Job Discussion Forums

[ndb26]

can anyone recommend a good tefl book that I could read as a guide to teaching tefl, eg how to do lesson plans, good teaching practices etc
Thanks.

[Canuck2112]

I have yet to try it out in a classroom, but "How to teach English" by Jeremy Harmer looks really good. It's very easy to follow; each chapter has a title like "How to teach reading" or "How to plan lessons".

[Gordon]

Jeremy Harmer has another titled How to Teach Grammar. It's more detailed than the previous book and is very practical.

[cabbagehead]

NDB,

the reason that there are so few recommendations so far is, I'd say, because it is virtually impossible to fit what you need to know to teach EFL into a book. Harmer's book is good but it is the tip of the iceberg. If you are a totally new teacher it will be useful. But once you know how to fill out a lesson plan and draw stick figures on the board, you are still going to be challenged by what to put in that lesson plan you know how to write.

Also, it's hard to know what you need as we don't know your particular teaching situation i.e. are you working with adults, kids, preschoolers, the JET programme ?

So my advice would be to check out some of the books that Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press publish in their excellent professional development series. Go for titles like "Teaching Writing" or "Teaching Young learners" ... whatever fits your situation. Each of these books has been written by a specialist and is focussed and in enough depth to give you years of advice. The books also do not suffer from the need to cover all bases that Harmer's book does which, IMHO, waters down some sections so that they are not as useful.

Sure, in the long run, it will cost you a lot more to build a little library of dedicated PD titles re EFL but the payoff in the classroom will be huge.

Check out these links:
Oxford Handbooks for Teachers
http://www.oup.com/elt/global/catalogue/bft/#OxfordHandbooksforLanguageTeachers

Oxford Language Teaching series
http://www.oup.com/elt/global/catalogue/bft/#LanguageTeaching:ASchemeforTeacherEducation

Cambridge Handbooks for Language Teachers
http://publishing.cambridge.org/ge/elt/booksforteachers/26829/

Cambridge Language Teaching LIbrary
http://publishing.cambridge.org/ge/elt/booksforteachers/26831/

or for the real nitty gritty this series in Teacher Education
http://publishing.cambridge.org/ge/elt/booksforteachers/26827/

Hope that helps

[ndb26]

Thanks, your help is much appreciated, I am new to this so will try Jeremy harmers books first but will definitely look into getting some of the oxford press books.