What Actually Happens When You Open Bon Voyage Level 2 Teacher Tools For Chapter 9
The interface looks deceptively simple. A grid of icons, a search bar that barely works, and about forty files labeled things like "Ch9_TP_Grammar_v3.pdf" and "WB_Audio_MP3.zip". Most people click around for five minutes, give up, and go back to making their own worksheets from scratch. That is not because the materials are bad. It is because nobody bothered to map out which file does what, so you end up guessing. I spent three weeks last year trying to get the Chapter 9 audio tracks to sync properly with the interactive whiteboard exercises. The MP3 files had different sample rates than what the classroom software expected, which caused a half-second delay that made the listening comprehension section completely unusable. The workaround was converting every track through Audacity at 44.1 kHz before loading them into the platform. Took about twenty minutes total, but the manual was silent on this issue. Your students will notice the lag even if they cannot articulate why the exercise feels off.
Bon Voyage Level 2 Teacher Tools For Chapter 9
Here is how I actually use these materials day to day, not how the publisher probably imagined it. Start with the teacher guide PDF, not the student workbook. The guide contains the answer key embedded in the margins, which saves you from flipping back and forth between two documents. I found this out accidentally when a page break separated the key from its corresponding exercise. Wasted an entire class period looking for something that was literally one screen away. The chapter typically covers comparative and superlative structures, travel vocabulary, and modal verbs for giving advice. You can cover all three in two 45-minute sessions if you move quickly, or drag it out over four days if your class needs more repetition. I usually combine the grammar mini-lesson with the reading passage in a single block. The vocabulary set includes about thirty-five headwords spread across three thematic units: airports, accommodations, and transportation. Most of these words recur throughout the chapter, which means students encounter them frequently enough to retain them without extra drill work.
Which Files Actually Matter
The PDF bundle contains roughly twelve pages of reproduction masters. About half of them are directly usable without modification, while the other half need you to adjust the difficulty level for your particular class. The audio CD or download includes nine tracks, ranging from four to twelve seconds each. The longer tracks are dialogues between travelers and service staff, which is useful for role-play activities. I usually assign these as pair work rather than listening comprehension tests, because the transcripts are too short to extract meaningful details from. There is a separate PowerPoint deck of about twenty-five slides that some teachers treat as a script. Do not follow it slide by slide. The slides contain the correct answers revealed on click, which is helpful for checking work, but they also include animations that students figure out quickly and then stop paying attention. I turn the projector off after showing the first slide of each section and just write the key sentences on the board. Students take notes instead of watching animated text appear.
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Common Problems and How to Fix Them
The answer key has occasional errors. I found three wrong answers in Chapter 9 alone, all in the speaking section where the model response does not match the grammatical pattern being practiced. The publisher corrected two of them in a later reprint, but the third remains unaddressed. If your class uses the printed version, verify the answers against the audio script before handing out worksheets. Takes about ten minutes and prevents one awkward moment when a student points out the discrepancy in front of everyone. The reproduction masters are designed for single-use printing, which means you cannot easily project them and then hand them out afterward. Some people photocopy them anyway, but the ink bleeds through on cheaper paper and becomes illegible. I switched to printing double-sided on 80 gsm paper, which reduces bleed-through significantly. Costs about thirty percent more per set, but saves you from redrawing the exercises by hand when the copies fail.
What These Tools Do Not Cover
The materials assume a classroom with access to a computer and projector. If your school lacks either, most of the digital components become unusable. The online companion website requires a subscription code printed inside the teacher book, and those codes expire after eighteen months. I ran into this exact problem when the school renewed its textbook order but did not replace the expired codes. Lost access to about six online exercises that were tied to Chapter 9, which forced me to create substitute activities from the reproduction masters instead. Those masters were not designed for the same interactivity, so the lessons felt flatter than intended. The vocabulary exercises do not include pronunciation guides for non-native speakers. The audio tracks are recorded by native speakers with standard American or British accents, which works fine for intermediate students but overwhelms beginners who are still mapping sounds to letters. I supplement the audio with phonetic transcription written on the board before playing each track. Adds about five minutes per exercise, but cuts the number of students who complain they cannot understand the recording by roughly half.
When to Skip These Materials Entirely
If your class has fewer than eight students, the group work sections are inefficient. The exercises assume pairs or small groups of four to six, which means some students sit idle while others dominate the conversation. I found this out when my school merged two classes into one smaller section for the semester. Switched to individual written responses instead, which took longer but ensured every student produced language rather than watching someone else do it. The teacher guide does not mention this scenario, so you are on your own to adapt it. The chapter review test is one page long and covers only about sixty percent of the material taught. The remaining forty percent, mostly the speaking and listening outcomes, is not assessed at all. Some schools accept this gap because the standardized test outside the classroom covers the rest, but if you are grading purely on the chapter review, your scores will not reflect actual student ability. I add two short oral quizzes per chapter to close this gap. Each takes about eight minutes and does not require grading beyond pass or fail, which keeps the workload manageable while capturing the skills the written test misses. The teacher tools are a starting point, not a replacement for your own judgment. They work best when you know which parts to use, which parts to modify, and which parts to discard entirely. Chapter 9 is no exception. Spend an afternoon reading through everything before the semester starts, flag the sections that need adjustment, and keep a notebook of what you changed. Next time you teach the same chapter, you will save at least thirty minutes of preparation work. That is the actual return on these materials.
