Headway Elementary Students Book (Soars)
Headway Elementary Students Book (Soars) is a recommended TEFL/TESOL title from the Global English reading list, available to buy on Amazon.
What it is. The Students' Book of Oxford University Press's Headway at elementary level, by Liz and John Soars. Headway is written for adults and young adults, and this volume sits at roughly CEFR A1 to A2 - true beginners, or learners who studied English years ago and have lost most of it.
How it is built. Headway's syllabus is grammar-led. Each unit opens on a structure, builds vocabulary, reading, listening and speaking around it, and closes with an Everyday English section on the functional language of a real situation: ordering, asking directions, telling the time. The pattern is deliberately visible on the page, which is exactly what makes the book worth looking at.
Why a trainee buys an elementary Students' Book. Judging what an elementary class can do is the hardest calibration a new teacher faces, and it is very easy to pitch far too high. Reading the actual texts and rubrics at A1 to A2 corrects that faster than any description of the level does. Set it beside an intermediate book and the contrast is instructive: how much is carried by the pictures, how short the reading is, how much of the page is production rather than input.
What it does not do. The teaching notes, the answers and the staging are in the Teacher's Book, sold separately. Headway has been revised repeatedly and the level names hold steady across editions, so a recent secondhand copy serves this purpose as well as a new one.
Recommended for these courses:
Available from Amazon - price & delivery shown on Amazon.
View on Amazon