Books for English teachers

[slevlife]

Hi everyone! I'm really interested in finding the best English teaching books and coursebooks, so I've been doing a bunch of research on them lately. Here are a few I'll call out:

Language Awareness

• Grammar for English Language Teachers, 2nd Edition by M. Parrott
• Learner English: A Teacher’s Guide to Interference and Other Problems, 2nd Edition by M. Swan & B. Smith

Teaching Methodology

• Learning Teaching: The Essential Guide to English Language Teaching, 3rd Edition by J. Scrivener
• The Practice of English Language Teaching, 5th Edition by J. Harmer

I've listed a lot more in this long post where I've included mini-reviews of the above, along with 50 additional books categorized by the language subskills they aim to help you teach, and a bunch of modern coursebooks for British and American English. Hopefully this is helpful for some of you!

I'm very interested to hear your favorites as well. What books have helped you most in your English teaching career? What coursebooks have you used in your classrooms, and were they any good?

 

[jutfrank]

For language awareness:

I think Scott Thornbury's About Language is a good book, with very well-designed tasks. I use it a lot in my own teacher training sessions.

Also, Michael Lewis's The English Verb is one book that has changed the way a couple of us here on the forum have thought about and presented ideas related to verbs.

Finally, I think Rosemary Aitken's Teaching Tenses is very well organised and very handy for newly-qualified teachers.

 

[Tdol]

And Michael Swan's Practical English Usage.

 

[Tdol]

But the list does remind me of what I was reading thirty years ago.

 

[slevlife]

Thanks, jutfrank and Tdol!

Practical English Usage and About Language were already on the list, so the validation is helpful. I've added The English Verb and Teaching Tenses. I've also split the grammar section into books for teachers, game/activity books, and self-study books.

 

[bobfily]

Thanks for the recommendations)) I would like to add some books for literary reading. This will help develop a correct understanding of phrasal verbs.

 

[RichardRichieR]

And Michael Swan's Practical English Usage.

This is probably the coolest book for teachers.

 

[emsr2d2]

Thanks for the recommendations.

[STRIKE]))[/STRIKE]

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