Book excerpt: Easy and enjoyable to teach, Touchstone offers a fresh approach to the teaching and learning of English. Touchstone Student's Book2 is the second level of the innovative Touchstone series. Drawing on research into the Cambridge International Corpus, a large database of language that includes everyday conversations and texts from newspapers and books, Student's Book 2 presents the vocabulary, grammar, and functions students encounter most often in real life. It makes learning fun by maximizing the time students spend on interactive, personalized activities on high-interest topics. A free Self-Study Audio CD/CD-ROM at the back of the book gives students further practice in listening, speaking, and vocabulary.