This book is designed for the foundation-level course, English for Effective Communication, at the Institute of Teacher Education (Institut Pendidikan Guru). It is organised thematically into eight units—beginning with Unit 1 Current Issues, followed by Unit 2 Living in a Multicultural Society, Unit 3 Lifestyle, Unit 4 Technology, Unit 5 Culture, Unit 6 Education, Unit 7 Natural Disasters and Their Impacts and, lastly, Unit 8 Food and Health. The themes were chosen based on their relevance to the 21st century society we live in and their interest value for learners of today.

From the perspective of content, each unit deals with an aspect of real life that has an impact on the learners. From the viewpoint of language skill development, each unit takes the learners through a series of tasks in developing listening, speaking, reading and writing skills, with a final subsection that focusses on explicit instruction of grammar. This grammar subsection, which is incorporated in each writing section, provides further practice and reinforcement of the grammar items presented in the earlier sections.

This book comes with ample examples, a variety of fun exercises, suggested answers for easy reference, as well as a CD script for the listening practices and a complementary audio CD. The exercises cover a spectrum of individual, pair and group tasks, and can also be adapted for use in other English language proficiency courses.