PROGRAM HANDBOOKS - Biola University

Cook School of Intercultural Studies
Applied Linguistics & TESOL Program Handbooks
TESOL RESOURCES FOR GROWING PROFESSIONALS SECTION 5.5
5. For how to teach, have two basic methodology books: Jeremy Harmer’s Practice of
English Language Teaching (Longman) and H. Douglas Brown’s Teaching By Principles
(Longman). If you are a novice teacher, try instead: Don Snow’s More than a Native
Speaker (TESOL) and Jeremy Harmer’s How to Teach English (Longman). I also really
like Tessa Woodward’s Planning Lessons and Courses (Cambridge) for really great advice
about all aspects of teaching. For resources if you’re teaching students other than university
students and educated adults, I recommend:
• Children overseas: Susan Halliwell’s Teaching English in the Primary Classroom
(Longman), W. Scott’s and L. Ytreberg’s Teaching English to Children (Longman),
Slattery & Willis’s English for Primary Teachers (Oxford).
• Children in the U.S.: The More Than Just Surviving Handbook: ESL for Every
Classroom Teacher, published by Peguis books in Winnipeg, Canada.
• Immigrant and refugee adults needing basic ESL and literacy: Teaching Adult Second
Language Learners and Teaching Large Multilevel Classes, both published by
Cambridge.
• Business English: Teaching Business English by Ellis and Johnson (Oxford) or Teach
Business English by S. Donna (Cambridge).
• Literature: Literature and Language Teaching by Lazar (Cambridge).
6. Besides these general resources, there are how-to books on all kinds of specific aspects of
English language teaching: conversation, pronunciation, listening, reading, writing,
grammar, vocabulary, etc. Many books for teachers contain easy to use “recipes” for
classes as well as duplicable activities, games, and supplements to regular classroom texts.
Here are some versatile favorites you can use in many kinds of classes: Carolyn Graham’s
book of jazz chants called Small Talk (Oxford), Nancy Zelman’s Conversation Inspirations
for ESL (Second Edition by Pro Lingua), Penny Ur’s Grammar Practice Activities
(Cambridge), Bruce Marsland’s Lessons from Nothing (Cambridge), and Scott Thornbury’s
How to Teach Vocabulary (Longman). If you’re going to a place with few resources or
you’re training novice teachers, some great books to have are the Oxford Basics: Simple
xxx Activities.
7. It is beyond the scope of this article to list specific classroom texts. Besides, without
knowing the details of what kind of class you’re teaching, it’s impossible to recommend
specific books. That’s why you need the publisher catalogs at hand. But here is a general
orientation to what’s available. Many classroom texts are known as “core” or “basal” and
they come in a series of three to six levels. These are useful for classes which must cover
all the skills, from listening and speaking to reading and writing, and where students may
Date: August 2012 Page 3 of 4