'Pronunciation games ' by M Hancock

[LeighS]

Why is it that EFL books are so expensive? This is on my reading list, but I´m wondering if it´s really worthwile buying. I´ve already spent a small fortune on the 'essential' reading books.
Any thoughts?

[5jj]

I don't know that particular book, but experience of many courses and many 'essential' books has made me very cautious indeed about squandering my limited resources on books that may turn out to have only a page or two of real value.

What course are you taking? If it's a CELTA or Trinity DipTESOL course, then that book (even if it's superb), is not 'essential'.

My personal feeling (and that's all it is) the only two books that you should buy before embarking on a Cert course are Michael Swan's Practical English Usage and either Jim Scrivener's Learning Teaching or Jeremy Harmer's How to Teach English.

[I'm With Stupid]

Yeah, I've used that. It's pretty good. I would hardly describe it as a reading list book though. There's no theory in there, just photocopiable activities. For pronunciation theory, get Sound Foundations by Adrian Underhill. Pronunciation Games is the sort of book you would just hope that your school would have in their resource library, rather than something to have on your own bookshelf (unless you work freelance). In Vietnam, it's legal to photocopy books, so we have loads of copies of pretty much everything if you need me to look anything else up for you.

Another book that works quite well in combination with Pronunciation Games is Ship or Sheep (or the elementary version Tree or Three). That's more of a proper course in pron though, so you use Ship or Sheep for the language, and Pron Games for the activities. The activities in Pronunciation Games are pretty good, because they're very easy to modify for whatever language point you're doing, as long as you have a photocopier and a bit of correction fluid.