Million Users Students Can't Be Wrong
Oliva Fernandez, Marketing Director,
Adult and Higher Education
Side by Side, by Bill
Bliss and Steven J. Molinsky, has helped more than 25 million students
worldwide persist and succeed as language learners. Now Side
by Side Plus—a special edition of Side
by Side—builds students’ general language
proficiency and helps them apply these skills for success in daily life
and work. Here’s a brief description of how Side
by Side Plus works (adapted from a welcome
message by the authors).
Flexible Language Proficiency Plus
The core mission of Side by Side Plus is to
build students’ general language proficiency so they can use
English flexibly to meet their varied needs, life circumstances, and
goals. We strongly believe that language teachers need to preserve
their role as true teachers of language even as we fill our lesson
plans with required life-skill content and prepare students for
Our program helps you accomplish this through a
research-based grammatical sequence and communicative approach in which
basic language lessons in each unit lead to standards-based lessons
focused on students’ life-skill roles in the community,
family, school, and at work.
Meaningful Instruction Relevant to
Throughout the instructional program, civics
topics and tasks connect students to their community, personalization
questions apply lesson content to students’ life situations,
and critical-thinking activities build a community of learners who
problem-solve together and share solutions.
Extending Learning Outside the
The magazine-style Gazette sections in Side
by Side Plus provide motivating material for students to use at home.
Feature articles, vocabulary enrichment, and other activities reinforce
classroom instruction through high-interest material that students are
motivated to use outside of class.
A bonus Audio CD offers entertaining
radio program-style recordings of key Gazette activities.
The core methodology of Side by Side Plus is
the guided conversation—a brief, structured dialog that
students practice in pairs and then use as a framework to create new
conversations. Through this practice, students work together to develop
their language skills "side by side." They are not
dependent on the teacher for all instruction, and they know how to
learn from each other.
This student-centered methodology and the
text’s easy-to-use format enable students to study outside of
class with any speaking partner—a family member, a friend or
neighbor, a tutor, or a co-worker, even if that person is also an
English language learner. If students need to attend class
intermittently or "stop out" for a while, they have
the skills and text material to continue learning on their own.