The material of the Cutting-Edge Advance Student book is very clearly structured as it includes the
warmer activities for students to brainstorm about the topic. Followed by that, the body of the unit
explains the details of the topic, which students can grasp by using the skills of skimming, scanning,
and intensive reading, which will eventually lead them to do the corresponding evaluations
independently. The language items are presented in a logical and appropriate level for the advanced
level students. However, I feel as the unit progresses, the materials do get difficult with the
introduction of continuous verb forms and further leading towards writing the report. Even though
the students are advanced level however some students may not be up to the same par as the other
students, which can lead to some students may feel stressed in doing the required assessments. The
layout of the tasks is also very well done as each task is dependent on the successful completion of
the previous task, which shows the use of the practice, recycling, and revision. However, this unit
lacks a teacher’s guide to the answers to the activities.
The materials in the book are very well organized in a non-cluttered format with the use of pictures,
large fonts for the introductions, different colour texts, such as Speaking on page 12 is written in red
to grab student’s attention. The unit has a good balance on all four skills including reading, writing,
speaking, and listening skills. In addition to that, the pronunciation task of listening to the different
dialects is also very well organized as it relates closely to the topic. Considering the class is an
advanced level, hence the introduction of the grammar exercise specifically teaching continuous
verb tenses is appropriate. In addition to that, I feel the topic is interesting for the students as it
highlights the positive and the negative impacts of globalization and there are a variety of tasks, fill
in the blanks, listening, speaking, and writing activities, which keeps students engage and interested
in the topic and activities.
I feel there was a lack of testing to check for student understandings. I would have liked if there was
multiple choice or true and false questions were used for testing the students. I believe testing builds
confidence in students and help them in evaluating themselves in their knowledge of the topic. In
addition to that, it also allows the teacher to keep track of the student progress and to guide them if
they have failed to understand something. It is very difficult to predict the affordability of the book
by the students or their parents. Nowadays technology has takeover the traditional ways of teaching,
hence if this book is share via Google Classroom then I feel that there would not be an issue of
affordability as only the high-speed internet would be sufficient.
Overall, considering everything, this unit is useful to teach to advance level students and I might use
it due to its well constructive layout and different tasks, which covers the four skills of reading,
writing, speaking, and listening. However, to check the understanding of students, I would include
the test, which will consist of multiple-choice and true-false questions. Basing on the results, I will
alter the pace of the lesson so that students can understand the topic fully.