How to Teach English

How to Teach...

by Jeremy Harmer

*How to Teach English provides practical coverage of specific methods, lesson planning, using textbooks and coping with the unexpected! *Includes a clear introduction to describing language so that you can understand technical words relating to grammar and pronunciation *Ideal for experienced and inexperienced teachers and CELTA candidates

Genres: Teaching, Nonfiction, Education, Language, Reference, Academic, Textbooks

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[Maud · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are someone with a ton of experience teaching English and you are looking to improve your craft, this is NOT the book for you.

If you are a student hoping to be a teacher one day or a teacher who has just started, this book could be a great read for you. As the synopsis tells you, it gives practical introductory information within a clear theoretical framework. A ton of things are discussed in short, easy to read sections. The author only talks about the important bits, there is no useless information in this one. Some things you might already know, how could you not after studying to get your degree? But nonetheless, everything is important and it never hurts to refresh things.

If you are a new teacher and you are looking for a book that globally discusses all the important things of teaching English, pick this one up.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well written but short introduction to the field of English language teaching. I was glad I read this book, but after reading LEARING TEACHING by Jim Scrivener, this didn't add much informtation. The one section that was outstanding however, was the chapter on how to describe language. Harmer manages to cover the basic points of English grammar in a very concise way. Since understanding and explaining grammar is a challenging part of teaching ESL, this chapter alone is worth the price of the book.

[Jake · Rating 2 out of 5]

3E, with DVD. Updated and much improved. Written by a thoughtful person, so actually readable. Task File activities in the back a big plus. General overview of teaching EFL and a solid choice for getting started, taking the Celta course, etc. Worth 4 stars.


Earlier editions: Avoid like the plague. Total snooze fest: overly broad topic that barely scratches the surface; writing style lacks any character, so it feels like you're reading an endless number of Wikipedia entries; assumes students are all highly to fairly motivated go-getters.

My first reading many years ago, I gave it 3. Upon rereading, I'm giving it a generous 2.

Read and study only if you've never set foot in an EFL classroom or you just don't know what the hell you're doing.

[Reg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Necessarily tedious. Great information and relatively easy to read. A good read and useful read, but not exactly a fun ride (just because I see the merit doesn't mean I didn't want to pull my hair out for large chunks of this).

Would recommend for prospective ESL/TEFL/etc teachers and no one else (omg, you'd be bored to tears, why would you do that to yourself?)

I'm glad I read it. I'm also glad it's over.

[Miranda · Rating 5 out of 5]

After teaching English as a Second Language for the past four years, I thought it was high time to read about all of the things I was doing wrong. I really appreciated Harmer's voice and knowledge of language learning. I have a more well-rounded understanding of language teaching with plenty more ideas to work with now. This was a wonderful book to read.

[Narmin Hajizada · Rating 2 out of 5]

One teacher cannot apply all of this in the classroom: her brain may explode! Though it was okay for me to read all the instructions and guides in this book and its language was quite understandable, but how I felt when I wanted to apply them on practice! I was totally mixed, my students were totally mixed with the weird attitude of their teacher — class was stupefied.

My conclusion: teaching is probably the inborn quality. No matter how much you will be reading about correct teaching, it will never replace the real-life learning from your own experience. Let it go with its own flow instead of behaving like robots in order to achieve this correctness. Students appreciate teacher's natural and sincere conduct more than her teaching's ideality.

So... Relax!

[Csabi Berger · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent guide to everyone who is new in the field of English language teaching. It gives you a glimpes of all the areas and the amount of examples and appendices help you develop. I am positive I will use this book whenever I want to check something or look for additional resources because there is a long list of works to be consulted categorised into the theme of each chapter.

[liza h · Rating 1 out of 5]

bo-ring..,,

[terka · Rating 2 out of 5]

A good starting point for someone who has absolutely no clue how to teach English and needs even the most basic and obvious things explained. The author tends to either not explain things enough or to explain obvious things way too much. Weird.

Half of the book is just "task files" which are mostly useless.

Bafflingly, an entire chapter is dedicated to explaining English grammar structures, tenses... I say explaining, but the author's explanations are just listing things and stating stuff without any real depth. And why "bafflingly"? Because anyone looking to teach English would already know all those things. If you don't know what past simple is, then, well... you have bigger issues to work on before you step in front of a class.

Obviously, I am not a native speaker. I teach English for a living nonetheless and I think this gives me a level of insight the author lacks - I have been a student learning English, I know how language acquisition works. The author didn't touch on that at all. In fact, he seemed to be very lacking in this regard, since as part of intermediate speaking activity he suggested things that no intermediate student would have enough vocabulary for (too abstract, argumentative etc.).

Anyways - I was clearly not the intended audience, with my work experience and education (linguistics, not just teaching) this book didn't give me anything. But a complete beginner might find some use for this.

[Jeje · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great resource for all English teachers.

[Zahra Louridi · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book was very informative, but I had to skip some pages and chapters either because I already know about the given info, or because of the too much detail in there. But in general, I liked the book specially because it makes you imagining yourself being in the classroom situation. The other reason why I had to skip is because I am preparing for the teaching exam here in Morocco so wish me luck, coz I really want to become a teacher.

[Samar Almossa]

I will add it later on

[Abeer Mohamad · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unless as a reader needs more Practical Explanations, it indulges the reader into the mood of teaching .
It's Excellent (y)

[J · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a textbook for a TESOL class I took. The first red flags came up in the first chapter when the author casually mentioned NLP as if it was a real thing and not a pseudoscience. He also entirely conflated it with the VAK model of education, which is another idea that has been debunked by decades of educational research yet still lingers on. Checking the glossary, his definition of NLP is actually a definition of the VAK model, though he credits the inventors of NLP for it. Even within the pseudoscience that is NLP, the pseudoscience of the VAK model is not prevalent. This type of error, right in the first chapter, made me seriously doubt the validity of this book.

Then, still in the first chapter, he gives the wrong definition of intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation! He writes, "[This is] extrinsic motivation, the motivation that students bring into the classroom from outside. Intrinsic motivation, on the other hand, is the kind of motivation that is generated by what happens inside the classroom." This is such a core and crucial concept in education that to mischaracterize it demonstrates either a lack of understanding or a lack of value in the subject he is writing about.

Sloppy language like this does not belong in a book about teaching language. These errors, especially since they are right from start, are a disgrace.

Later, when he wrote about lesson plans, many of the examples he gave were both woefully inadequate and very unrealistic. He barely even mentioned objectives and the only examples he gave were not actually objectives (and did not make sense in any educational context). In the chapter about testing, he completely neglected to mention the existence of formative assessments (another unforgivable omission in a book about teaching).

On the whole, I would not recommend this book to anyone, including teachers who are just starting out. When I think back to my own beginnings as a teacher, applying things from this book would have made me worse most of the time. There are a few useful lists of types of activities for some aspects of English teaching, so I generously gave this two stars, but it feels like a stretch.

[Alejo Alvarez || babblewithale · Rating 4 out of 5]

Starting my CELTA programme soon, wish me luck y'all 🙏

For anyone who's studied Linguisitcs or has taken any certification programme in teaching English that isn't as intense as CELTA or TOFL, this book will be a really good refresher!

While I think this was a great book to read to catch me up on all these topics, I kinda wish it went into a little more detail on the most prominent and less frequently used methodologies in teaching English in its history; I remember learning about different methodologies during my undergrad, and didn't see them mentioned here, so it would have been nice to relearn those again

And the book does a great job of including different examples of exercise you can use for teaching the Big 4 aspects of English (Reading, Writing, Listening, and Speaking); I just wish some of examples included detailed exercises to use with elementary learners rather than mainly intermediate learners, but it will still pretty comprehensive!

(Side Note: while I believe it may have already been insinuated, this was required reading for my CELTA programme, so it's definitely valuable reading for anyone who wants to learn the theory if they don't want to take the whole course itself 🙌)

[Maya · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really good book for beginners. It goes over the theory of teaching, and if you have no idea what you’re doing then it can be really helpful, but if you’re more hands-on than theoretical then this isn’t the book for you. Another problem is that this book is really idealistic and assumes that whatever it’s suggesting will probably work. That definitely isn’t the case.

All in all, boring read, but you’ll suffer through it because you have to. :)

p.s.: I may have neglected the last chapters a little bit.

[Shahla hajatnia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every time I read a book on teaching, I regret not having found it sooner! The funny thing is that because I had not majored in "teaching" in university, I have always felt the need to study the materials more, but it never seems to be enough. There is still more to think about, implement, and learn for different classes and students. All throughout this book, I was thinking that I could have really used all this information during my CELTA training and why I hadn't read it sooner...

[Hollie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started this book earlier this year as a way to fill desk warming time. I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of useful information crammed into a relatively short book. As a first-time teacher, I was really grateful for some of the advice. Although, like most educational books, it did err on being boring. However, it feels like a necessary monotony to be an effective teacher.

3.5

[Tatyana · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish I had read this book before I started teaching, a few years ago. I did not learn a lot of new information but it was interesting to compare my techniques with the ones described in the book.
Must-read for beginners in this field.

[Reihane · Rating 5 out of 5]

For thise seeking a good starting point to begin with reading about the basics of teaching English this is the best first book to read. Apart from a comprehensive introduction to the necessary concepts in teaching it offers some easy-to-understand guidelines and some practical examples.

[Rim Khiari · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best ELT books, full of ' Magic moments' of learning.

[Sandi Medina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Used with online TEFL course

[Atimzd]

Easily makes an image of a class that you can imagine yourself insidr

[Amir · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very general and not practical.

[Constantine]

2 copies

[Shirley · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a great book! It is very clean and concise. It goes straight to the methods for the different types of classrooms.

[Teacher Henry · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are an English Teacher you must read this book

[Mihaela Mureșan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best book ever read on teaching :)

[Isabela Crisologo]

Hello!

[Roxana]

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh *non stop screaming*