Opinions for and against building new motorways.

The Opinion Zone titles - Gun Law, European Union and No More Roads? - deal with the language of expressing opinions. Each title is built around a videotaped studio debate. The learner is exposed to authentic language with all its hesitations, self-corrections, syntactic slips and reliance on idioms. In addition to the studio material, the Opinion Zone titles include a variety of interviews with people ranging from an Australian government minister to a street vendor. The added value when compared to video tapes comes from the ease of access, the authentic language, the built-in language support, and the range of tasks. Opinion Zone titles are not intended to be self-contained courses; rather, they are classroom resources that teachers can call on to support an existing study programme.

The videotaped material is supported with transcripts, paraphrases, comments and a glossary students can refer to as and when necessary.

Ready-made exercises span a full range from simple language auditing tasks making sure that the students have recognized the form of language correctly to open, group-orientated tasks with student presentations and role play.

The Teacher’s Zone includes transcripts of all audio material, task sheets for reporting tasks, and keys to all exercises. All the teacher’s material can be printed out.