TEFL Book Reviews
Reviews of books (and occasionally other resources such as software and games) of special interest to English teachers, edited by Alex Case. New reviews are added regularly. If you would like to review books for TEFL.net, please read this.
 Learning Teaching The title of this book is encouraging because it suggests that you can learn how to teach. It also suggests that it is an ongoing process. Jim Scrivener is a very reassuring writer, and an experienced teacher, with many excellent ideas about teaching and his style is very readable and unthreatening for the novice or student teacher. The bonus with the third edition is a DVD showing many of the techniques and strategies described in the book. The drawback of the DVD is that all the classes are filmed at a private language school in Cambridge, with very small groups. It would have been far better (but undoubtedly much more complicated and expensive) to have filmed many different classroom types, varying the level, age, size, sector, etc. However, even though all the classes are on the same model, it is still very useful to see exactly how certain strategies can be used in the classroom.
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 English for the Australian Curriculum Book 1 English for the Australian Curriculum (Book 1) is a new textbook aimed at teaching English and literacy in an Australian context for junior secondary (Junior High School), but I decided to try it in two of my university EFL classes in Japan where students were in their 3rd and 4th year of English study.
At first glance it is very colorful and glossy and its layout is well constructed and easy to navigate, although it is a little big and heavy to carry. The text begins with an informative Contents page, followed by a Foreword from the editors, information about the authors and also advice on how to use the book. The textbook itself is divided into 7 chapters which are color-coded, making it easy to access. Their titles are My Story Our Stories, Poetry Activated, Getting Animated: Genre and Narrative in Animated Films, Ghosts, Ghouls and Doppelgangers: Exploring Gothic Horror Stories, Fairytales Revamped, Meanwhile Somewhere Else: Three Films from Iran, and Dream On: Storytelling, Reality and Identity.
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 Listening Power 2 Listening Power 2 with its accompanying four CDs is the second in a series of books that have a targeted approach to the listening skills that students need for standardized tests such as TOEFL and TOEIC. The lessons are practical for both inside and outside the classroom. The book is presented in four parts: Language Focus, Comprehension Focus, Note-taking Skills and Listening for Pleasure. Students are meant to work through the four sections at the same time as each other.
The Language Focus section teaches language such as questions, numbers, reduced forms, homonyms and sentence stress that are essential for listening comprehension but sometimes difficult to understand. One example of this is the unit about understanding numbers where it is pointed out that we use numbers in a wide variety of ways such as talking about prices, phone numbers,
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 Teaching Spelling to English Language Learners Teaching spelling has long been deemed a daunting task by ESL instructors. Frequently considered a chore at best, the presentation of orthographic rules and patterns is often sidestepped in the wake of more important class-time affairs. Johanna Stirling aims to shed light on the importance, and perhaps, ease of spelling instruction in Teaching Spelling to English Language Learners.
The text is written for teachers of adult English Language Learners, although the author points out that teachers of young learners and native English speakers would also benefit from the presented methodologies. Divided into sections, this guide deals with the problems associated with teaching spelling, and offers solutions to those problems through pedagogically focused activities.
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 IELTS Advantage: Writing Skills Writing is undeniably challenging and an area in which many students struggle to achieve a good exam score. Given that the IELTS Academic exam has two quite different writing tasks, practice is essential. Knowing and understanding what is needed to achieve a good mark is really useful, and in this book the authors, both IELTS writing examiners, clearly guide the reader through the different sections, practising key skills and building a range of expressions.
One great feature of the book is the “Try It First” sections. People using the book are encouraged to write an essay before studying the unit, in order to gauge how much they already know and what they need to work on. This should be effective in motivating them, and shows them the worth of the book by giving them the knowledge to fill the gaps identified. The book could be used as a self-study book or as a class course book.
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 Delta Academic Objectives: Reading Skills Reading Skills by Louis Rogers is a new title from Delta Publishing which forms part of the Delta Academic Objectives series to help students adapt to the challenges of studying academic English. The book prepares the learners to work with difficult academic material by covering the following four areas: understanding and comprehension of the text, critical thinking, using the text, and language focus. This text matches learners who have a lower reading proficiency, and it would best fit a target audience of middle school level and higher. It best fits students’ needs in basic areas of reading comprehension, specifically when it is related to reading of academic English texts.
The structure of the text includes 12 units, with units six and 12 dedicated to revision of the previous material. At the end of the book there is an Academic Word List, comprising twelve pages of exercises that test vocabulary knowledge. The individual chapters start out with “aims” that serve as objectives for each unit. A Topic Focus section prepares students for the material in the chapter. This is followed by a section entitled Understanding the Text which identifies specific reading skills such as
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 English in Mind English in Mind (Second Edition) is a course that the publishers claim is fresh and inspiring, especially designed to motivate teenagers, with 100% up-to-date content and extra attention on developing fluency. It has a Student’s Book DVD-ROM that contain games, extra exercises and video dramas featuring the photostory characters. The photostories also have a “videoke” function for students to record themselves taking part in the dialogue.
The books are level 3 which is B1 council of Europe level. They are standard A4 in size with a purple jacket. Inside, the student book is divided into 14 sections, with each one covering a different aspect of grammar, based around different topics. The first section is a recap of tenses previously
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 Complex Systems and Applied Linguistics Complex Systems and Applied Linguistics by Diane Larsen-Freeman and Lynne Cameron forms part of the Oxford Applied Linguistics series. However, you don’t need a great deal of prior knowledge of Applied Linguistics to read this book, as the main focus is on the complex systems part of the title. For that reason, it may be that some background in science would be helpful. Alternatively, a scientific background may have you throwing this book against the wall, for reasons explained below.
Complexity theory tells us that the behaviour of certain systems, known as “complex systems”, cannot be predicted because unmeasurably tiny changes now lead to completely different results later. This concept is best grasped using an analogy with a pile of sand. If you keep adding grains of sand to the pile, an avalanche is sure to happen, but it’s impossible to predict when, and in which direction, and how much sand will fall. All we can do is look back, and offer a retrospective account of what happened: the pile collapsed after adding such-and-such a grain, and fell in such-and-such a way, something that doesn’t allow us to predict similar events in the future because that “…depends on the day of the week… the time of day…” and a thousand other interconnected and uncontrollable factors (p235). It doesn’t take much scientific knowledge to realise that this runs contrary to the conventional picture of science that most of us learnt at school, with its regularly moving pendulums and models of the solar system. Complexity theory has been heralded by some as a paradigm shift, one that could revolutionise areas outside the natural sciences like economics, education and business. However, others believe that when it is exported to those other areas it usually becomes pseudo-science at best (hence the potential for angry scientists).
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 Primary iDictionary 2 The Primary iDictionary 2 is an interactive picture dictionary CD-ROM published by Cambridge. It is designed for primary school aged learners of English with the vocabulary being suitable for children preparing for the Cambridge Movers exam.
The program contains over 300 words divided into 14 vocabulary topics ranging from animals to weather, as well as language-focused units on things like adjectives and past simple forms. In each topic, the vocabulary is presented via images with the accompanying word. The pronunciation of each word can also be listened to, as can the spelling of the word.
Each unit also contains a song, a story and a game, all of which draw on the vocabulary that is presented. The songs can be listened to with the lyrics or without, or in the ‘karaoke’ mode that allows the child to sing along. There are 4 different types of game: a drag and drop game in which words are matched to pictures; a drag and drop game in which items are added to a picture based on an audio description; a listen and match game in which a description of an item or action is listened to before choosing the corresponding image; and a memory card game in which matching pairs of cards need to be found.
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 Essential Business Vocabulary Builder Having taken on a couple of new business groups, I was looking forward to the chance to road-test Essential Business Vocabulary Builder – and I wasn’t disappointed. Presentation-wise I wasn’t initially bowled over – its text-filled pages are not easy on the eye – and wondered how my students might react, but I was quickly put right. The strength of Emmerson’s text is not in pretty pictures or glossy pages, but in the depth of what it covers.
The main part of the book is split into three areas: Business Topics (companies and sectors, money and finance, management, etc), Effective Communication (Social English, Business Travel, Emails, etc) and a section looking at word families in a business context. As if that wasn’t enough, there are also speaking and writing practice sections linked to various lexical sets, and listening practice featuring both short phrases for practice of phonological aspects and longer listening comprehensions (the book comes with a CD). Somehow the author has managed to fit all this into less than 200 pages.
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 Communicative Activities for EAP I started teaching a new course this year at a private university, where I was asked to teach ‘speaking’ to first-year undergraduates in the first semester and ‘writing’ in the second semester. Apart from having a set of general aims and proposed outcomes for the course, which included EAP skills, I was pretty much left to my own devices in terms of planning the content. Coincidentally, I was also asked to review the present handbook of Communicative activities for EAP. So, I decided to plan the first semester using the activities from the speaking section of the book. This review is therefore based primarily on my experiences of using the tasks in the classroom and as such, should hopefully provide some practical information for teachers in similar situations.
The wide range of books in the same series as this title focus on providing practical activities, often using a particular task-type (e.g. dictation, discussion) or resource (e.g. dictionaries, literature). or focus on teaching a specific learner group (e.g. young learners). Step-by-step procedures with photocopiable materials mean teachers save time on planning and can adapt activities easily for their own teaching situations.
The present book has 6 chapters devoted to skills development: speaking, listening, reading, writing, vocabulary and grammar. Each chapter contains around 20 separate activities, and all focus on communicative activities for EAP – meaning topics are usually of an academic nature and the skills relate to those required at the tertiary level, e.g. research skills, presentations and writing essays. The level of the activities ranges from around intermediate level (one star in their three star system) and ending in quite advanced (three stars). For many exercises, the teacher needs to choose the actual text sources from websites etc, meaning the level can often be adjusted as necessary within these bounds.
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 EAP now! Preliminary EAP now! Preliminary is a textbook integrating a balance of skills and language and aimed at Intermediate students studying EAP (English for Academic Purposes) in a classroom context. This is possibly the first ‘textbook’ for EAP students that takes the successful formula for general language integrated-skills textbooks and applies it to EAP; but does it work?
EAP teaching is often defined by a focus on academic text-genres (e.g. research papers and critical essays) for developing awareness of language specific to academic discourse and learning skills for academic tasks (e.g. summarizing information and presenting findings). To do this, a reasonable level of ability with ‘general English’ is generally assumed necessary before starting to learn EAP.
However, many students want to get started as soon as possible on EAP, even when they are at the elementary stages of language learning. The question thus becomes how and when (if at all) do we combine the general with the academic? Take a typical grammar point at the intermediate level, modal verbs of possibility (may, might, could) – if students are aiming at studying English at the university level, do we teach these forms in contexts like ‘I might go to the cinema tonight, do you want to come, too?’ or ‘According to a recent article, Einstein’s theory of relativity may be incorrect’, or both? Should both contexts be taught in an EAP course, or be separated into general and EAP courses?
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 Listening Myths In the late 90’s, David Nunan referred to listening as the “Cinderella” skill, meaning a skill often ignored in language learning research due to a greater emphasis on speaking. With a flood of books on the subject of second language listening appearing over the past few years, from the practical (How to Teach Listening by J J Wilson) to the slightly more theoretical (Listening in the Language Classroom by John Field), listening’s Cinderella status might need an update.
Listening Myths is one of the most recent titles on second language listening and it proves to be an excellent overview for both the research-minded and the practicing teacher. Similar to two other books in a series from University of Michigan Press (Writing Myths and Vocabulary Myths), it is written around an interesting premise, which is to refute some common myths about teaching listening. The book explores eight myths in all. Each chapter contains three sections: In The Real World (an introduction to the chapter containing an engaging anecdote), What The Research Says (a concise overview of research relating to the myth), and What We Can Do (two or three suggestions for putting research findings into action).
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 Testbuilder for TOEFL iBT Exams are challenging to prepare students for, and as there are not an unlimited number of practice tests out there this book is a useful addition to a TEFL resource library. I was excited by the idea of reviewing this new “testbuilder” with its promised “tests which teach” and was keen to see whether it lived up to its claim.
The book offers two full length practice exams along with an answer key. Unlike a traditional answer key, it explains the reasoning behind the correct answers, as well as detailing the type of question each one is: vocabulary, gist, fact, inference, and so on. For the reading and listening parts of the test this information about why an answer is correct is just what a student needs!
After doing this so well, the book then falls down. For the speaking and writing test components, although sample responses are offered, there is no indication as to whether these are good or appropriate responses, what kind of mark they’d have achieved in the exam, what could have been improved, or any guidance for the student as to what a good response would be like. I was disappointed by this.
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 Active Grammar The Active Grammar books are published by Cambridge University Press and this is a review of the 2011 editions of Levels 2 and 3. The levels correspond with two levels of The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEF). Level 2 corresponds to B1-B2, and Level 3 corresponds to C1-C2. According to the description of the text at the beginning of the books, the Active Grammar series takes a communicative and interactive approach to learning.
The units are divided into the following grammatical concepts: tenses, modals, questions/multi-word verbs/verb structures, determiners and prepositions, adjectives/adverbs/passive/conditional, and word formation and sentences. At the beginning of each chapter there is a different context in which the particular grammar concept can be found. The books also provide brief comprehension questions after the introductory activities. After that, there is an immediate explanation of the specific grammar concept. There are numbered explanations with up to three examples per explanation. In between explanations there are “tip” boxes, which provide helpful extra attention to questions that may be raised by students.
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 Meetings in English Meetings in English, published by Macmillan, is written by Bryan Stephens. In its own words, it “focuses on the skills and techniques to help gain confidence and build strategies for successful meetings in English.”
The book is divided into 20 short units, each dealing with a particular aspect of giving and participating in meetings. Each unit is divided into four sections: ‘Background’ (relevant cultural and company information), ‘Skills’ (with an emphasis on listening and speaking), ‘Further practice’ (activities in grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary) and ‘Over to you’ (more speaking practice). It is also backed up by an optional activity at the back of the book for each unit, predominantly concentrating on more in-depth roleplays or writing activities. There is also an answer key for all exercises.
To its credit, the book is designed to be adaptable. Units can be rearranged and dropped completely, depending on the particular needs of the students, without any disruption to the flow of lessons. This is also true of the exercises within the unit and the optional activities.
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 Macmillan Children’s Readers These readers are described as being for ages 6-12, from Beginner to Pre-Intermediate level and I reviewed 6 readers from levels 1-4.
First flicking through these readers I was pleasantly surprised to see the quality of pictures and details which had gone into the books. They are beautifully illustrated and a wide range of kids will appreciate the stories and be drawn in.
What really adds to the stories are the activities at the back of the book, practising the language covered in the reader. Another excellent factor is the picture dictionary, also at the end of each book.
Levels 1 and 2 have a short simple story to work from. The two books I reviewed were Hide and Seek and The Fancy Dress Competition. These are fun topics which would open up a range of extension activities for the classroom, using the readers as a basis.
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 Tips for Teaching Culture Texts on culture and intercultural communication topics tend to divide into too theoretical and research oriented or too superficial, treating culture as “food, flags and fun.” Tips for Teaching Culture by Wintergerst and McVeigh is one of the rare college textbooks that has been able to successfully bridge the theory, research and practice divide by integrating important concepts and research into chapters that offer teachers of adults and young adults activities to investigate cultural concepts and understandings in their English as a Second Language (ESL) classes. The authors’ goal is to build the intercultural understanding of teachers while providing ways to raise English language learners’ (ELLs) intercultural understanding and awareness of cultural dynamics.
In eight chapters on the intersection of culture with language, non-verbal communication, identity, cross-cultural adjustment, education, sensitive issues, and social responsibility, Tips for Teaching Culture provides the basics of understanding ways to describe, view, compare and interrelate various cultural paradigms and the interactions of cultural participants. Including traditional perspectives and concepts of teaching culture (e.g. culture shock) and spanning into more contemporary approaches (e.g. identity and social responsibility), the text provides new insights for even the seasoned professional. I was happy to learn more than just the tired and stereotypical comparisons of “shy Japanese students” to “raucous American children”.
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 The Lexicography of English The author of this book, Henri Béjoint, believes that English dictionaries can serve as a valid example of the evolution of lexicography from the seventeenth century to the present day. His interest in dictionaries is a life-long passion, one which is probably shared by many people. The statistics he provides in the introduction date a little: 90% of households in Britain possessed at least one dictionary in 1985; 87% of households in America owned a dictionary in 1989. This time-lag could be explained by the fact that the earlier, shorter version of this book was first published in 1994. It is probable that in the twenty-first century more and more people will be turning to online dictionaries or CD-ROMS, but dictionaries are rarely discarded unless they are worn out through over-use.
This is quite a lengthy volume, divided into ten chapters of unequal size with an introduction, a conclusion, an extensive bibliography, and four pages of abbreviations at the front (rather like those to be found in a dictionary). Inside the book there is an insert containing 27 reproductions, on glossy paper, of dictionary pages through the ages. This is followed by screenshots of a dictionary on CD-ROM, an online dictionary and the Wiktionary entry for ‘dictionary’, together with four black and white photographs of the people working on the OED from its beginnings in the 1880s to the present day.
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 Researching Vocabulary Although not all teachers want to be researchers, all good teachers should have some idea of current research in their field. This book is an excellent introduction to vocabulary research by a renowned expert, Norbert Schmitt. It is a mine of useful information, presented in a very approachable manner. It is divided into four sections: Overview of Vocabulary Issues (Chapter 1); Foundations of Vocabulary Research (Chapters 2 and 3); Researching Vocabulary (Chapters 4, 5 and 6); and Resources (Chapter 7).
The first section begins with one of my favourite quotes on language: “Without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed.” As a language teacher, I have been using various forms of that sentence for many years. If vocabulary is important, then it seems logical to seek to assess vocabulary proficiency. The very useful online DIALANG tests are described on pages 4 and 5, although it is a little tricky to track down other useful information on them due to no reference in the (very short) index, notes being at the end of the book, and no website address being given.
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