Name: Michigan Proficiency Skills Builder
ISBN: 9789604036004

Diane Flanel Piniaris

Michigan Proficiency Skills Builder is a motivating, attractive course book designed to provide students with the skills and test-taking strategies they need to become competent and confident Michigan ECPE candidates.

Michigan Proficiency Skills Builder: Teacher's Book with Overprinted Answers

1 Perspectives on personality
Introduction 
About the Michigan ECPE: Overview − Results − ECPE writing criteria 
Introduction Vices versus virtues (and vice versa) A moral primer – Vices and virtues: A sketchy sampler 
Writing (1) Paragraph development Supporting a topic sentence with generalizations and specific examples 
Vocabulary (1) It takes all kinds (Part I) Using context clues – Personality portraits A-F – Time out for review 
Grammar (1) Adjectives: Frequently tested topics Order of adjectives: Mnemonics to the rescue – Adjectives that are not adjectives 
Vocabulary (2) It takes all kinds (Part II) Personality portraits G-P – Time out for review 
Cloze A closer look How to handle a cloze passage – Practice: Amelia Earheart: The lady vanishes 
Grammar (2) Predicate adjectives Using adjectives after stative verbs (predicate adjectives) 
Vocabulary (3) It takes all kinds (Part III) Personality portraits Q-Z – Time out for review 
Reading Skimming and scanning The importance of skimming and scanning – Practice: Presidents at gunpoint 
Writing (2) The importance of clear structure The “Tell Them” prototype – Topic: Early role models
Exam practice (1)

2 Flora and fauna
Introduction Biodiversity What on earth is ‘biodiversity’? – Home sweet home – Biodiversity under attack –
On the brink
Writing (1) Paragraph development Earth Day contest: wildlife threat (jumbled paragraph) 
Vocabulary (1) The plant kingdom (flora) Our debt to plants – Plant points to ponder – Plants in action – Get the picture? –
Itchy eyes, sneezing, and the sex life of flowers – Time out for review
Grammar (1) Verb alert! (Part 1) Handling ECPE verb-tense questions – Back to basics: Commandments 1-5 –
From theory into practice
Vocabulary (2) The animal kingdom (fauna) What’s what and who’s who? – The phylum Chordata – Be fruitful and multiply – A guide
to -vores – A picture’s worth a thousand words – Beyond zoology – Time out for review
Cloze Reference words Tracking down reference words – Practice: Close encounters of the natural kind 
Grammar (2) Verb alert! (Part II) Back to basics: Commandments 6-10 – From theory into practice 
Vocabulary (3) Animal language in action Animal movements – Actions speak louder than words! – Animal idioms 
Reading Tracking down technical terms Losing your fear of technical writing – Practice: Co-evolution 
Writing (2) The problem/solution essay Topic: Wildlife at risk: analysis of local problem + steps to correct it 
Exam practice (2)

3 Health and medicine
Introduction First day of med school We’ve come a long way, baby! – A sickness by any other name – What’s up, doc? –
Time out for review
Writing (1) Paragraph development Linking: The power of complex sentence structure 
Vocabulary (1) Anatomy 101 In the beginning – All systems go! – Other systems in brief 
Grammar (1) Clauses (Part 1) Noun clauses – Relative clauses – From theory into practice 
Cloze Easily confused words and word
forms
Practice (1): Easily confused word forms (Passage: Epidemic in the Sudan) –
Practice (2): Easily confused words (Passage: Whooping cough)
Vocabulary (2) In sickness and in health ... until
death do us part
Sicknesses and symptoms – Routine check-up (preposition and particle practice) –
Anatomical idioms
Grammar (2) Clauses (Part II) Adverbial clauses and related structures – Participle clauses – From theory into practice 87
Vocabulary (3) Daunting developments
The conquest of disease – Diagnostic technology – Surgical advances –
Reproductive medicine – Time out for review
Reading Visualizing metaphors Practice (1): Drug abuse – Practice (2): Commando viruses to the rescue 
Writing (2) The “for and against” essay Topic: Genetic engineering
Exam practice (3)

4 Environmentalism 101
Introduction In the beginning ... The biosphere and the forces that have helped to shape it – In praise of erosion:
Waxing eloquent in Nevada’s Valley of Fire – Enter Homo sapiens ...
Writing (1) Paragraph development Writing introductions – Which is better: objective or imaginative? 
Vocabulary (1) Pandora’s box Global warming – Declining air quality – Declining water quality – Time out for review 
Grammar (1) Emphatic structures: Inversion Inversion with negative adverbials and so/such – Inversion in emphatic conditionals
– From theory into practice
Vocabulary (2) Disasters wrought by nature Kobe earthquake – Volcanoes, melting glaciers, and flooding in Iceland – Hurricanes
Andrew and Katrina – Time out for review
Cloze Linking words
Finding “missing links” in a writer’s train of thought – Practice (1): Establishing
relationships within short contexts – Practice (2): Finding missing links in a text
analyzing cause and effect
Vocabulary (3) Disasters wrought by man Chernobyl – Mumbai’s urban nightmare – Sea of Japan oil spill – Time out for review
Grammar (2) The subjunctive and other
message-intensifying phrases
The subjunctive mood – Common colloquial intensifiers
Reading Coping with texts that describe a
process
How to handle process descriptions – Practice: What’s an El Niño? 
Writing (2) The opinion essay Acknowledging the complexity of an issue – Topic: Pesticides 
Exam practice (4)

5 Technological transitions
Introduction Technology and innovation What is technology? – What drives technology forward? – Ingenious 19th-century
innovations – Techno adjectives for a brave new world
Writing (1) Paragraph development The importance of mechanics 
Vocabulary (1) 20th-century milestones Mass production – Radar – Laser – Integrated circuits – Time out for review 
Grammar Gerunds and infinitives Handling ECPE questions with gerunds and infinitives – From theory into practice 
Vocabulary (2) Techno buzz words Interlocking revolutions – High-tech computer spin-offs – Time out for review 
Cloze Parallel structure Dealing with cloze items testing parallel structure – Practice: Robo-revolution 
Vocabulary (3) Other hot techno themes
Food technology and the Green Revolution – Medicine and biotechnology –
Time out for review
Reading
Coping with typical ECPE techno
passages
Characteristics of typical ECPE techno passages and questions – Practice: Seeing is
believing (past ECPE techno extracts)
Writing (2) Time management Developing a time-management approach to ECPE writing – Topic: Automation 
Exam practice (5) 
Grammar reference

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