Reviews from ELT Authors
Writing to congratulate Vanessa on her e-book! Lovely and thoughtful work that adds to our knowledge of literacy and how the arts engage students in significant ways as they learn reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills. I especially like the easy-to-follow activities, worksheets and background information including information on artists! Wonderful work, Vanessa! Congratulations!
Merryl Goldberg, Ed.D.
Dr. Goldberg is a Professor in the School of Arts at California State University San Marcos and Executive Director of Center ARTES. She teaches classes related to music and learning through the arts. Her publications include the books, Arts Integration: teaching subject matter through the arts in multicultural settings (5th edition, Routledge); Teaching English Language Learners through the Arts: A SUAVE Experience (2004, Allyn and Bacon); and Arts as Education (1992, Harvard Educational Review). California State University San Marcos / Center ARTES. (U.S.) – Email: goldberg@csusm.edu
It is well known that what we learn is enhanced and reinforced through our senses and that the learning will be deeper and longer-lasting when there is an emotional connection formed between the object of study and our inner self. This is why, Vanessa’s book, Teaching the Four Skills through the Arts, is such an essential companion for any language teacher. The carefully curated, beautifully explained, imaginative and communicative activities supply everything the students need to light up their senses, fire their emotions and make their learning engaging, memorable, and enduring. Powerful, challenging, and beautiful art lies at the heart of each activity, giving students full opportunity to react, respond, learn, and grow – all ingredients of engaged language learning which will make them want to keep coming back for more, leaving them with not only more developed language skills, but a heightened appreciation of art and how to understand, enjoy and share it. Children respond instinctively to art, teenagers connect to the emotional content, and adults can relate to and empathize with what they see on the canvas or screen. Great art provides context, story, depth, sensory stimulation, wonder and lasting memories. Combine all this with effective and creative language-learning activities, as Vanessa has done in this rich, vital book, and you have ingredients and recipe for success in the language classroom. This book is inspired and inspiring.
Dave Tucker
Dave Tucker has been involved in ELT for nearly 35 years as a teacher, director of studies, teacher trainer, author, and consultant. He has written teacher’s books, methodology resources and two books of supplementary materials for Macmillan ELT (Grammar Goals) and has delivered training and spoken in conferences on four continents. He is English and currently lives in Portugal, where he consults on course books for state school English courses. Macmillan ELT (Portugal) – E-mail: davet2000@gmail.com
Reviews from ESL/ EFL/ ELT Teachers
Having utilized Vanessa Frascino’s book Teaching the 4 Skills through the Arts in my classroom, I found that the art experience can be used as an extraordinary language development tool.
The book can be used to introduce different levels of the receptive as well as of the productive skills for L2 students.
When my students got the hang of the works of art in the book, they enjoyed their learning even more and I as their teacher thought that was authentic learning. I would like to thank Vanessa Frascino for writing this book and thus enhancing our teaching!
Elsa Tsiakiri (Assistant Director at Kingston University, United Kingdom. EFL Teacher from Greece).
I would highly recommend this book to all EFL/ESL/ ELT teachers as a valuable resource and practical guide to support their teaching programs. This powerful resource models the importance of the Arts in the language learning process and truly guides the educator by providing practical guidelines and strategies to allow them to successfully deliver innovative techniques to their students.
Έφη Καραγιαννίδου (MA in Special Education, EFL teacher from Greece).
Teaching the 4 Skills through the Arts is much more than a practical guide for teachers to teach language skills through the arts; it is an invitation to learn about arts from the language. The book definitely enriches both teachers and learners. For teachers, it is a valuable and complete resource with a clear and well-organized lesson plan format. It includes suggested key to solve the activities and all the necessary resources which definitely saves time while providing orientation for teachers. As a person who does not know much about arts, I was highly motivated to take this book to my classes when, after looking into it, I discovered that teaching with works of art does not require specialized knowledge in the field of arts. Besides, the lessons are organized to attend different levels of proficiency which helps even better to adapt the arts to our classes! This book makes it easy! For students the book is an enjoyable way to learn English and arts while developing critical thinking and problem solving abilities. Learning with arts helps students to express knowledge about the world as well as their emotions in a different way.
It was after acquiring this book that I felt highly motivated to experience with the arts in my English classes! I hope every English teacher could enrich their practices from this book!
Maria Belen Dominguez (Professor at Instituto Superior de Lengua Inglesa and EFL Teacher from Argentina).
I highly recommend getting the e-book “Teaching the 4 Skills through the Arts”. I got a copy and I am fascinated because I didn’t expect to find such quality material in my hands. It is well-organized and clear. It provides you with all the necessary resources to use the arts in your EFL/ESL lessons, with all the complementary material about the authors (bio), setting, elements of the painting (meaning), tasks to be carried out in the computer lab or remotely from home using wonderful ICT resources and the follow-up worksheets to keep on developing the skills with their answer keys. My students loved the lessons, which where very enriching and appealed mainly to feelings and emotions.
Iris Ibarra (EFL teacher from Argentina).
What I like about this book is that it is clearly structured into sections of the 4 key language skills – speaking, writing, reading and listening with easy to follow and engaging activities under each section. The activities have a warm up activity where the students can practice their language skills on the topic before the main activity. This is a fun way to learn and get the students interested in the topic. I highly recommend this book to all English teachers.
Jarrod Hill (EFL Teacher from New Zealand).
Great book! The best part is the creative approach used to teach the four key skills. The creative approach allows students to stay motivated as activities are highly interactive and fun. I strongly recommend this book.
Mario Eunick (MA in Physics and ESL teacher from Jamaica).
As an ESL teacher this book was a pleasure to read. The detailed material made it fun and easy to create lesson plans for my students. The links in the book gave an amazing depth of information and allowed me to learn about art history as well as ESL. 5 out of 5 stars! It is well worth investing your time and money with this book!
Rory Brown (BA in Anthropology and ESL Teacher).
I have really enjoyed this book because it provides amazing ideas to be included in our classes. Many times integrating the Arts into the teaching of the 4 language skills represents a great challenge for most of ESL educators and this book simplifies all this process. I firmly believe that anyone who teachers a language should read it, since it offers a valuable perspective and a significant way to learn.
Maria Esther Estevez (BA in ELT and EFL Teacher from Argentina).
