Connect With English

No habla Englais? No problemo. The Annenberg/CPB Project has come to the rescue with a 48-episode English-immersion story of an aspiring singer named Rebecca who travels across America in pursuit of her dream, dealing with parenting, education, work, love and other issues along the way. We watched Episode 7: Leaving Home, in which Rebecca leaves Boston, bound for a music school on the West Coast. As in real life, various gifts between family members and friends are exchanged and tears and hugs are shared. As drama, this is about as palatable as an episode of Days of Our Lives, but--and this is a bigger butt than a Roman senator's--subtle dramaturgy is not exactly the point here. Viewers are presented with commonplace situations featuring dialogue peppered with standard English idioms precisely so that they will learn to talk like the guy sitting on the next stool down, not like Dennis Miller ("I'm sorry, I sat out the 1963 TV season, could you run that arcane pop culture reference by me one more time there, Temple Houston?") Each episode concludes with an ESL panel reprising the story's main points, thereby reinforcing the viewer's comprehension. Not as stiffly structured as its predecessor, Destinos (VL-5/92), Connect With English's multimedia telecourse approach (print materials not seen) is a fine English-immersion program that will work well either individually or as part of a broader approach to ESL instruction. Recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (R. Pitman)