Review
- Review
Vocabulary Activities
Penny Ur’s name has long been associated with teaching vocabulary, and recently she has articulated her beliefs about the value of English language teachers engaging with research (Ur, 2012). These two interests come together in Ur’s latest book, Vocabulary Activities, which is a welcome contribution to the Handbooks for Language Teachers series through Cambridge University Press. The book…
- Review
International Negotiations
International Negotiations is the latest in a long line of successful ELT course books written by Mark Powell, one of the world’s leading Business English teachers, teacher trainers, and materials writers. Fans of his other publications, including Dynamic Presentations, will find that Mark has once again incorporated a complete package of excellent materials. As the…
- Review
Lernen fördern: Englisch. Kompetenzorientierter Unterricht auf der Sekundarstufe I
The concept of competence has been a mixed blessing for ELT. On the one hand, it gave rise to the European Framework of Reference with its action-oriented and integrated approach to learning. On the other hand, it championed a fragmentation of language into discrete skills in the interest of standardization and a marginalization of areas not easily…
- Review
Cambridge English: Preliminary for Schools Trainer, KET for Schools Trainer
Both books have a similar layout, with two training and practise exams followed by four more exams. Of course, all of these exams include the reading and writing, listening and speaking sections. Therefore, at first you may think this series is aimed at teachers with exam preparation classes. While they are (and indeed were) useful…
- Review
Classroom Management Techniques
Classroom Management Techniques, written by acclaimed author and conference presenter Jim Scrivener, is a recent Cambridge University Press publication. Scrivener is currently head of Teacher Development for Bell International and his publications include Learning Teaching (Macmillan ELT, 2005), which won him the ARELS Frank Bell Prize in 1995, Oxford Basics: Teaching Grammar (OUP, 2003)and, more recently, Teaching English Grammar (Macmillan Education, 2010),…
- Review
52: A Year of Subversive Activities for the ELT Classroom
52 by Lindsay Clandfield and Luke Meddings is an e-book collection of subversive activities for the ELT classroom. Each of the activities in the book attempts to engage the learner and the teacher in a challenging conversation. They are both forced to question, investigate, and debate the world that we live in. The book is…
- Review
English Grammar in Use
Many teachers and students will be familiar with Raymond Murphy’s grammar books. They are almost a standard – but using them requires care! They are not systematic, and not complete: the aim is to cover the main difficult points of English grammar which need practice. There are three volumes of these grammar books from Cambridge…
- Review
International Legal English: A course for classroom or self-study use
The first edition of CUP’s International Legal English coursebook was published in 2006. A groundbreaking publication designed for use in the classroom as well as for self-study, it was well received across the board by teachers and students alike. Five years on, a revised and updated second edition has appeared. To be fair, I must…
- Review
The Oxford ESOL Handbook
This handbook provides an overview of TESOL teaching for new teachers and their trainers and is simultaneously a reference work for experienced TESOL teachers. It comprises eight chapters (each ending with annotated suggestions for further reading), a brief glossary, a full bibliography, and an index. This practical guide is written for teachers tutoring people who…
- Review
Teaching in pursuit of WOW!
This slim volume is a collection of short papers – to call them anecdotes would do disservice to the immense knowledge and philosophy underlying them – focusing on Tim’s humanistic approach to teaching that places the learner rather than any teaching method at the centre of attention. Many of them deal with Tim’s personal experience…
- Review
Literature – into the classroom
My first encounter with Amos Paran occurred in a thoroughly enjoyable workshop on teaching literature at the ETAS Annual Conference and AGM in Appenzell in 2002. One of the activities he presented at the time, an engaging approach to Wendy Cope’s poem “Lonely Hearts” that I have successfully used with a number of students, actually…
- Review
The Developing Teacher
Who needs a book for development? Don’t we learn new things along the way? Teachers who enjoy what they are doing grow naturally as they go about their daily work. With every new school year, every new group creates challenges that make us grow as teachers. However, this growth can go unnoticed. It can happen…
- Review
Teaching Unplugged
This article is about a lightweight many of you already know: Luke Meddings and Scott Thornbury’s book, about their conversation-driven, materials-light teaching philosophy that focuses on what matters to the learners and on language emerging from the conversations about it, is only 100 pages long and weighs less than 250 grams! The slender paperback, however,…
- Review
The Study of Second Language Acquisition, 2nd edition
Fifteen years after its first edition, Rod Ellis’s 2nd edition of The Study of Second Language Acquisition takes as its basis the question of where SLA stands as a field of study now. The preface begins by outlining some developmental trends in the field of SLA, such as the expansion of the study of pragmatic…
- Review
From Teacher to Manager: Managing language teaching organizations
Teacher management and managing language teaching organizations have become ‘big business’ in the past few decades. This book is for managers of language institutions or for those looking to move in this direction. It is recommended to such people as directors of all kinds as well as owners. I would add that this would be…
- Review
Puzzle Time for Starters, for Movers, for Flyers
Because the three above-mentioned books are intertwined and basically built up in the same way, they can easily be summarized in one article. They follow and focus on the Cambridge syllabus needed for the three exam levels for young learners of English: Level 1 ‘Starters’ (ages 7 to 10), Level 2 (A1) ‘Movers’ (ages 8…
- Review
Oxford Word Skills Basic
Oxford Word Skills is a series of three books that take the learner from a starter level to more technical vocabulary at the higher level. The focus of the books is on helping students learn, practice, and revise new vocabulary. They even come with an accompanying CD and a ‘Test yourself’ cover card that covers…
- Review
Film, TV, and Music
A teacher can approach this user-friendly, photocopiable activities book in many ways. Throughout the three sections of the book, divided by the subject matter, which is further subdivided based on level of complexity, there are several board games and vocabulary games that can quickly be put to use. One that I found most delightful with…
- Review
Objective PET (CEF level B1)
This second edition of Objective PET is a revised and updated version of a course to prepare B1 students (adults and young adults) for the Cambridge Preliminary English Test (PET). It consists of a student’s book with or without key and CD-ROM, a workbook with key with or without answers, a teacher’s book, and three class audio…
- Review
Cambridge School Dictionary with CD-ROM
This handy monolingual wordbook (plus more!) claims to be for intermediate and upper-intermediate learners, but I think it could very well be introduced to a pre-intermediate English class. Besides the standard ingredients of a good ESOL dictionary — headwords (with high-frequency items clearly sig-naled), definitions and sample sentences, as well as some illustrations and diagrams,…