In Tempo is designed for non-native learners who feel it is difficult to listen to native speakers and make themselves understood by them. Although this textbook is intended for self-study of intermediate or advanced ESL learners, it will be quite helpful for EFL beginning students if their teacher use this textbook as a supplement to the coursebook and offer an appropriate guidance. The central aim of this textbook is to get learners to become intelligible and effective communicators and to gain confidence in their pronunciation. The focus of the textbook and its audio material, is on teaching “stress and rhythm” not only at the word level but also at the discourse level. My target learners, Japanese high school students, have problems in this area therefore this textbook would meet their learning needs.
Although the physical layout of this textbook may not look attractive and does not have a variety of materials such as a teachers’ guide or DVD, the strength of the textbook is the way it provides instruction and exercises which are well organized and systematic. This pronunciation textbook employs the combination of Intuitive-Imitative and Analytic-Linguistic Approaches (Celce-Murcia et at, 2010). It consists of 12 units in which learners can learn about a necessary phonological knowledge with simple explanations. After providing these basic concepts, the textbook offers step-by-step listening and speaking exercises with clear directions so learners can develop not only their listening and speaking skills but also their self-monitoring ability which is important for them to become independent learners. Teachers are not necessarily expected to follow the original sequence of the exercises the textbook shows. Therefore, they can pick up any activities with which they can compensate their coursebook’s weaknesses. This flexibility plays a supplementary role that Cunningsworth mentions (1995).
The possible weakness would be some topics the textbook deals with. They are all related to real-life communicative situations but some of them are specifically designed in Australian contexts. Without extra cultural and social explanation, EFL young learners would have much difficulty in listening and feel less motivated because practice with no understanding of the context can be monotonous and fruitless.