For Here or To Go? is a collection of readings and activities for students of English as a second language (ESL). The readings, all written in the first person, are composite stories based on the experiences of ESL students from a variety of home countries (Japan, Vietnam, Iran, Russia, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Argentina, China, France, Korea, and Kenya). The stories revolve around the themes of confronting a new language and acclimating to a new home---themes with which ESL students easily identify. Some stories are lighthearted whereas others border on tragic; in any case, they represent real experiences.

For Here or To Go? deals only incidentally with specific cultural information. In general, the stories and exercises focus on universals of human experience and on language as used in context, providing models of native fluency that interest students because they are authentic and mature stories written in simple prose. After all, students will begin to truly understand a new culture only after acquiring the linguistic tools to explore it firsthand.

The stories involve situations and perspectives either familiar to or easily imagined by students and therefore will engage students' interest and provoke discussion. Recent arrivals to a new country (the United States in this case) want to learn about their new cultural and linguistic environment, but they also need to be reassured that they have certain experiences in common with other adults or young adults transplanted to a new country, a new life. Disagreement with the viewpoint presented in a story provides students with added impetus to engage in discussion or other response activities.

The readings are grouped into three general themes: Part 1 deals with culture shock, Part 2 with problems that students experience in their first attempts at communicating in English, and Part 3 with coming to understand a new people. Each chapter concentrates on one story, which is supported by a prereading synopsis, postreading activities, and illustrations that depict key elements of the reading. Following the story, short answer questions stimulate thought about the main ideas, cloze exercises and derived forms tables reinforce vocabulary in context, and questions of inference and questions for discussion and writing call for deeper analysis. One chapter includes the more open-ended activity of predicting and writing the end of the story. Since answers are provided in the Appendix, comprehension and vocabulary exercises are as appropriate for self-study as they are for pair or small group work in class. The layout of the chapters is designed to accommodate readers' interactive text processing: illustrations representing the essence of a story provide a conceptual orientation (top-down processing); the text then provides confirmation and detail (bottom-up processing). Illustrations and icons attract attention and encourage students to guess context and meaning. The use of these pictorial cues allows students to concentrate on language without struggling at the same time to comprehend the situations described in the readings.

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