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.
 Practical Grammar 3 Practical Grammar is a three-part series, the third of which is reviewed herein. The textbook is designed for students of British English, with the third level focusing on those who have an intermediate to high-intermediate level of English proficiency. As such, the book shifts its content from introducing new grammatical forms to improving accuracy of use with known grammatical rules.
The textbook itself is broken down into 100 units, with groups of four units focusing on different grammatical points and every fifth unit being a review of the preceding four. For example, units 71 through 74 cover reported speech; reported statements; reported questions, requests, instructions and orders; and reporting verbs respectively, and are followed by a review in unit 75.
A particularly refreshing feature of Practical Grammar is its use of real-life scenarios at the beginning of each unit. These texts and short conversations offer students a glimpse of each grammatical point being used in appropriate contexts. The inclusion of such material seems a ready answer to the ever-persistent push toward developing students’ communicative competence and should be a welcomed attribute to all those claiming their allegiance to communicative language teaching. Such dialogues are further exemplified by Practical Grammar’s inclusion of two audio CDs, with which students can listen to the language being spoken by native speakers.
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 The Big Bag Mistake Each of the books in this collection has a very bright and colourful cover illustration or photo, including the classics, which was a welcome change to the old style classics sadly accumulating dust in my school. The photo of David Beckham on one of the books was particularly popular with some of my female students!
Some of my students were kind enough to read a few of the books and their comments have been included in my review. I also asked them to make an additional comment about the activities included.
The Big Bag Mistake by John Escott
Two young students Ricardo and Gisela are travelling from London to their homes in Rio de Janeiro and they meet on the plane. They have very different personalities and Ricardo´s attempts to chat to Gisela en route are not successful. When a thief steals Gisela´s bag, Ricardo and Gisela cross paths again.
Between Two Worlds by Stephen Rabley
Joanna is an Australian nurse living in Woomara. A very ill baby has to be taken to Sydney for treatment, but the mother is unable to leave behind her other children so Joanna offers to accompany the baby. After some time in the big city Joanna has to make an important decision.
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 English Unlimited English Unlimited (B1 Pre-intermediate) has been developed through modern research methods based on language frequency using the Cambridge International Corpus (CIC). This means that adult learners are using goals-based language that real people use in their everyday life for global communications. The curriculum is based on the goals set by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEF). It is divided into 14 topic-based units such as Money, Energy, City Life, Feelings, and People and Places. that are spread over eight pages. Each topic is divided into four sections: Goals, Language, Skills and Explore. For example, in City Life, the Goals are to make guesses and predictions, make recommendations, give directions, and get information in a tourist office. The Language and Skills sections deal with exactly those things, and the Explore section is different for each unit, e.g. cultural work, writing, plus some work on spelling and sounds in the City Life unit. The coursebook is accompanied by an e-Portfolio DVD ROM that has four components. One is Self-assessment whereby the student records their own competency for each unit. The others are a Word List to help student to study the main vocabulary of the topic, My Work to help students to upload files from their computer and Word Cards to help students consolidate their vocabulary learning.
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 ReCALL The world of Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) is an area which is growing in momentum at a very quick pace. There are numerous books available to instruct EFL/ ESL teachers in the basics of CALL, but what may be of even greater assistance are journals, especially if you are interested in CALL itself and not just setting tasks for your students to do in word processing! If you are like me and relatively new to the wonders of CALL, then I advise you to look at as many research articles as you can and journals are a great place to find ideas. ReCALL (The Journal of EUROCALL [European Association for Computer Assisted Language Learning]) is one of the most well-known and esteemed international CALL journals whose self-stated aim is to include “…the use of technologies for language learning and teaching, including all relevant aspects of research and development”. It is a refereed journal published by Cambridge and it is released three times a year in January, May and September, with the May issue containing papers from the EUROCALL conference.
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 My Grammar and I When it comes to grammar, as far as I can see, there are three types of English teachers. There are those who don’t speak English as first language. These people have battled their way through the language’s quirks, and rules that have so many exceptions that you wonder why they are rules in the first place, until they have reached a point where, while perhaps not being entirely fluent in the language, they have a level of competence whereby they can teach English. The chances are that having studied the language so much themselves, they are able to deal with most of the grammatical queries that come their way.
The second group are the native teachers of a certain age (I’m far too polite a person to suggest what that age could be…), who were educated at a time when grammar was seen as a cornerstone of L1 learning. Maybe they even attended a Grammar school, which suggests that the subject was so highly thought of they even named the whole school after it. This group has the best of both worlds when it comes to grammar teaching, native levels of proficiency matched with an in-depth knowledge of the mechanics of the language.
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 Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Language For those who are not familiar with him, David Crystal is the “David Bellamy of linguistics”, a knowledgeable, animated and bearded figure, and an outspoken commentator on contemporary language matters. The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Language is an ideal vehicle for his comprehensive knowledge. It is accessible, compelling and well organised, and deals with its topics with a depth that belies its glossy exterior and format. It is packed full of fascinating facts and is quite an inspiration to read, as well as being an ideal reference or revision tool.
In terms of its presentation and approach, this book resembles Crystal’s The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of the English Language. The Houston Chronicle, referring to that earlier work, commented that ‘you can’t turn a page without learning some fascinating titbit about our common tongue.’ I would make a similar claim for The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Language. It seems that anything you want to look up is there in some form or other, and there is a wealth of new information and interest, making it a perfect book for idle browsing as well as serious study and reference.
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 Cambridge Young Readers Factbooks: Why Is It So? Why Is It So? is a series of twenty non-fiction readers for children with each title full of facts and information about the world around us. The series comes in six levels designed to fit in with the Cambridge Young Learners tests Starters (levels 1-2), Movers (levels 3-4) and Flyers (levels 5-6). Topics covered range from the physical sciences to the natural sciences, as well as astronomy.
The first two sections in each reader present questions of the kind a curious child might ask such as ‘Why are flowers different colours?’ or ‘How does a compass work?’ The explanations for each are concise and simple yet also informative, offering the children the chance to learn something new using language they can understand. There then follow sections featuring facts about the topic, including some extraordinary ‘Can you believe it?’ ones which are bound to fascinate young learners. Some history of the subject is also covered through the ‘Who found out?’ section which again will surely engage a child reader.
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When I heard that Cambridge was bringing out a new book in their Handbooks for Language Teachers series entitled Learning One-to-One I was keen to get my hands on a copy. The series is a favourite of mine and over the past few years I’ve found an increasing number of one-to-one lessons on my timetable. I prefer teaching groups as I find one-to-one teaching less dynamic and more tiring, so I was hoping that Ingrid Wisniewska’s book would give me some new ideas and stop one-to-one lessons being such a chore.
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 Raise the Issues Raise the Issues is subtitled ‘An Integrated Approach to Critical Thinking’. ‘Integrated’ means what it means in the TOEFL exam. Rather than being treated in isolation, the skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing are brought together, with students responding to spoken and written texts by speaking and writing themselves. Reading matter is drawn from American publications such as ‘The New York Times’ and audio recordings from the American ‘National Public Radio’ (NPR) syndicate, edited into pieces lasting approximately 3 minutes each. It is generally oriented towards classroom use, with many exercises involving group or pair work. There are ten units, each with a distinct ‘issue’ and they all follow a similar pattern. Topics include law, sports, education, immigration and genetics. There is an introductory section giving suggestions for usage, and a teacher’s book (although a copy was not available at the time of writing this review: I managed without it).
The first thing to say about Raise the Issues is that to get to most out of it, you will need the audio CD. There are some exercises that work without recourse to it, but there is so much cross referencing between text, audio and written exercises that you would be left with half a book or less. But this CD is expensive and hard to get hold of- mine had to be imported from the USA. If I were intending to use this book in a course, I would order the CD in good time before it started. It is a shame it is not included with the book.
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 Teaching English Grammar When offered the chance to review a book by Jim Scrivener, I jumped at it. When I first started in this industry Learning Teaching was my roadmap – he seemed to be able to explain fairly complex concepts very clearly, giving me the confidence to go out and teach and, perhaps most importantly, experiment. I can see Teaching English Grammar helping new teachers in exactly the same way with what is (for native speaker teachers at least) the hardest part of EFL teaching.
The book starts with a brief introduction in which the author sets out his aim to “save you time, energy and stress and help you to feel more confident, well-informed and one step ahead of your students”. There is then a brief section on key terminology, including useful potted guides on the use of timelines and finger contractions. This is a brief section mostly aimed at new teachers, but even an old-timer like myself found a useful tip – that teachers spend too long worrying about making lessons fun, when the real aim should be to make them engaging.
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 The Business English Teacher Those of us who have been teaching Business English for years find it difficult to find volumes on ESP methodology that are accessible and well justified. This is just what can be found in The Business English Teacher: Professional Principles and Practical Procedures. This volume, which can be used both by in–training and in-service teachers, is a compilation of good activities that work in the business classroom. The book has three main positive aspects: there is a clear interest in addressing international students; a detailed guide for current and prospective teachers; and an attractive collection of activities that address the students’ language- and content-oriented skills.
The book is divided into three sections that pay attention to first theory, then to practice and, finally, to development.
Part A addresses the organization and planning of Business ESP courses, including the contents and physical set up, along with basic considerations of vocabulary, language skills, grammar and so. This section also addresses the teaching principles such as how to choose the lesson objective, how to plan effective lessons, ways of
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 Professional English in Use: Engineering Part of the major Cambridge “in use” series, this addition is one title from the Professional English in Use sub-series that includes vocabulary for Marketing, Finance, Medicine, Law. Thanks to the burgeoning popularity of ESP, you name it, Cambridge are writing a vocabulary book for it.
There are 45 units, with 9 themes, such as Design, Measurement and Energy. There are two pages per unit, with the right and left fulfilling different roles: The left page has words in context and the right page has exercises for the target items.
The texts in which the words are given in context are from textbooks, magazines or other sources. The target audience includes both engineering students and professional engineers. The level is Intermediate and above (B1-B2 CEF), so although the texts may be largely authentic they’re probably edited to keep the incidental lexis level down. The texts by and large read like an explanatory text from a textbook. For example,
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 Perspectives on Language Learning Materials Development One of the most interesting things about this book is the breadth of its scope. It is divided into three sections: Materials Development and Naturally Occurring Discourse (four chapters); Technology and Materials Development (two chapters); and Tailoring Materials for Learner Groups (four chapters). Six of the ten chapters were originally given as papers at the MATSDA (Materials Development Association) conference held in Ireland in 2008. The second section is entirely composed of new articles (one by the co-editor of the book) and there is one new article in each of the other two sections. The authors work in many different environments, with learners from a wide range of ages and backgrounds, using many different types of material, and in countries as far apart as Japan, Pakistan, Tunisia and Venezuela.
One of the postulates here is that every language teacher is a materials developer, and it is for this reason that the book is a must-read for those of us who want to take things just that little bit further. Naturally occurring discourse is far more readily available now, in the age of internet, than it was in the past. The problem now is one of knowing how best to use the vast quantities of material available. The first chapter shows how the authors McCarthy and McCarten, well-known in the field of ELT publishing, used the Cambridge International Corpus to build a conversation management syllabus. The four macro-functions identified are: organising your own talk; taking account of the other speaker(s); listenership; and managing the conversation as a whole. Part of the problem of using a corpus of naturally occurring speech is that such conversations rarely fit the ideal textbook format of 50-word snippets. The authors suggest strategies for overcoming these problems, illustrating them with examples taken from their Touchstone series.
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 English Idioms in Use (Advanced) Idioms are difficult. They’re such an integral part of English yet students of all levels often struggle with them, and finding a way to systematically teach these kinds of expressions is a challenge for teachers. So where to start?
English Idioms in Use begins with an introductory section about idioms, how to use them accurately, how to play with them, and how to understand a humorous play on words. There’s also a brief look at idioms from places including Scotland and the US.
The next section considers idiom types, including proverbs, similes and clichés, before moving on to presenting idioms via topic area, covering themes such as conflict, transport, animals, body parts and literature. I was intrigued in the contents page to see a unit titled ‘Shakespeare’ and discovered that idioms such as ‘the green-eyed monster’, ‘at one fell swoop’, ‘eat me out of house and home’ and ‘wild-goose chase’ were actually used in Shakespeare’s plays.
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 Using Corpora in the Language Classroom From the same collection as From Corpus to Classroom, Reppen’s book is the perfect introduction to corpus linguistics from the classroom viewpoint. One possible quibble could be that the book is quite short, but even that can be seen as an advantage: it leaves the reader hungry for more.
The book follows the popular American textbook format: there are grey “Your turn” boxes at regular intervals to encourage active reading; and each chapter starts with an outline in the form of questions and ends with a brief recap of what has been learnt. This makes navigation easy, and the index is also quite useful, although sometimes frustrating: Word Pilot sounds fascinating but, alas, the only mention of it is to be found in the index, whereas Voice Walker is mentioned in the text, but is absent from both the index and the software list in Appendix B.
The book is divided into five chapters. The first provides a rapid review of what a corpus is, and what different types of corpora there are. From the beginning, the text is easy to read and abundantly illustrated, with examples of word frequency lists, KWIC (key word in context) concordance lines, screen shots of online corpora, and concrete examples of exercises based on corpus data or using corpora.
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 English Language Teaching Materials: Theory and Practice
English Language Teaching Materials: Theory and Practice is a very useful book for all teachers of English as a foreign language, and especially for experienced teachers looking for more specialised help with lesson planning or understanding course content. In addition, it is a great tool for those involved with (or considering involvement with) materials writing. The teaching materials covered in the book are wide-ranging and not just limited to textbooks. Of course, textbooks are covered, but so are realia, worksheets, specific exercises, and the methodology for using these materials. The book also covers the production and publication of materials.
The book is divided into chapters, in this case each written by a different author or group of authors. All the contributors to this work are practising teachers or academics from university departments, covering a range of English-speaking countries. Some names will also be familiar to those readers who often read research papers about EFL.
This last point is significant because the content of the book is very academic. The chapters are written more like journal articles than book chapters. Because of this, I would say that while the book is of use to all teachers of EFL, for those who are newer to the profession or those who do not have so much academic knowledge of language and language teaching, it may be quite heavy-going.
At the end of each chapter, there are points for discussion and other such tasks designed to enable the reader to reflect upon what they have just read and to give the reader a chance to put into practice the ideas and content of the chapter.
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 Macmillan Collocations Dictionary When it comes to English fluency, collocations are crucial to sounding natural, smooth and competent. Understanding how words work together adds meaning that cannot be gained in any other way and is essential for beginner-level students who wish to progress to the next level. The Macmillan Collocations Dictionary is an excellent book to help students develop their language skills in this way. The introduction describes how the dictionary can aid students in their IELTS study, but it is useful for those not taking this test as well. In particular, I think this book can really support writers looking to improve their academic or professional writing skills. I’m even considering making this a required text for my university academic writing course because it’s so easy to use.
Its main strength is the colouring and layout, which are simple and clear, meaning that it doesn’t take long to get the hang of it. The basic colouring includes headwords in red, simple definitions in black type and examples in italics. Multiple definitions are clearly numbered and collocates are bolded for easy identification. Under each word, different grammatical relationships (adj +N; V + N) are marked with a dot and additional listings of the same relationship are labelled with an arrow. Since the collocates are bolded, they visually leap off the page in a way that helps the busy writer efficiently identify the appropriate words to use. There are also occasional grey-and-red boxes that explain elements of usage in further detail and provide examples.
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 Global Pre-Intermediate Global is the new coursebook series from Macmillan. It consists of a student coursebook, an eWorkbook, a teacher’s book with resource CD, audio CDs, a version for interactive whiteboards and a regularly updated website. At first glance, Global doesn’t differ that greatly from the coursebooks that teachers the world over are accustomed to using, in that it is divided into themed units containing grammar, reading, listening, and vocabulary, along with speaking and pronunciation components. At the end of each unit is a ‘functional’ page to practise ‘useful’ English, a writing task and a review section.
So far, so typical. However, as you begin to dig deeper you begin to notice aspects of the book that make it quite unlike other coursebooks of a similar ilk (New English File, Cutting Edge etc). One of author Lindsay Clandfield’s stated aims is “for students to learn about English…We believe that (this subject) is
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 The TKT Course CLIL Module The TKT (the Teaching Knowledge Test) is a Cambridge ESOL test about teaching English to speakers of other languages and aims to provide teachers, both experienced and less experienced, with the tools and confidence to develop their knowledge and skills. No formal qualifications or preparation courses are required to take the test, but Cambridge recommend an intermediate or B1 (CEFR) level of English.
The TKT consists of three core modules, each of which is tested separately, on language and background to language learning and teaching (Module 1), planning lessons and use of resources for language teaching (Module 2) and managing the teaching and learning process (Module 3). In addition, there are three other optional modules, TKT Practical, TKT Knowledge About Language, and TKT Content And Language Integrated Learning (CLIL).
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 Learning One-to-One My favorite kind of professional text is books of practical techniques that are full of thoughtful, creative and interactive language tasks and activities. These kinds of books can range greatly in quality and usefulness, however. The most notable exception is the Cambridge Handbooks for Language Teachers series, guided by Scott Thornbury. Like all the other valuable contributions to teachers’ professional libraries that Cambridge has produced, Wisniewska’s Learning One-to-One does not disappoint. As the title succinctly indicates, this is a book for ESL/EFL instructors who work individually with learners, in person or at a distance. It fills a gaping hole in the field today, as many teachers have been trained to teach classes of English language learners (ELLs) but are being asked to pull learners out of mainstream courses for one-on-one support or to teach an individual online. This text orients teachers to both of those two types of environments, as well as the intellectual shifts necessary to teach one individual well.
After a brief introduction to this instructional format and its challenges, the book has two large sections entitled “Basic Principles” and “Activities”. These are followed by references and a slightly annotated list of useful websites. The text also includes a CD-ROM of photocopiable worksheets.
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