The second edition of the Lado English Series is a complete course in English consisting of six carefully graded levels, with a textbook, workbook, teacher's manual, and cassettes for each level. The central objective of the series is to help students in the complex business of learning to understand, speak, read, and write English. In the new edition, careful attention has been given to the importance of learning to use these four skills for meaningful communication.
The chief innovative feature of the second edition is "contextualization," that is, the placing of all new structures and vocabulary in meaningful contexts, so that the student is always sure of the meaning of the sentences being presented or practiced. New "conversations" are introduced with a background situation which places them in a natural communicative setting. The substitution drills which formerly followed the conversation section have been transformed into "adaptations," which relate structures introduced in the dialogue to other situations in which they may be used. The "practices" are often centered on a context, and are usually accompanied by pictures, which clarify the meaning of each sentence, and provide the student with non-verbal cues. In general, the exercises in the new edition are designed to guide the student to a more creative use of the language in activities that closely approximate a normal communicative situation. All this has been achieved while maintaining the advantages of graded, organized learning.
The second edition has retained the same qualities of simplicity of presentation and transparent organization evident in the previous edition. Each unit of the student's text is divided into sections with clear, single-word headings indicating the purpose of the sections: Conversation, Adaptation, Study, Practice, Speak, Read, Think, and Pronounce.