Why join a teachers association?

A while ago, I wrote a post about what had brought me back to twitter. As we’re on this subject matter, another post I wrote was on the effect of PLNs on my professional growth. I’ve also written something about my fond memories of Braz-TESOL conventions and how much I treasured them. That’s all fine, and I do believe all those things, namely twitter, PLNs, and conventions do add a lot to my professional life. But how so? And, even more important than that, why bother?

How does being the member of a community help?

Even though this is not the most important question, the answers to this question are just too many to be written in a single blog post. Pretty much all posts you can find on this blog were the result of some sort of interaction I had with other teachers, students, or just people who weren’t even in the field of education. When you join a community and become an active member of it, you’re allowing yourself the chance to reflect on lots of things you believe in. However, you must always keep an open mind as this activity is bound to show you ways of thinking you couldn’t probably fathom before.

Photo by Ian Sane

A lot comes from online communities, building your PLN, sharing and contributing with like-minded people as well as people who disagree with you, but know how to do so reasonably and also in attempt to get something out of the discussion. When we’re online, we also have the chance to interact with people from different countries a lot more easier than you can do face-to-face. However, I always feel there’s something missing in the online component of interaction.

Despite all the benefits that arose from Web 2.0, it’s still hard to beat the atmosphere from a face-to-face convention. Having had the chance to attend the last Braz-TESOL national convention with more than 1200 teachers from all over Brazil and all over the world, I can certainly assure you that the things you experience in such a convention are a lot more intense than what you usually get online. It’s like one thing complements the other.

Finally, joining a teachers association, online or face-to-face, is helpful because it puts you together with people who, just like you, believe that teaching means acknowledging you must constantly be learning. Teachers who are members of a teachers association are willing to share information, experiences, and anecdotes that might help other teachers. Members of these associations aren’t selfish and believe that the ones who benefit the most of such exchange of information are they themselves. Oh, really? But why is that?

Why should I join a teachers association?

I believe that sharing what I know with others and listening to what they’ve got to say, and trying out new things in class is done with the sole purpose of helping learners. I usually tell my students that teachers should care a lot less about their teaching and a lot more about their students’ learning. This means teachers should learn how to truly listen to their students. In language teaching, I very much agree with the idea of working with language that’s produced by learners themselves as this is more often than not a lot more personal and meaningful to learners than a pre-fabricated chunk of language used to show a point. If you’ve paid a visit to this blog before, you probably know what I mean by this.

That’s fine, but what’s this got to do with joining a teachers association? In a nutshell, the better the teachers are, the better students will be. If you believe you’re a fantastic teacher but you don’t share what you do in class, you’re likely to have to start from scratch every semester or year. I honestly can’t think of an educational setting in which students only have one teacher. This means that the better our peers are, the easier our job will be every new semester or year. Instead of having to teach students from scratch, you can just continue what had been done in previous semesters. Now, if that happens, and if you believe you’re such “a fantastic teacher, like, the best teacher in the world ever”, how much do you think you can accomplish if you haven’t got to worry about teaching your students the basics, or things they should have learned long before they were your students?

If we accept that teachers who join teachers associations as teachers who are always willing to seek what’s best for their learners, then it’s likely that students who have been the students of teachers who participate in such associations are better prepared than students whose teachers do not take part in such associations. And the better prepared our students are, the easier our job is. Would you agree with that?

Where to go now? Well, if you’re reading this and you’re an English teacher in Brazil, you could start by clicking here (or on the image below).

Professional development? Why don't you join Braz-TESOL?

Hidden gems – The blogosphere revisited

A while ago, Darren wrote a post claiming that theres a vast pool of human knowledge that’s been neglected. On his post he asked us to revisit some of the blogs we usually visit and find some #hiddengems (twitter hashtag) to make the topic active again. Even though when I commented I said I was going to do my homework, this doesn’t feel like homework. I can still remember a couple of blogposts from my early days here, and I just need to spot them again. Here goes:

1. On books, publishers & teachers – This is a post by Gavin Dudeney and he puts forth some interesting ideas regarding, well, books and publishers. I’ve already had the chance to talk to some people about such ideas, and most seem to find them quite sound. I wonder whether publishing houses think the same…

2. None for the teacher, none for the students? – Jim Burke talks about his experience with blogs and using blogs with students. There’s also a file to download with some guidelines so you can do the same thing with your students.

3. Thoughts on assessment 1: a response – Greg Thompson writes about rethinking school and other educational matters on his blog. His blog posts are always thought-provoking and insightful. This piece is one I like for two reasons: his sound ideas and arguments, and also because this was the first post written in response to one of my posts. It certainly was responsible for truly making me feel part of the blogosphere. I don’t think I ever got to thank Greg properly, so here it is! I hope he’s still following my blog.

4. Highly qualified teachers: who’s paying for it? – I really enjoy the personal tone Mary Beth Hertz puts in her blog posts. In this particular piece, she writes about teacher qualification and makes us think about something we all know – teacher’s pay checks. I’ve had the chance to meet many teachers who said they wouldn’t bother improving because they wouldn’t be recognised for their efforts and if they’re not going to be paid more, why should they spend more on qualification… people who have found themselves in any profession will go out of their way to do what it takes to become better professionals. This is what MB has done.

5. Thank you so much! – Nick Jaworski‘s blog has been on my blogroll from the very beginning. This post is a good example of how joining the blogosphere and interacting online can help in one’s growth. If only more people could understand that spending time on blogs and twitter (to name but a few) isn’t a waste of time…

So, these are my #hiddengems. I hope you’ll also benefit from any of these posts.

The local and the “foreigner”

A short while ago there’s been a discussion on the blogosphere related to the treatment given to foreign speakers in detriment to local teachers. I’ve read lots of blog posts in that area and chose not to say anything for myriad reasons. The most important reason is that I haven’t been to any of the conferences that people were talking about. As a matter of fact, it’s been a while since I last could attend a major ELT conference. The last big conference I attended was the national Braz-TESOL in 2006, when I was the Master of Ceremonies together with a very good friend of mine. We had to make sure all was ready for plenary speakers and even our workshop was cut short from a 90-minute hands-on workshop to a 45-minute hands-on (???) talk. But that was not an issue. In that conference, all were treated equally and all parties were open to all (as far as I know, at least). Needless to say, arrangements were made to host foreigners, but nothing particularly special. I had the chance to meet and take pictures with lots of people I’ve always admired in the profession and whose faces I used to replace with book covers, if you know what I mean.

However, I don’t want to discuss that here. What made me think about writing this post was a short period of time I spent with some former teachers of mine this afternoon. Just like I hold some of the people I met in very high esteem, like Scott Thornbury, Penny Ur, Luke Prodromou, and many others I had the chance to meet and briefly talk to, I’ve also always held my own teachers in very high esteem. This afternoon I was in the teachers room when two of these high-school teachers started discussing assessment. Unfortunately I couldn’t stay until the end of the discussion, but it was a lot of fun for me to be there listening to them. Actually, this was the highlight of the afternoon. I really haven’t got the chance to sit and talk to people like H.D. Brown, Jeremy Harmer, Scott Thornbury, Ken Wilson, Luke Prodromou, Luke Meddings, Lindsay Clanfield, Penny Ur and others who are considered the big names of ELT. At least nowadays I have the chance to follow them on twitter and read their blogs, interact a little bit here and there, but because of all this media revolution, I’ve also got to know lots of other people I’d be dying to meet in person and sit and talk to. I could go on and on saying names, as they are the vast majority of my PLN and the ones I’ve learned a lot from whereas the names I mentioned above were the ones I knew (among others) before I joined social media. But what about the other people? What about the ones right next to you? Just like I’ve learned a lot from the people whose names I deliberately (as this truly illustrates the arguments I’ve put forth) chose not to mention, the same seems to happen outside web 2.0.

I’m fortunate enough to work very closely to my primary and secondary school teachers. These are people who have been working in the field for more than 25 years, and even though they haven’t written any methodology books in any of their area, they’ve still got so much to teach us. Many times I’ve sat down next to them on purpose to exchange ideas about teaching. If they had taught me a lot when they were my teachers, you can’t imagine how much more they teach me nowadays. I’ve been thinking a lot about this and the fact that nowadays it’s just so easy to get in touch with people overseas that some people end up overlooking those who are right next to them. There are many people who aren’t on the blogosphere due to lack of time or maybe because they simply don’t feel the need to be here, nor do they feel the need to join twitter. Some people may say they’re passing out on a great opportunity to learn more, but a 2-minute conversation with them will easily show they haven’t stopped in time and keep learning their own way. And the best thing: they’re right there. It’s very easy to talk to them over a cup of coffee.

I’ve already felt like one of those who are “taken for granted” for being a ‘local’. For instance, sometime we take our staff to workshops which take place in Brasília. And sometimes all the presenters do is repeat, to a much simpler extent, what had been discussed over the course of a week during our training sessions. However, this time teachers leave the lecture saying they were impressed and that what was said was particularly clever and that now they’d give it all a try. Well, to be perfectly honest, I guess it’s better that someone can instill this on them. If they need a foreigner to do so, fine by me. And this seems to be true of many different areas. For example, a friend of mine is a wonderful musician. He used to be invited to play in all sorts of festivals in Brasília and nearby cities when he lived in São Paulo. However, as he had lived in Brasília for a long time, he moved back to Brasília. Suddenly, all of those invitations disappeared. When I talked to him, he said he’d heard from music producers that now he was a local musician, and as such, it wasn’t that appealing to invite him. When he moved back to SP, all those invitations magically popped up. Weird, huh?! And this very afternoon, I had a talk with one of my former teachers whose wife is an artisan. She’d been advised to do something outside Brasília as this would help her work locally. Call me naïve, but I guess the idea of the available local versus the foreign expert is slightly more complicated than I thought.

Shall I do a Shelly here? I hope she doesn’t mind…

Challenge: Find a local #hiddengem and share some thoughts on education, teaching, learning and what have you. How much do you think you can learn?

L1 in the language classroom

Is there room in today’s language classroom for the use of L1? I distinctly remember that when I started studying L2 a long time ago, translation was unthinkable. Teachers had to use L1 and L1 alone. Perhaps that had something to do with Krashen and his Comprehensible Input hypothesis. But then again, perhaps most teachers were simply doing as they were told, no questions asked – something sort of “hey, this is what everybody is doing, so why should we do things differently?” Even though most teachers from bygone times I’ve had a chance to talk to have always shown a solid knowledge of methodology and the ability to think critically, I must admit I don’t believe all teachers were that conscientious of their practices. But I leave this to someone who’s had the chance to work directly with people from different schools, and the more people the better, to answer.

However, coming back to the past 15 years or so, I can say that, unfortunately, there are a whole bunch of “teachers” out there who have very little knowledge of what they’re doing and who are just fine with it. This is not exclusive to the world of ELT – but it’s the world of ELT the one I live in. Hence, the one I’m most comfortable to talk about. Just like I’ve seen many teachers saying they abide by the principles of CLT, but can’t actually say what CLT is nor can they think of any procedure carried out in the classroom that is communicative. Instead, these teachers just walk into a classroom and talk to their students. The thing is, they’re not paying attention to their students’ learning – they’re just talking. I wish these teachers had heard of Dogme so they could perhaps turn things around and realise how much learning can deride from a conversation – but Dogme is not the trend, so they won’t say they teach *ahem* “dogme-itically”.

These days, a lot has been said about Lexis and then all those teachers claim they abide by the principles of both CLT and the Lexical Approach. They don’t even care they haven’t read any of the books – as long as this is the way to go, that’s what they claim they do. And, to finally come back to L1 in the classroom, I still see many teachers who don’t give it any thought and simply reproduce what they’ve been told in training sessions. If they work for a school that says that L1 in the classroom is cool, that’s what they defend. If they start working for a school whose beliefs shun L1 in the classroom, God forbid they ever hear someone says using L1 is OK.

But then, at the risk of provoking some outspoken criticism, I’ll put in my two cents’ worth. I believe there is a time and a place for L1 in the L2 classroom. The problem doesn’t lie in this regard – it lies in the fact that some teachers haven’t been trained to learn how to judiciously use L1 in the classroom. They either overuse it, or punish students for making use of L1. Just like teachers can’t rely on pictures all the time their students ask for the meaning of a word, they can’t take the soft way out and resort to L1 all the time. This is particularly true when it comes to single-word lexical items. However, if a teacher asks his students to, for instance, discuss in groups about a certain topic for 10 minutes, it’s way more sensible to answer a quick vocabulary question that would otherwise have taken 1 minute to be explained by translating it and letting the students carry on the conversation. At this stage, they’re supposed to do the talking, not the listening. It’s not only comprehensible input, but comprehensible output as well.

To sum it up, even though I believe that there’s a time and place for L1 in the classroom, I believe that it should be used as little as possible, and mainly as a last resource during most of the lesson. Actually, I even encourage and expect teacher to use L1 only with students in and out of class. This is particularly important in an EFL setting, I suppose. Learners have to interact with one another and the teacher in the target language, but this doesn’t mean L1 is to be banned. But it takes a teacher who’s knowledgeable and resourceful to know when to use L1 (and all other resources we have at hand) effectively. Unfortunately, it seems teacher education is less and less valued.

Is one born a teacher?

I’ve read a nice article entitled “building a better teacher” and I had a nice talk today that started during our teacher development session and continued shortly after it. Are good teachers born like that? Is it something innate? Or is teaching a skill that can be taught and learned? As a teacher trainer, I guess there’s no other answer I could give than that it is possible for one to learn how to be a good teacher, even if one hasn’t got all it takes when his or her career is just starting. As a matter of fact, I have to believe in it – I myself have been constantly learning how I can hone my teaching in order to better foster learning. I even had the chance to talk to one of my first employers about that, and he actually confirmed to me that my first sample class was a bit of a disaster, but he said that he could see there was potential for training and development. I’m really grateful for having had that chance. I have learned a lot about the tricks of the trade while working there, and I don’t think I would be a teacher these days if it hadn’t been for that job.

Good teachers can be ‘created’, just like good professionals in any other area. Of course there are some people who excel at what they do with immense ease, and maybe aptitude and innateness have got something to do with that. If you take football, for instance, there aren’t many football players like Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Kaká or Ronaldinho in the world. There aren’t many singers whose voice is appreciated by nearly anyone. There aren’t many drivers like Michael Schumacher. These people may have an innate ability and have certainly found what they were supposed to do in life. If you ask them, they’ll say that it’s all the fruits of their labour and that they have to practice as hard as anyone, which, in my opinion, is true. What sets them apart from others, well, that’s something I can’t answer. But the thing is, there are many other very good football players who aren’t that well-known, but have decided to put their back into it and work really hard to be at the top of their game and be acknowledged as very good professionals. And the same is true for all professions, if you ask me.

Teaching is no different. Maybe there is such a thing as people who are cut out to be teachers and will be extremely successful at it with little effort. Others may be just as successful, but will have to work a bit harder at it. It may come across as cliché, but I believe that where there’s a will, there’s a way. Perhaps you will not be the most famous person who’s ever worked in your area, but you may definitely be great at it – whatever this it may be. What are the most important characteristics of a successful language teacher, then? I wouldn’t dare to claim to have an answer, as I don’t think such an answer has been found. This short quote from the article demonstrates it:

When Bill Gates announced recently that his foundation was investing millions in a project to improve teaching quality in the United States, he added a rueful caveat. “Unfortunately, it seems the field doesn’t have a clear view of what characterizes good teaching,” Gates said. “I’m personally very curious.”

However, I’ll allow myself to take a guess and see whether you agree with me or not.

Good language teachers should, regardless of training and development, be good at three things:

1. They should have a good command of the language – being knowledgeable seems to be one of the characteristics good teachers share.

2. They should have good people skills – good teachers seem to know how to talk to their students in a way that engages them. They know when it’s their turn to talk and to listen. Good teachers know that they can only talk when his or her students are listening, and they also know they have to listen and respond to learners.

3. They worry more about the product of their work, i.e. they make sure students are learning – the ultimate aim of lessons is learning, not teaching. Good teachers do what it takes to get the job done They don’t sulk if their it-took-me-3-hours-to-plan activity doesn’t work as planned and adapt easily to ensure learning.

The second item above is the most difficult to ‘train’, as it depends a lot more on the individual than on an external trainer. However, if all three are accompanied by a willingness to keep learning and being able to take criticism, then it’s feasible. Good teachers reflect on what they’ve been doing and are always looking for a better way to help their students learn.

What do you think? Can one learn how to teach, or is one born a teacher?

Why bother?

Why should I know this if I won’t be teaching it to my learners? This is a question often asked by some of the language teachers I’ve recently talked to when discussing about grammar, phonetics and phonology, and different methodologies. Well, in my opinion, there are certain things teachers must know. Teachers are supposed to be knowledgeable in order to guide learners in their own quest of self-discovery. This doesn’t mean I believe teachers should do all the teaching while learners sit passively and simply listen to their teachers – much on the contrary. However, there are a couple of things I think language teachers should know. Here it goes:

1. Teachers should know advanced grammar

Even though I believe grammar shouldn’t be more important than vocabulary or pronunciation in the classroom, it has its importance. The fact that the teacher knows the subject matter well doesn’t mean he is going to give chapter and verse of every little bit of grammar that comes up in a lesson. Nevertheless, the more the teacher knows about grammar, the easier it is for him or her to find a different way to get his or her students to understand that they should have said “I would have read it” instead of  ”I would read”. I believe that English teachers should be able to pick up mistakes and take advantage of correct utterances equally as fast as possible in class – especially the latter. If, on the other hand, the teacher is trying to teach only the grammar and not use it as yet another aspect of language teaching, i.e. if grammar becomes the focus of the lesson instead of yet another aspect of it, then, as Nick said in his post, it’ll confuse students more than it’ll help them.

2. Teachers should know phonetics and phonology

The same thing that applies to grammar is true to pronunciation. I don’t think teachers should bother all their learners with names as fricatives, plosives, soft palate and so on. However, in my view, the teacher who is versed in such matter has an edge over teachers who lack knowledge in the area. It’s much easier to understand what is happening inside the students’ mouth and, consequently, show them what is right and show them the right way to do it. I found that, more often than not, when teachers rely only on sound and drilling, without raising learners’ awareness to the correct position of the mouth, the mistake tends not to be corrected. On the other hand, once learners are shown the correct way to produce the sound, the easier it is for them to repeat it later, when there’s no teacher to correct them. I agree with what Adrian Underhill says, “we should try to make pronunciation physical.” If the teacher knows about manner and place of articulation for individual sounds, for instance, it’s way easier to correct learners.

3. Teachers should learn about language teaching and learning methodology

OK, I’ve said it before and I’m going to repeat it. I do enjoy the principles of Dogme, just as I like the principles of the lexical approach, TBL, and CLT – to name just a few. There’s no magic pill to lose weight, and there’s no one method “to rule them all”. Teachers should be resourceful, and different techniques can be used with different methods. Again, it’s only through knowledge of different learning strategies that a teacher can help students become autonomous and life-long learners. It might even be OK for novice teachers to be trained in this or that method, but as teachers become experienced, they need to keep an open mind and accept that, yes, there may be useful procedures in methods considered dated. It all comes down to the learners you have. If we accept that each learner is unique, why should we believe that A is the best method for all students?

I guess I could compare it to going to the doctor’s. When I see doctor, he or she doesn’t tell me what I have in medical terms, or, if so, I definitely ask for a “translation”. Yet, I expect my doctor to be able to make a diagnosis as fast as possible and treat me just as swiftly. If he isn’t knowledgeable about his or her area of expertise, I’ll probably be running lots and lots of exams – most of them unnecessary ones. Mistakes are part and parcel of learning, but teachers should have a very good idea of what they’re doing to help their learners when they make such mistakes.

Needless to say, this isn’t a comprehensive list. However, I’ve been thinking about these matters as they have been mentioned over and over by teachers I’ve talked to recently.

* The My ELT library series will continue, but I found out that it was preventing me from writing about different things I felt like writing.

My ELT library (part 2)

Part 1 was about methodology books. Now I’ll focus on some other books for each specific area. As I said before, it’s not my intention to come up with a comprehensive list, nor do I mean that these are the only good books there are in the market. It doesn’t mean, either, that these are the books I abide by and shun anything else. Much on the contrary, I’d love to hear some suggestions on books I have not mentioned so I can add to my own library. Besides, we all know there are tons of grammar books in the field of ELT, which would make it impossible to suggest all of them in one single blog post, right?

Books on Grammar and teaching grammar

1. “Practical English Usage“, by Michael Swan. This is one of the most practical books I’ve seen for teachers who need to find an answer when preparing a lesson. It’s very straightforward and easy to follow. It contains lots of examples to help the teacher better visualise the explanations.

2. Scott Thornbury’s “How to teach Grammar“. The book addresses the issues of teaching Grammar and, just like the other books from the “How to…” series, can be used in training sessions with teachers. Quite insightful.

3. Diane Larsen-Freeman’s “Teaching Language: From Grammar to Grammaring” has been a great asset in my training sessions. Larsen-Freeman writes about the 3 dimensions of grammar and explains the importance of addressing grammar from such a perspective. The book is filled with investigation questions, teachers’ anecdotes and questions, which also render it impossible not to read.

4. “The Grammar Book: an ESL/EFL teacher’s course” was written by Marianne Celce-Murcia and Diane Larsen-Freeman. It’s a course for EFL/ESL teachers and it is quite thorough. It brings all sorts of tree diagrams, which might be an inconvenient for some, but, in my humble opinion, is something English teachers should at least be acquainted with. Each chapter end with suggestions for classroom activities which focus on form, meaning, and use of the grammar point of the lesson.

5. If you’re looking for a complete reference book to have at home, I’m actually going to suggest three. I have them at home and they will definitely sort out your questions regarding Grammar. The winners are: “Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English“, a corpus-based grammar packed with graphs with corpus findings; “The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language“, by Huddleston and Pullum; and Quirk’s “A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language“, which was written together with Greenbaum, Leech, and Svartvik.

6. If you’re looking for a more light-hearted way of explaining grammar and its intricacies, but at the same time you don’t want to go as deep as you would with the items mentioned in 5, you should try “Woe is I: the grammarphobe’s guide to better English in plain English“, by Patricia T. O’Conner. It’s a fun read.

7. Finally, if you’re looking for books to give you some practical ideas to use in the classroom, I’ll recommend two: “Teaching Grammar Creatively“, by Gerngross, Puchta and Thornbury – packed with full lesson plans ready to use in the classroom or to be adapted; and Penny Ur’s “Grammar Practice Activities“, which will also give you some ideas when you’ve got your “teachers’ block” and can’t come up with an activity or a different way to engage your learners.

What other books on Grammar or on teaching grammar would you recommend?

My ELT library (part 1)

I’d thought about publishing a list of ELT books I usually recommend to teachers I work with, but I’d never really got to doing it. There are lots of ELT lists of books for teachers on Amazon and other sites that I thought it wouldn’t be exactly helpful. However, after a very brief exchange of tweets with @thieddu and some talks with teachers I know and who have participated in training sessions, I decided it wouldn’t hurt to mention some of the books. This is not meant to be a comprehensive list, and I do believe some readers can actually contribute a book or two.

I’ll start this series with some methodology books.

1. If you’ve been looking for a place to start, and have got little experience or reading, I’d suggest “How to Teach English“, by Jeremy Harmer. The book will cover the basics of teaching and learning, including suggestions for teaching the different skills. It’s also a nice book for teacher trainers depending on the level of your trainees. The Task files a the end of the book give you some food for thought during your training sessions.

2. If you’d like to learn a bit more about the different approaches and methods throughout the history of ELT, I recommend you check “Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching“, by Jack C. Richards and Theodore S. Rodgers. I highly recommend the first few chapters where the authors discuss some key concepts any language teacher should think about – theory of language, theory of language learning, approach, method, design, and procedure.

3. No methodology library would be complete without H. Douglas Brown’s “Teaching by Principles“. The book contains a wealth of information on many different issues in the field of ELT, and it also leads you to a way forward. In addition, the questions for discussions at the end of each chapter are insightful.

4. Another useful book for teacher trainers and teachers interested in learning more about their profession and grow as teachers is Penny Ur’s “A course in Language Teaching“. It also has good questions that will lead to discovery instead of merely showing the way.

5. If you’ve read the first book of this list, or maybe if you’re more experienced and read, Jeremy Harmer’s “The Practice of English Language Teaching” is a good choice. Harmer expands on the topics introduced in his “How to Teach English”, which make the book much more thorough. The videos of recorded classes in the new edition are a great addition to the book.

6. The last book in this post is David Nunan’s “Second Language Teaching & Learning“. Not only does Nunan provide his readers with practical examples, but there are also questions and tasks to be discussed in training courses. One thing that called my attention was the concept maps present at the end of each chapter.

Which books would you add to or remove from the list? I know there are two other books I’d add to the list, but one of them I haven’t read in its entirety yet (yes, shame on me – it’s Jim Scrivener’s “Learning Teaching“) and the other one I still couldn’t get hold of a copy in Brazil (Luke Medding’s and Scott Thornbury’s “Teaching Unplugged“). Nevertheless, these books would “close” the list.

I hope you find this first list useful. Feel free to criticise it. I’ll be continuing this series with books on other areas of ELT soon.