com Visit the Marzio School http://www.realenglish.tm.fr/ Visit the English-Zone.Com http://english-zone.com

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