The Forefront Achieving Academic Success 1

We would like to thank our colleagues at Middle East Technical University, Department of Modern Languages, who are too many to name individually, for sparing their time to read several drafts of the materials in this book and providing feedback, for proofreading, contributing through sharing their resources, and piloting the materials in their classes.

We also thank the previous committee members, Didem Ayan, Murat Aydın, Sinem Bür, and Başak Kösereisoğlu, whose valuable work provided the basis for what we have produced. Another thank you is for our colleague, Melek Altun, who provided valuable support for the logical fallacies part.

To our dearest friend and colleague at METU Northern Cyprus Campus, Gamze Öncül, we offer genuine appreciation for her sincere and constructive feedback. Her candor gave us a little shake :) but added the perfect kick in shaping the second edition of this book.

We would also like to express a heartfelt thank you to the members of the administration, Derem Çanga, Gökçe Sert, and Meriç Gülcü Kurç, for their support, encouragement, and help throughout the process.

The first book of the series, The Forefront, Achieving Academic Success 1, is designed to cater to the academic needs of first-year students in English-medium universities. The book follows an integrated skills approach aiming to give students practice in the basics of reading, listening, speaking, and writing for academic purposes. Central to the book’s methodology are thematic reading and listening materials revolving around the theme of the human journey, which serve as input for the productive skills, speaking and especially writing, which are the two skills that the book mainly targets.

The activities in the book start from a basic comprehension level, gradually guiding students toward developing higher-order skills. Through engaging with various materials, students analyze, evaluate, react to, and synthesize information, finally generating their own pieces of writing by using these as reference materials.

Another aim of the book is to familiarize students with the world of academia in their first year of academic studies and help them adopt academic conventions when speaking and writing, which will prove useful in their academic journey ahead. To this end, extensive writing input has been included in the book, providing instructional scaffolding so that students can master the sub-skills and accomplish more autonomous and extended writing tasks.

The writing input is thoughtfully constructed, avoiding overgeneralized advice and providing detailed explanations by considering different fields of study where different rules may apply. It also appreciates disciplinary differences in writing styles, giving advice informed by linguistic findings.