Learning Teaching by Jim Scrivener [Second Edition]

Subtitle: A Guidebook for English Language Teachers

(Book Review)

Why I Read This Book

            I bought this book because it was the required reading for the CELTA (W) course I did 2 years ago.

            We were expected to read the entire book for the course, but, as most people do with textbooks, I did not read it cover to cover.  I read the parts of the book I needed to read for specific assignments, and the rest I just skimmed over.  (In my defense, I was very busy that year because I was also working on my Master’s degree.)

            However, the parts of the book I did read impressed me.  It seemed to be very practical, useful advice, written in a clear and understandable way.  And so I hung onto the book, and decided at some point in the future I probably should read it in more detail.

            Textbooks, even well written textbooks, don’t usually make for exciting reading, but eventually I decided that for my own professional development I was going to set aside a little bit of time at work everyday to read about 10 pages or so of this book until I worked my way through it. 

            Now that I’ve finished the whole book cover-to-cover, I’ll write a brief review of it here.

The Review

          Obviously this is not pleasure reading, and obviously this book is only intended for a select audience—those of us who make our living teaching English.

            If you fall within that select audience, however, this is a great book to read.

            For me much of the appeal of this book is that the author never talks down to his audience.  He states repeatedly that he is not going to tell you the “correct” way to teach or not to teach, he is just going to give you a number of tools that you can use or not use as you see fit.

            This friendly, non-judgmental tone makes the book very accessible.

            I also found the book full of very useful information.

            The book is designed for beginning teachers, and so some of the more classic TESOL activities he recommends I was already familiar with.

            But for every familiar activity I encountered in this book, there were at least two activities that were completely new.  So I came out of this book with a ton of new ideas for my classes.

            (It’s a pity human memory is so limited, because I read many more great activities than I can possibly store in my brain.  Which just means I’m going to have to re-read this book at some point, I guess.)

           

            In the second edition, the appendix of photocopiable classroom resources are also great.  

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Learning Teaching by Jim Scrivener [Second Edition]: Book Review (Scripted)