ELT Material Reviews
ETAS is fortunate to have the support of publishers and materials providers who make available the latest in teacher support materials: course books, resource books, teaching tools, apps and other resources as they come on the market. We offer these for review and the Resources Editor sometimes asks ETAS members to review materials directly. You are invited to offer to review some resources and can also suggest others you have seen. Subscribe to the ETAS Newsletter to discover our latest additions!
Writing reviews is not as difficult as you might think; we provide guidelines and support so nobody should feel daunted. Review writing is a good way to hone your general writing skills while informing other teachers about the many resources available. Reviews are printed in the ETAS Journal and you may keep the materials as a thank you for your valuable contributions.
Contact the Resources Editor for more information: BOOKREVIEW@E-TAS.CH
A Fractured Winter
A Fractured Winter, the second novel by retired former ETAS President, Alison Baillie-Taylor, is an intriguing mystery. A missing girl, threatening notes, sinister strangers –…
Communicative Business English Activities
Many of you probably know Marjorie Rosenberg, the American author of a new, comprehensive, photocopiable, spiral-bound activities book geared to assist Business English teachers with…
CREATIVE OUTPUT Activities for Teaching Speaking and Writing
Creative Output offers teachers practical resources to assist in improving students’ productive skills. Hence, the activities are focused on enhancing speaking and writing skills which means…
Business Proficiency: Wirtschaftsenglisch für Hochschule und Beruf
This dense Business English course and exam preparation book offers a plethora of classroom exercises to help students tackle language in various business environments. Aimed…
Dealing with Difficulties – Solutions, strategies and suggestions for successful teaching
Both Luke Prodromou and Lindsay Clandfield are well known to ETAS members as experts in their field. Both started their careers teaching and have used…
Grammar for Great Writing (C) Student’s Book
The Grammar for Great Writing series of books aims to cover general grammatical points that have been found to challenge students when producing writing tasks across the…
Great Writing 4 Student’s Book C1
Great Writing(Book 4) is the fourth book, in a series of five, which are designed to train students in carefully graded steps to improve their…
Teaching Hospitality English
This self-published book was written by a teacher for fellow teachers and provides those of you who teach Hospitality English a framework in which to…
Successful Group Work: 13 Activities to Teach Teamwork Skills
Have you been looking for ways to get everyone in your class involved and motivated? Maybe you have a project planned and need to bring…
Brainstorming
This e-book aims to provide teachers and educators with original go-to brainstorming activities that could be used to challenge and motivate students. We’ve all encountered…
THE IMAGE in English Language Teaching
What role do images play in your teaching and learning contexts and how do you use them with students? Do they play an integral role…
The Great Verb Game
The Great Verb Game comes in an attractive and sturdy box and contains 100 verb cards, three collapsible dice for tense,personal pronouns and sentence type, a…
The Business English Teacher: Professional Principles and Practical Procedures
Writing in the Guardian about the “behemoth” English language taking over the planet, Jakob Mikanowski (2018), said, “In the not-too-distant future, thanks to English, the curse…
Straight to Advanced “Teacher’s Book Premium Pack” with CDs
Straight to Advanced has a clearly defined purpose: that of preparing students for The Cambridge English: Advanced (CAE) exam. It is an intensive, one-semester course. The…
Real Business English Coursebooks B2
The Real Business English set of books was created for “REAL companies with the input from REAL international companies” (Buller & Vetter-M’Caw, 2018, p. 5), with the…
Keynote Intermediate
The Keynote series, which recently won a British Council ELTons Award for excellence in course innovation, is aimed at working adults and young adults in higher education…
Podcasting and Professional Development: A Guide for English Language Teachers
Podcasting and Professional Development is a booklet of () pages for teachers who are considering using podcasts for professional development. It is divided into four…
Swiss History in a Nutshell
While teaching a group of apprentices, I mentioned that I couldn’t remember the specifics of why Switzerland was neutral and when this occurred. There was…
Putting CLIL into Practice, Oxford Handbooks for Language Teachers
Implementation of CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) in the European context has been successful in the past decade and has flourished also owing to…
Understanding English as a Lingua Franca
Following the creation of VOICE (Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English), a database with samples of English non-native speaking users in different contexts, Seidlhofer publishes Understanding English as…
THINK Student’s Book B2
What initially attracted me to this book was the brightly coloured promotional video that one can watch on the website, which promises something REALLY (and…
English Empower B1
English EMPOWER B1 Workbook with Answers Peter Anderson Cambridge University Press (2015) ISBN 978-1-107-46680-7 96 pages; paperback English Empower B1 Pre-intermediate Teacher’s Book Lynda Edwards, Ruth Gairns,…
The Naked Swiss: A Nation Behind 10 Myths
If you are Swiss, know someone who is Swiss, or are simply interested in the Swiss and Switzerland, then this book is for you! Delving…
Tenses on Timeline
This self-published Kit provides a set of teaching materials crafted through the author’s 35 years’ experience and with which she has had great personal success…
Teaching Lexically – Principles and Practice, DELTA Teacher Development Series
Since Meara (1980) argued that vocabulary was a neglected aspect in language teaching literature, the situation has changed considerably. Not least thanks to books and…
Collins English for Life: Listening
B2 Level to Upper IntermediateCollins English for Life: Listening What exactly is perfect spoken English? Is it English spoken only by a native speaker? Is…
Going Mobile: Teaching with Handheld devices
Going Mobile is part of Delta’s Teacher Development Series. Although the cover makes explicit mention of teaching with hand-held devices, Hockly and Dudeney take a…
The Naked Swiss: A Nation Behind 10 Myths
If you are Swiss, know someone who is Swiss, or are simply interested in the Swiss and Switzerland, then this book is for you! Delving…
Speak Out Advanced Students’ Book 2nd Edition
It can be difficult to choose a text book for advanced learners as many books contain such advanced grammar that students immediately go blank while…
Moral Dilemmas
How important is it to keep a promise? When is killing someone an act of self-defence? Is it right to torture a terrorist when the…
Focus with MyEnglishLab
Workbook Daniel Brayshaw, Bartosz Michalowski, Beata Trapnell ISBN 978-1-4479-9839-6 Teacher’s Book with Multirom Arek Tkacz ISBN 978-1-292-11010-3 Class CDs Sue Kay, Vaughan Jones, Daniel Brayshaw, Beata…
Teaching English to Teenagers
The Oxford Teachers’ Academy online course Teaching English to Teenagers offers a 30-hour immersion in fundamental teaching strategies and ideas to engage students of this critical age…
Open Mind Advanced Teacher’s Book Premium Pack (with with Class audio CD and DVD)
Despite the abundance of online resources – and the voices arguing that we are moving towards teaching without textbooks – the fact is that textbooks…
Teach like a Champion: 49 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College (K-12)
This book is aimed at school teachers in the USA. However, I believe it would be useful for any teachers of groups, especially those teaching…
Passport to Academic Presentations: New Edition
In business and academic circles today, knowing how to give effective presentations ranks high amongst the soft skills being taught and sought after in post-study…
English EMPOWER B1: Student’s Book, Workbook with Answers, Pre-intermediate Teacher’s Book
The Empower B1 course can be described as one that can be comfortably placed in the middle ground between a General English course and a…
Foundation IELTS Masterclass: Student’s Book, Teacher’s Pack
Although I get more and more requests to assist my learners with their IELTS exam preparations, the exam, or at least aspects of it, remains…
Thinking about Language Teaching: Selected Articles 1982-2011
As the title suggests, this is not a resource book like others but an eclectic selection of Swan’s articles over the span of his career…
Measured Constructs: A History of Cambridge English Language Examinations 1913-2012
This hefty, academic tome, which is No. 37 in the series Studies in Language Testing, is by Cyril Weir, Director of the Centre for Research in…
Film in Action
Film in Action is a resource book which aims to demonstrate to teachers how film can become an essential part of their teaching. It achieves this…
Oxford Grammar for Schools 1
This book is designed to teach students all the grammar they will need to successfully complete the Cambridge Young Learners Starters assessment. The 25 units…
Culture in our Classrooms: Teaching Language through Cultural Content
How many of your students’ reason for learning English is because they want to go abroad, or communicate with someone who has a culture different…
Business Benchmark Upper Intermediate
This new edition of Business Benchmark Upper Intermediate improves on what was already an excellent coursebook for learners studying for the Cambridge Business English Certificate…
English for Economics in Higher Education Studies
This book is suitable for upper-intermediate to proficiency (IELTS 5.0-7.5+ and CEF B2-C2) level, although it is assumed that the student is familiar with English…
50 Steps to Improving your Academic Writing
Serendipity’s a fascinating thing, isn’t it? I am currently submitting many papers to an academic setting as well as teaching English at a local university,…
Schubitrix English: School, Body and Home, First Reading 2
As I am always on the lookout for games and fun activities to motivate my students, I find this product the perfect choice. With 22 volunteers…
Going Mobile: Teaching with Handheld Devices
Going Mobile is part of Delta’s Teacher Development Series. Although the cover makes explicit mention of teaching with hand-held devices, Hockly and Dudeney take a holistic…
Collins English for Life: Listening
What exactly is perfect spoken English? Is it English spoken only by a native speaker? Is it English spoken by someone with perfect grammar? What if a…
Moving into Tourism and Hospitality
This three-component course is intended for college and/or university students who are pursuing a career in tourism or hospitality. The components of the course are…
Visual Grammar Elementary A2
Another refreshing can-do, communicative approach to learning is Scrivener’s Visual Grammar (Richmond, 2013), which uses colourful graphics, pictures, and photographs to visualise how grammar works…
Authentic Listening Resource Pack
One of the difficulties that an ESL/EFL student faces in developing their listening skills is the challenge of coping with a steady stream of connected…
The Legal English Manual
ETAS’s very own valued member and former ESP SIG Coordinator, Alison Wiebalck, has been at it again. This time she has outdone herself by co-writing an…
Focus on oral interaction
Speaking and listening are key communication skills, yet they are often taken somewhat for granted. To what extent and how should they be practised in…
English File Third Edition: Intermediate Plus: Student’s Book with DVD-ROM
This course from OUP aims to help learners make the jump from Intermediate to Upper-Intermediate (B1/B2) by providing motivating but challenging consolidation and extension of…
Teaching Online: Tools and techniques, options and opportunities
Teaching Online: Tools and techniques, options and opportunitiesis a most welcome addition to the emerging resources for language teachers who are either currently engaged with teaching…
English for Public Relations in Higher Education Studies
English for Public Relations is part of Garnet Education’s ESAP (English for Specific Academic Purposes) series, which is designed to prepare B2 – C2 level…
Exploring British Culture
This recent publication focuses on teaching English through lessons which concern various cultural elements of modern Britain. I was particularly pleased to see it since…
Catalyst: A Conversation Taskbook for English Language Learners – False Beginner to Advanced
Anyone who knows me can confirm that I’m big on technology, so when I was asked to review a coursebook on an iPad, I needed…
Advanced Trainer
If you are looking for new resource material which offers both an introduction to the Cambridge English Advanced (CAE) exam as well as practice tests,…
Three Languages in the Swiss Primary Section: A Challenge, but not impossible – A Comparative Study
Caroline Briggs Ambrosi de Magistris Verzier compares three different course books for teaching English at primary school level starting in class 3 or 5. Her…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
English Unlimited, Pre-intermediate (CEF level B1)
This is the third set of materials in a new six-level course that reaches from level A1 (Starter) to C1 (Advanced) according to the Common…
Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary
The ‘academic content’ referred to in the title of this dictionary is the vocabulary of high school (and possibly college) courses in the US and…
Oxford English for Careers
These three books are part of the Oxford University Press series Oxford English for Careers, and are mainly aimed at English courses for non-native doctors and nurses…
DELTA Business Communication Skills – Meetings
This is a slim volume that punches above its weight. Working with architects and project managers who increasingly had to hold meetings with clients in…
Cambridge English for Nursing, Intermediate +
This is Cambridge University Press’s answer to OUP’s Nursing books. The level is given as Intermediate + (B1-B2), but the emphasis on listening and speaking…
English for Academic Study series
(The EAS series comprises seven separate EAP Coursebooks and Teacher’s Books, covering the essential skills for English-medium study.) Garnet Education (2012) See www.englishforacademicstudy.com and www.garneteducation.com The 2012 British English edition…