Grade: 5/4/3/2/1

Comments (5 being the highest grade and 1 the lowest)

3.5

These titles have been around for a long time and I’m glad to say, the most recent editions have been given a significant facelift from the originals.  They are much more pleasing to the eye and therefore a lot more attractive for students using them for self-study.  I’d imagine they would be even more popular with teachers now too.

Ship or Sheep has units dedicated to each of the sounds, starting with vowels before moving on to consonants.  It provides a very useful diagnostic test, which guides students to sounds that may be problematic.  The reader can therefore pick and choose which units are going to benefit them the most.  The website support provides teachers with PDFs for a number of languages and their problem sounds.  Unfortunately, this is not available to students and I feel the reader might benefit from access to these too. 

The units first work on how to pronounce the sound and then practise in a variety of ways, including minimal pairs, and listening practice.  Before the beginning of the vowel and consonant sections, there is a useful introduction to key vocabulary and pronunciation features.  This is kept simple and easy for the reader to understand.  Intonation and sentence stress are integrated into each unit.  Although dealt with frequently throughout the text, I feel it would be easier for students to access specifics of intonation and stress if they had dedicated units.  Linking is also littered throughout the text.  It again might be better to have at least an introductory unit to explain the concept more fully.  Each unit also contains a noticing activity.  This is designed to help students identify the spelling possibilities for each sound.  

In Tree or Three, the content, language, and lexis are much more simplified as it is aimed at Beginner and Elementary students.  There is no diagnostic test and the recommendation is to work through it unit by unit, unless the reader knows what to work on.  Again, each chapter is dedicated to one sound, this time mixing vowels and consonants.  The units provide a variety of practice exercises for each sound, with stress and intonation being dealt with, albeit much less frequently due to the limitations of the language used. 

Overall, both these titles should be staples in any student library or self-access centre as they approach each sound systematically and provide useful practice activities.  However, I’d personally prefer to see more units dedicated to other features of speech.  The addition of a phonemic chart might also be useful.