We would like to thank our colleagues at Middle East Technical University, the Department of Modern Languages, who have taken the time to give us valuable feedback and comments and have encouraged and supported us throughout. Especially the critical feedback has enabled us to think about issues we would not have considered otherwise. Without you, we couldn’t have produced this work. Another thank you is to the teachers who volunteered to take part in the recording of the instructional videos, namely Ali Can

The first book of the series, The Forefront, Achieving Academic Success 1, is aimed to meet the academic needs of students in their freshman year 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. Thematic reading and listening materials, which follow the theme cities, are used as input for the productive skills, speaking and especially writing, which are the two ski