Making Sense of the World

From culture and society to international relations and science, this reading course takes in a wide array of topics that are vital to an understanding of the modern world.

Wile improving English reading skills, this high-level course will help students gain a deeper understanding of subjects such as the spread of globalization and the information society. Despite encompassing a wide array of topics including culture, society, politics, international relations and science, this course is written in a way that students will find easy to comprehend even without any specialist knowledge, and will appeal to both students of humanities and science. The exercises will develop both language skills and critical thinking. Each unit has a short column with fun tidbits of information. The teacher’s manual contains grammar explanations, rough translations of the columns, answers and other explanations. After every five units, it also has test questions that can be used as mid-term or end-of-semester exams. 

Contents

The Hollywood effect: How does popular entertainment influence society? / Renewable energy: When will we finally use only clean energy? / The final frontier: Will people eventually travel to distant planets? / Aung San Suu Kyi is free: Is Myanmar becoming democratic? / The Rise of China: How will China’s growing power affect Eat Asia? / The origin of the universe: Where did everything come from? etc. (20 units)