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Les Cahiers de l’APLIUT volume XVII • n° 1 • septembre 1997 ISSN 0248-9430 Kathy Gude. Advanced Listening and Speaking CAE. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1996. Two cassettes (38 m and 47 m). This book is primarily targeted at learners who are studying for the listening and speaking tests of the Certificate in Advanced English (CAE). As I assume most of our colleagues are not preparing students for this exam, this review will focus on the use of this material for activities in the classroom, in the language lab or for self-learning. The 21 self-contained modules in the book are organized into 6 sets. Sets 1 to 4 deal with speaking and listening skills, while sets 5 and 6 are “ Task Banks” with activities for specific parts of the CAE. Also included are a function file index, a pairwork section, an answer key and tapescripts. The topics covered are quite familiar and fall under the heading of “ general” English, including, for example, meeting and finding out about people, jobs and training, leisure activities and holidays, today’s technology, art and culture. Some of the material related to business situations (e. g., CVs, selling travel insurance) would be suitable for students in tertiary departments like GEA or TC. There are some phonological exercises, involving for example brief reviews of word stress or sound-spelling relationships. Grammatical structures are studied from a functional perspective, e. g., talking about certainty, possibility and improbabilty. The “ exam hints” interspersed throughout the book could be used in strategy-training to help learners transfer these techniques to real-life situations (cf. for example, “ Giving yourself time to think”). As can be expected, the sound quality of the cassettes is excellent. It was a good idea to design exercises that help the learner cope with background noises and accents, areas that are often neglected. My one reservation concerning the cassettes is that the speech occasionally sounds somewhat artificial or contrived, in spite of efforts to reproduce a colloquial feeling through the use of particles like “ well” or contractions like “ gonna”. This raises a more general question regarding the use of authentic material for listening exercises and tests. While the use of “ real” material, such as interviews or conversations with ordinary people, may involve a slight loss in sound quality, the gain in authenticity reduces the gap between the classroom and real-world situations, therefore leading to greater motivation. 1

As learners are increasingly exposed to native speakers and to language aimed at native speakers via movies, TV, CDs and the Internet, they are likely to become more aware of the differences between relatively “ tidy” scripts and natural speech, which, especially in conversation, often contains errors, false starts, backtracking, extensive use of particles and fillers, redundancy and so on. To be fair, however, it is possible that the editorial policy in this case was dictated by the requirements of the CAE. In conclusion, the IUT teacher or student may find some useful supplementary material here. The term “ advanced” should not be taken too literally, as most of the texts and exercises appear to be accessible to the intermediate or upper-intermediate learner. In spite of the reservation mentioned above, the listening material can provide learners with a bridge to authentic speech. Finally, I urge teachers who are preparing students for the CAE to make their own assessment by comparing this book to others on the market.