This title is a self-study vocabulary book with accompanying audio CD designed for students who want to master the English of the oil and gas industry, whether for study or work purposes. It is part of a series of similar books aimed at different branches of engineering, insurance, retail, finance, accounting and hospitality.
The book contains the 500 most useful words for the field, and is designed to help students acquire a good working vocabulary as efficiently as possible. Each entry has a headword, pronunciation, variant forms and abbreviations, subject area (linked to thematic word lists), word forms, word class, a definition, sample sentences, synonyms and collocations.
The book starts with a very clear two-page spread to explain the layout of the entries, then there is a one-page guide to the pronunciation symbols Read on →
Earl Stevick’s influence on language teaching is undeniable. Whether you have read any of his books or not, making sure activities or teaching points are as meaningful as possible to students is a familiar concept. We have Earl Stevick’s influence to thank for that.
Stevick’s work is mentioned throughout, but this book is not a biography of the man, or a summary of his work. Rather, this is a book that details the way and ways educators have taken his ideas and used, adapted and pushed them in their teaching. It is not an entry level book on the subject though. It is a book for someone who believes in the importance of affect in teaching and wants to take it further.
The book is divided into three parts with each part containing several articles. Part A focuses on interaction between students. Part B looks at creating meaningful and effective classrooms activities. The final part gives us ideas about how meaningful action can change the dynamics of classrooms and institutions, and how to manage that change. Read on →
The entire ELT industry seems to go through sudden enthusiasms for particular kinds of book, and after the VYL (very young learner) and ESP (English for Specific Purposes) booms it now seems to be the turn of EAP (English for Academic Purposes). Garnet Education can hardly be seen to be jumping on this bandwagon, however, as EAP has always been their speciality. In fact, they have also been pioneers in the more specialist field of ESAP (English for Specific Academic Purposes) and many of their books are already on their second editions.
This new edition of English for Academic Study: Writing is at first glance the most conventional of all Garnet’s titles, being an undergraduate-level Read on →
How ELT Publishing Works is an ebook from the ELT Teacher 2 Writer series. This training course is a comprehensive introductory ebook for teachers and other ELT professionals who want to start a new career as an ELT writer.
This training course for ELT teachers starts with an introduction from the author, who is an experienced editor and has known many ELT writers. She can thus provide beginners in the field with sufficient and adequate information on how to write ELT materials. At the end of the introduction, a task is provided to challenge the reader’s knowledge of ELT writing and the process of producing it, then by reading the whole ebook you can get answers to each of the questions section by section. Read on →
The light bulb goes on in your head; you finally had an idea and have an awesome lesson planned for your language class. The activity is foolproof and fun! You teach the class in excitement only to find that not all students are as enthusiastic as you and you feel let down and a little confused. How did the lesson you put so much time and effort into flop? If this has happened to you then Spotlight on Learning Styles is the perfect book for you. It is a great new book in Delta’s Teacher Development Series. Just the title made me feel optimistic and I was not disappointed when I opened the book.
Every language teacher has struggled to motivate and get students participating eagerly in the classroom. Often it is not the teacher’s fault. Read on →
This book is an official Cambridge publication marking 100 years of ESOL qualifications like FCE, IELTS and CELTA from the very first CPE (Cambridge Proficiency in English) test in 1913.
I have to state straightaway that it is difficult to imagine any school or teacher actually paying money to buy this book, and I’m saying that as someone who is rather obsessed with industry trivia. However, the book does have some fascinating information, some of which I’ve shared below. I also imagine there’ll be lots of copies given away by Cambridge to celebrate their centenary, in which case it is certainly worth a look.
The book traces the development of Cambridge ESOL qualifications from CPE in 1913, what was to become FCE in 1939, PET and what was to become IELTS Read on →
I don’t know about you, but I’m always on the lookout for new ideas on how to correct the pronunciation of my students – even the good ones with a great ear for music need all the help they can get, so this book is a bit of a gift.
Somehow, that “listen and repeat” routine just doesn’t do it for so many students. They need something more – something more tangible, some oral mechanics or technology, some help to isolate the alien sounds of English in order to access both aural recognition and oral production. The Book of Pronunciation aims to assist us in giving them just that. Read on →
The collaborative duo of Patsy M. Lightbown and Nina Spada is one of the most well-known and respected partnerships in the field of SLA. The two are highly prolific writers and researchers in their own right and have coauthored numerous articles and books ranging widely in subject including oral communication correction, developmental readiness in SLA and L2 learner awareness of L1 influence, to name just a few. Here, they come together again for the newest edition of the widely-used and highly-acclaimed book How Languages are Learned.
Now in its fourth edition, How Languages are Learned has been highly valued for the way it relates language acquisition theory to classroom teaching and learning and draws practical implications from the research for the language classroom. One of the strengths of all editions of this book is the emphasis on looking at relevant classroom research in which to analyze particular aspects of classroom dynamics and classroom instruction. Through looking at prior researchers’ studies, various SLA topics are examined such as the dynamics of pair work, learners talking to learners, oral and written corrective feedback and teacher’s questioning practices.
Having written textbooks and scholarly articles for more than 40 years, Muriel Saville-Troike is an icon in the field of SLA. Coming primarily from a background in bilingual/multilingual education, she has examined an immense variety of SLA topics including contrasts in patterns of communication, achieving coherence in multilingual interaction, development of English language imagined communities and cross cultural communication in the classroom. In the second edition of Introducing Second Language Acquisition Saville-Troike shows again why she has been such an influential figure in SLA.
Aimed more at undergraduate students but practical as well for graduate students with little or no knowledge of linguistics, the second edition of this highly accessible book, like the previous edition, offers a clear and practical introduction to second language acquisition (SLA). Saville-Troike uses non-technical language to answer three key questions that the book investigates: how a second language is acquired, what the second language learner comes to know and why some learners are more successful than others. The book takes a step-by-step approach to Read on →
In this interesting, if not exactly groundbreaking book, George Woolard draws heavily on his own experience of learning Spanish to introduce an approach to language learning that he terms “messaging”. In this, he aims to provide a “fast and efficient” way of acquiring language that falls back on traditional methods of language pedagogy such as translation and Contrastive Analysis, but uses modern technologies (podcasts, media players) to achieve this.
As the title suggests, Woolard takes the meaning-before-form viewpoint of Michael Lewis’ Lexical Approach and expands upon it to create what he terms a “message frame”. This is a semi-fixed example sentence, which is (very!) similar to a traditional grammar frame, except for the fact that it has at least one fixed noun or verb. This message frame is then “chunked” into common collocations and then finally personalised by substituting the appropriate noun or verb – Woolard encourages noun substitution as he argues it is the noun that carries the most meaning, as in the Lexical Approach. See below for an example of this. He likens this way of learning to the way a holiday phrasebook works, a metaphor he repeats many times at the beginning of the book, but appears to forget about as the theory progresses and becomes more complex.
The book argues that this focus on the message will integrate vocabulary and grammar and allow learners to flip back and forth between grammatical structures as needed, rather than in the linear fashion of a typical coursebook wherein learners are only “allowed” to use one grammatical structure at a time. As I’ve already mentioned, this is hardly groundbreaking and can be said to be a mere manifestation of what Dell Hymes proposed in 1972. However, it does give us a slightly more concrete and complete version. Theoretically, this makes sense, but the examples given to illustrate this leave a lot of unanswered questions. For example, a summary of the approach is given as shown below, with no attempt to explain where all the extra language in the “personalizing” stage might come from:
Messaging– (YOU-CAN-SAY)
We’ve been having problems with our car recently.
Chunking – (YOU-CAN-ALSO-SAY)
We’ve been having problems with our neighbours recently.
He’s been having problems at school recently.
Personalizing – (CAN-I-SAY?)
I’ve been having problems with my laptop recently. It keeps freezing and I have to shut it down and start it up again. What a pain.
Instead of speaking and listening, these messages are to be exploited by focusing on texts (“ a textSbook”) by fully exploiting every structure, vocabulary item or phrase in each text by repeated visits to the same text.
More controversially, Woolard calls for a return to the audio-lingual method of memory-based learning through traditional drilling methods, which he believes is the most effective way to install the language chunks in our brain so that they can be immediately recalled to create spontaneous speech. Although this argument is well put together; drawing on child development theory to explain how Consciously Produced Language (CPL) transforms into Spontaneously Produced Language (SPL), little account is taken of the individual needs or learning styles of the learner or what to do when faced with a situation not covered by the example sentences that have been drilled, no matter how much personalization goes into them.
Perhaps even more controversially, he also advocates extensive use of L1 and full translations of texts. Using Cook’s 2010 text Translation in Language Teaching as his main resource, Woolard justifies this by stating that all proficient speakers of a foreign language can also translate between that language and their own mother tongue. This perception seems to me to be fundamentally flawed. Although it may be true, it does not follow that they learned to do so through translating. Being able to translate is the end product of language study (whatever form that may take), not the means of achieving it. Additionally, his solution to how this can be achieved in a multilingual learning environment is “simply” for coursebooks to have online translations of texts in a multitude of languages – an idea that completely fails to take into consideration the logistics and cost of such a huge undertaking. Interestingly, he backtracks somewhat on this idea in the Postscript to the book, replacing it with the even less well thought-out idea of getting students to use Google Translate instead.
Overall, I found Woolard’s personable writing style engaging and easy to read and his examples clear, concise and unfettered by dogmatic allegiance to any particular school of thought. I picked up some useful tips (using the speed control on Windows Media Player to slow down podcast speed, for instance) and found myself sympathetic to some parts of his argument. However, these strengths are also this book’s weaknesses. The conversational style and tendency to over-rely on applying universal principles for ways and means that he personally found success with are not quite convincing. The lack of allegiance to any pedagogical tradition leads to conclusions such as: “It seems to me that there is something intuitively correct about the message approach”, that highlight the lack of empirical evidence for much of the theory proposed in this book. The result is an interesting collection of ideas and advocacies, but ones that have the unfortunate sense of a “My Share” corner of an ELT journal.
How to Write ESP Materials is the first ebook book that I have ever reviewed, so the review will focus on the electronic reading experience as well as on the content of the book itself. As well as being readable on Amazon’s Kindle e-reader, the mobi version can be read online, on a computer or tablet, using the freely downloadable Kindle app. The EPub version can be read on most other e-readers (except the Kindle), but also on a computer or tablet with the freely downloadable Adobe Digital Editions, or any other EPub app.
How to Write ESP Materials is part of a modular series from ELT Teacher 2 Writer, whose aim is to help ELT teachers become authors. However, as the author of this module points out on the ELT Teacher 2 Writer website, her first coursebook “like most ESP materials, is no money spinner.” So this is not intended as a get-rich-quick course, but rather a guide to the many facets of ESP materials writing. It starts with a pre-module task in which teachers reading the book are asked to think about the materials they use to teach ESP, and the rationale behind their design. There is also a series of relevant quotes to ponder, from key authors and researchers in the field of ESP. Read on →
I’m not usually keen on skills-based courses, as there can be a danger when focusing on individual skills that it takes away from the holistic approach to language learning that many students benefit from. However, these books from Garnet offer a variety of tasks, a crossover of language skills and engaging materials, and avoid feeling as forced or contrived as lessons can be when you try to isolate one particular skill.
The course is called Progressive Skills in English, and it’s fair to say the course title actually reflects the course. It is possible to make good, solid progress in language learning with this book. It is focused on working towards the IELTS Academic test or building university students’ academic English skills. However, I’ve also found this course book works very well with motivated General English small groups or individuals learning in a more intensive manner. Read on →
On very few occasions during a teacher’s career will they find a book that is universally hailed by educators and learners alike as a fantastic, indispensable resource. When Macmillan first delivered Paul Emmerson’s Email English back in 2004, it found immediate success in tapping into a market that had been crying out for a title devoted to this still emerging form of communication. Now, almost a decade on, what changes have been made to this classic text, and, importantly, how has this book adapted itself to meet the current conventions of email communication?
Like its predecessor, this second edition of Email English is primarily for learners of Business English who need supplementary support in the fine tuning of their writing of effective emails, as well as developing their social media communication (although by no means is it limited to this niche; as it is equally useful for General English). Perhaps the clearest benefit of Email English is that it is based on countless real life examples, systematically presenting its users with key language for constructing effective and convincing emails, as well as developing an appropriate style for interacting on the likes of Facebook and Twitter. This feeling of working with authentic email communication is something that shone through in the first edition. This thankfully remains the case with this updated version. Read on →
Compact First is a textbook for students preparing for the Cambridge: First exam, commonly known as the FCE. Compact First was my main text early in 2013 and, I think this is one of the best such texts that I’ve come across. Its clear and thorough approach makes it very easy to teach from but still allows teachers to adapt exercises.
The ten units are divided thematically, each tackling a separate grammar and vocabulary point as well as one or two parts of each paper in the FCE. In addition to this there is: a writing guide supplying model answers for each writing question; a speaking guide with tips, visual materials and useful phrases; a wordlist; a grammar reference; and the CD ROM. All these elements made my class feel they had a good understanding ofwhat was required in the exam.
One thing I really appreciated was the fact that no space is wasted in this book. Although the content of the units only make up about half the total space in the book, there is more than enough material to cover. Any pictures are either directly related to speaking tasks or can be adapted for this purpose. Read on →
One of my most informative early experiences as a teacher happened while I was doing my Cambridge CELTA course. Until this time, I’d happily been carrying on, teaching the way I thought was best, in my own quiet way. But then on the course I met all these teachers who could stand in front of a classroom and hold their attention, whose charisma and natural show(wo)manship immediately seem to lift the students’ mood and make them more engaged.
I could only stand back in awe, because as a naturally introverted person there was no way I could do that. I didn’t have access to these skills, and I never would. And that led me to think that maybe I wasn’t cut out for this teaching game. Maybe there was no space for someone reserved like me, and teaching belonged those who could treat the classroom as their stage. Read on →
Although I’m a fan of Academic Vocabulary in Use (which I reviewed here five years ago), I’ve long been looking for an alternative that is lower level, covers less stuff more thoroughly, and concentrates more on the language that I think the majority of my EAP students really need at this stage – perhaps even something I can recommend to IELTS students too (rather than warning them not to waste their time with it until they’ve passed).
Garnet Education’s English for Academic Study: Vocabulary Study Book takes a very different approach. Firstly, it’s purely for self-study. More importantly, it’s based directly on the General Service List of 2,000 frequently used word families (GSL) and (mainly) the first 300 word families from the Academic Word List (AWL). The AWL contains vocabulary which is common in academic writing but not in the GSL. The GSL words are used to introduce the concepts needed to learn vocabulary (multi-meaning words, word classes, word families, word parts, collocations and word grammar) in the first five units, then these aspects of the first five sublists of the AWL are explored in the last five units. (The AWL is arranged into sublists by frequency, making the first five sublists the most frequent examples of the AWL). Read on →
This third edition of Objective First consists of a Student’s Book with CD-ROM (with or without answers), a Workbook with audio CD (with or without answers), and a Teacher’s Book with CD-ROM. This review focuses mainly on the Student’s Book with answers. All are for preparation for the high-Intermediate exam Cambridge: First (also known as FCE and Cambridge First Certificate).
Any book which aims to help students prepare for a standard test faces a major problem, since standard tests are designed to assess, with a fair amount of accuracy, the level of English that the candidate has reached. Any book helping students to pass a standard test without actually reaching the level of English certified by that test would undermine the credibility of the test itself. Teachers and editors alike therefore face a quandary, and CEFR level B2 is often a major hurdle. Level B1 is the first stage as “independent user”, and it is within the reach of most candidates. Level B2 demands greater depth of knowledge and much greater mastery of language. The Association of Language Testers of Europe (ALTE) recommends a certain number of guided teaching hours for each CEF level, indicating that it takes at least 100 guided teaching hours for a student to progress from level B1 to B2. Read on →
Exploring ELF has nothing to do with Santa’s little helpers but is in fact a new book in the Cambridge Applied Linguistics series, authored by Anna Mauranen and edited by Carol A. Chappelle and Susan Hunston. ELF stands for English as a Lingua Franca, a term which is becoming more widely recognized around the world, especially in the realms of academia among not only language researchers but also teachers. Exploring ELF covers a vast range of topics related to ELF and all are extremely relevant in the field of linguistics.
The book deals with different perspectives on ELF, academic speech as data, vocabulary in oral ELF, word grammar, discourse explicitness, and repetition and rephrasing, after the very interesting Introduction. I was a little apprehensive because it seemed quite long at fourteen pages. However, as I started to read it I was relieved to find that it is very interesting and informative. Mauranen introduces the world of ELF and its spread in a relatively easy manner and includes a number of references and studies relevant to ELF. She also outlines the chapters, making the book easier to navigate. The introduction ends with a detailed reference list which is extremely useful for anyone interested in ELF. I highly recommend looking at the introduction before diving into the book. Read on →
Breakthrough Plus 3 is an intermediate level, twelve-unit, multi-skills course. It is written by Miles Craven, who was one of the authors of the excellent Q:Skills series of listening and speaking books as well as the previous Breakthrough series. In style it is much like its predecessor Breakthrough. Each unit contains listening, speaking, reading and writing components based around a theme with fairly typical presentation and style. Four pages of each unit are spent on the presentation, form and practice of the unit’s core language point, while the last two “Expansion Pages” review and re-practice what has already been taught. Although it has parts focusing on all different skills, the main strength of this book is its easy to use and implement communicative activities.
Each unit follows the same pattern. Speculation on pictures and warm-up questions introduce the topic. The warm-up questions typically try to personalize the topic in some way by asking about the students’ own experiences or opinions on a topic. These questions provide a lead in to a recorded conversation on the topic, which in turn introduces new grammar and vocabulary for the unit. Brief vocabulary and grammar activities follow this to check comprehension. Read on →
Content and Language Integrated Learning (“CLIL” for short) is currently an area which is arousing much interest among ELT researchers and practitioners. Building on strong communicative approaches such as task-based language teaching, CLIL classes combine the teaching of content with the learning of a language with a focus either more on the former or the latter, depending on the context and course. As the amount of research into CLIL grows and as more teachers find themselves teaching using the method, a study into how language is manifested and can be exploited for learning opportunities in the CLIL classroom would seem a timely addition to the professional literature. The Roles of Language in CLIL has been written to fill that position.
For the most part, graded readers need to be level-appropriate, well written and, most importantly, interesting. Macmillan’s new series of Factual Readers for young learners match all of these requirements. The 40 book series is divided into six levels covering the five topics of natural science, history, people, wildlife and transport. Full of pictures, tables and diagrams that bring the topics to life, these books offer a good alternative to the plethora of narrative-based readers that usually fill most extensive reading libraries.
The presentation of these books is very similar to what one would find in books for young native English speakers like Guinness World Records books or a Time for Kids Almanac. The presentation of information is bold, clear and well illustrated. For kids interested in general knowledge and unusual facts (as I was when I was a kid) they are perfect. While some of the lower levels may be by necessity rather basic, there are still some wonderful little bits of trivia for kids to digest. The pictures often raise questions which motivate the kids to read and find out what they are about. Read on →
Business people studying English as a second language have specific language needs, and it’s crucial that these language students can express themselves clearly and unambiguously in their working lives. Cambridge’s latest Business English course is dedicated to teaching English through authentic, realistic contexts and is engaging and practical for students of Business English. Read on →
English Pronunciation in Use Intermediate Second Edition
English Pronunciation in Use is back with a second edition and it’s updated, current and a joy to use. The author of the Intermediate version is Mark Hancock, whom many teachers will recognize from his indispensable Pronunciation Games, which is also published by CUP. He brings the same enthusiasm for the subject to Pronunciation in Use. This book deals with many of the pronunciation issues our students face at an intermediate level such as individual sounds, stress and intonation, and a final section focuses on listening and natural speech.
The first thing to note is the simplicity of the layout of the materials. There are 60 two-page units starting with basic issues like minimal pairs and moving onto more specific areas such as emphasizing corrections. Pronunciation explanations are on the left hand side and exercises are on the right. The explanations are easy to follow (a must for a self-study book) and the exercises offer specific practice for each pronunciation point. Read on →
English for Work and the Workplace examines the communicative language needs of workers worldwide. There are twelve articles in this book, written by teacher researchers based all over the world (with the notable exception of North America). The focus is varied, from local case studies and workplace needs assessment to more fundamental questions as to the status of language education in lifelong learning. Read on →
Why do university students write? What are they expected to write? To what extent do academics understand the process of setting a writing assignment, and – significantly – how proficient are they in creating appropriate prompts to elicit the kind of writing they expect? On first reading, none of these questions seem that demanding, nor might you expect them to have interesting answers. Nevertheless, it is precisely with such issues that Genres across the Disciplines concerns itself.
Those aspiring to read this title should know that it is intended for a fairly select audience. If, say, you’re currently doing an MA and at some point need to analyse student writing, this title will be at the top of your wish list. Indeed, it is with such an audience in mind, along with those tasked with preparing and assessing a writing-related curriculum and/or materials design, that this title has been written. As such, it presents the reader with what is ostensibly an unparalleled, forward-looking, corpus-based body of research into contemporary student writing in higher education. Read on →
Essential Teacher Knowledge provides almost everything a language teacher needs in 110 two-page units, providing of course that the language to be taught is English (even though many of the ideas are valid for language teaching in general). Each of the tasty nuggets of essential teaching knowledge is clearly presented, with up-to-the-minute illustrations and excellent use of highlighting and colour to guide you through the book.
To see what I mean, you can download a couple of sample sections from the Pearson ELT Facebook page. This also gives you an outline of the book, mapping it on to the Cambridge TKT (Teaching Knowledge Test). You can also see a two-minute presentation of the book by the author, Jeremy Harmer, explaining the philosophy of the book. I suppose my main regret is that he makes it all seem so easy – experienced teachers who have worked so hard to learn their trade will undoubtedly regret that this manual did not exist when they were starting out. Read on →
Published by Delta Publishing in conjunction with UK-based corporate trainers York Associates, Managing Projects is intended for learners at CEF level B2 to C1, and as such, is perhaps unsuitable for those not already at or moving towards a high level of English proficiency. It is principally viewed as a group learning resource but may also accommodate one-to-one teaching, as well as self-study. Its major selling points are its handling of cultural issues affecting work performance and communication, and its promotion of personalised goal-setting to monitor progress with learning diaries and action plans, both of which consolidate the learning process and encourage work-skills transfer. The book is one of a series of four entitled International Management English. It rests on the well-founded belief that to manage people and execute business plans effectively, non-native English speakers need access not only to appropriate language, communication and professional management skills, but also to a developed sense of intercultural understanding. Accordingly, these core competencies form the foundation of content in the eight units of Managing Projects in what is framed as a 48-hour/32-lesson course. The practice foregrounds speaking and listening through tasks that are designed to increase fluency, broaden the lexical resource, and cement a deeper appreciation of cultural considerations. It also offers strategies to help cope with the challenges of international project management more successfully.
Complete IELTS: Bands 5-6.5, written by Guy Brook-Hart and Vanessa Jakeman and published by Cambridge University Press, is a welcome resource for teachers preparing students for the academic module of IELTS (International English Language Testing System) at the intermediate level (B2). The eight-unit Student’s Book is designed as a short course for IELTS preparation of around 50-60 classroom hours. It includes a full IELTS practice test as well as all grammar and vocabulary considered relevant to this level, informed by the Cambridge English Corpus, not to mention plenty of well-explained IELTS practice exercises in each unit. The full set of answers and CD-ROM are a bonus. There are also two Class Audio CDs which contain additional listening practice, as well as recordings for all the listening sections.
The 166 pages include a map of the units and an IELTS Academic Module: Content and Overview at the front, and at the back a speaking, writing and language reference (giving the additional descriptions of grammar covered in each unit) to give students more of what to expect “on test day”. A detailed word list of useful words from each unit is also provided here but some teachers could consider the detail given a little complex, and students might be better off finding the meaning for themselves. Read on →
Practice Teaching, A Reflective Approach is a practical guide for a teacher about to start their student teaching experience. It gives any novice teacher insight into this often daunting rite of passage for all teachers. This would be an excellent guide to anyone entering his or her teacher training course and could easily be used as a textbook for such a course.
This book is well laid out and speaks directly to the student teacher with detailed advice on how to approach the student teaching classroom. It examines the student teaching experience and asks the teacher to reflect on how this experience will form them as a teacher. This book reads like a playbook for teachers, giving advice on what to expect when being evaluated, how to plan a lesson and what to do when you are finally in your own classroom. Read on →
400 Ideas for Interactive Whiteboards is a practical resource book published by Macmillan Books for teachers as part of an accessible series edited by Adrian Underhill. This book follows other titles such as 500 Activities for the Primary Classroom and 700 Classroom Activities in providing an exhaustive set of ideas for the classroom. Written by Pete Sharma, Barney Barrett and Francis Jones, all of whom are established figures in the field computer-assisted language learning (CALL), 400 Ideas for Interactive Whiteboards is aimed at providing users of IWBs with a wider scope of activities than they may already be aware of, or for newcomers or buyers of the apparatus who may be looking for ways or reasons to introduce the technology into their schools or classes.
The core of the book is divided into four chapters, all dealing with different aspects of IWB usage. These chapters are preceded by a foreword by the authors and a brief introduction, which include a helpful assortment of explanations about the many IWB features there are as well as a page detailing the benefits of using IWBs. The authors also shed brief light on the challenges facing IWB users and some forecasts of their uses in the future. The four chapters of activities which follow are all preceded by a pair of case studies displaying firsthand experiences of IWB in action. Read on →
International Negotiations by Mark Powell is a textbook focused on learners who want to look at the area of business negotiations. Published by Cambridge University Press, as part of the Cambridge Business Skills series, it should interest any ESP teacher or learner looking for a comprehensive guide through this complicated area of business. The course book takes learners through the whole negotiating process from preparation to finishing the deal.
It is described by Cambridge University Press as a short course (15-20 hours) and it is aimed at learners from intermediate to advanced. My initial impression however is that in order to cope with the pace of the course and nature of the language, learners will need to have a fair grasp of the English language. Read on →
In The Company Words Keep the authors, Paul Davis and Hanna Kryszewska, put forward a strong case for adopting a more lexical approach to language acquisition. The title is divided into three main parts: part A outlines the theory behind the book, B sets out a number of exercises to be used in the classroom and the third encourages the instructor to reflect on his/her lessons and his/her learners. It also has suggestions of how to continue professional development in this area. To get the most out of this title in a language college setting, it would benefit from a workshop session led by someone who has read and cherry-picked activities relevant to the learners and equipment available. I found this book encouraged me to be more conscious of the elements of lexical approach that I was already incorporating in my teaching. Some of the exercises will probably be familiar to more experienced teachers (depending on the teaching methodology and coursebooks used) but there are so many activities that there’s bound to be something new. Read on →
Michael Swan’s name is well known among language teachers, particularly for his grammar guides such as Practical English Usage, which are liberated from bookshops en masse at the start of each new CELTA course. These books are very popular among teachers because they provide stripped down explanations of grammar points, presented in a comprehensible way, which can then by relayed to students. In the Oxford English Grammar Course series, Swan, along with Catherine Walter, have combined these kinds of short grammar explanations with the self-study elements of their earlier self-study books such as How English Works to produce a full three-level grammar course for self-study and for classroom use. The books are available at basic, intermediate, and advanced levels, and are designed to guide learners from the reasonably simple grammar of English to its more advanced elements. Read on →
Prolifically varied is a term that could be used to describe Jack Richard’s writing output in the last 30 or so years, as he has authored or co-authored numerous professional books for English language teachers as well as many widely used textbooks for English language students. Samuela Eckstut-Didier has also authored or co-authored many textbooks for English language students ranging from grammar-based books to integrated skills books to reading and vocabulary building books. Here, the two have collaborated to produce a useful and enjoyable reading textbook that can be used for self-study or incorporated into the classroom.
Strategic Reading 2 is aimed at high-intermediate young adult and adult learners of English. It is designed to develop reading fluency through the use of a variety of authentic texts including newspapers, magazines, books and websites. The book is divided into 12 units with three readings per unit Read on →
Grammar Sense 3 is a massive, multi-pronged attack to the question “How should I teach grammar?” 18 chapters each focus on one grammar point. At over 411 pages the book has room to teach each point’s form, meaning, and use in great detail. Reading, listening, speaking and writing exercises mean there is a lot to get through; using all this material effectively, especially without overwhelming students, will require careful planning. The book may need the teacher to be selective, but, if used well, can provide the grammar students need as well as a springboard to more meaningful communicative activities.
Each chapter is broken down into two parts. The first introduces the form. It does this through authentically-sourced readings, grammar tables and sentence building/completion exercises. The second half of each chapter delves into subtler points of use. It asks students to compare and analyze each grammar point’s different meanings. This knowledge is reinforced through speaking and writing exercises, and tested with critical thinking questions. Read on →
50 Steps to Improving Your Academic Writing offers students a step-by-step guide for creating well written and well-structured academic appropriate writings for non-native speakers of English. While addressing issues to writing and common problems students face when understanding the various steps involved in creating quality writing including: avoiding plagiarism, the differences in academic writing versus other forms of writing, using unfamiliar words, and other special topics necessary to create solid work. Speakers of other languages are able to focus on their specific needs and goals in order to improve their academic writing and the book is a great academic aid for students and teachers alike.
50 Steps to Improving Your Academic Writing is, as stated in the introduction, “…primarily intended for students who are new to or inexperienced in academic writing (5)” and focuses on university-level academic writing. It is primarily a self-study book made for students to use on their own, but teachers can also use it to help plan lessons. Read on →
The TKT Course: KAL Module from Cambridge is a book containing official preparation material for the Knowledge About Language test, written by an actual test item writer.
Although not as well known as the CELTA or some other four week TEFL courses (including by myself when I received this book), Cambridge’s range of TKT (Teaching Knowledge Test) exams are becoming increasingly popular as preparation for longer and higher level courses, as an alternative to or qualification to take out of online courses, or a (more or less) internationally-recognized qualification for those who do not have the time or language level to get a CELTA or equivalent. The format and related jargon is a bit confusing because TKT KAL is not part Read on →
This title was of particular interest to me: I am head of an institution with a considerable number of ESOL learners at Pre-entry level, and there seems to be little suitable published material available for them. As well as being too high level, many materials are also cultural-specific: beginner-level course books tend to assume a working knowledge of Western culture and values, which is an incorrect assumption with many learners at Pre-entry level.
The book is divided up in the same way as most of the photocopiable Cambridge ESOL resources – theme-based chapters that each have three units (speaking and listening, reading, and writing). The themes have been chosen sensibly – starting with classroom language and college life, and progressing on to jobs and transport – and each section is mapped to the Adult ESOL Core Curriculum. Within the units themselves there is a lesson plan for each activity that includes resources needed and suggested differentiation activities. Read on →
As a PhD student and a newcomer to the world of research I found Replication Research in Applied Linguistics to be a useful extra textbook for research courses at universities along with other sources the professors introduced. Most of the time the doctoral students are encouraged to try to make a contribution to the overall knowledge of the field when it comes to selecting a topic for their research by doing something totally new. However, after reading this book, I found that we CAN contribute to the knowledge of the field even by doing appropriate replication studies, provided that we know the proper and accurate way of doing such research. If you want know how to replicate research and are eager to know the technical practices of replication in applied linguistics, then this book is written for you.
The book is organized carefully in three parts. First, we are introduced to the field by the editor of this collection with a comprehensible introduction to replication research in scientific thinking and practice, especially in applied linguistics. The book starts by explaining some introductory issues and then continues by explaining some practical aspects such as how to do and write replication research. The last part of the book provides two real examples of qualitative and quantitative replication research. Read on →
Michael Swan is well known in both the teaching and applied linguistics field and has written numerous articles and books over the years. This book is a compilation of his most cited and well-known articles. It has a generic index which lists the title of each article and is followed by an interesting Introduction written by Swan. The book is then divided into 2 parts. Part 1 contains eighteen pedagogic and academic articles which were published between 1985 and 2011. Most of them include a short introduction to the article telling readers about the context in which he originally wrote them and at times includes a reflection and how he would write it differently. Part 2 contains seven satirical pieces on the world of language teaching.
Part 1 includes articles on a wide range of topics within the field of language teaching and theory. It covers topics such as English as a Lingua Franca, text-based teaching, grammar, language teaching versus teaching language, vocabulary, task-based instruction Read on →
