This book offers 50 practical ideas for teachers to use for their professional development. The tips cover a wide range of activities that can be carried out individually or in collaboration with others, including self and peer observation, journal writing, on-line forums, classroom research, action research, team teaching, lesson review, materials review, lesson study, mentoring, peer coaching, reading groups, and workshops. The Tips can be used by both novice and more experienced teachers and are intended to provide a basis for teachers to review the current state of their professional learning and to develop and implement goals for their development.

TESOL / ESL Teaching.

Tips for Teaching Listening introduces English language teachers to contemporary research and specific techniques for teaching listening. Topics include listening processes, skills, text types, academic listening, course planning, and assessment. Features: Vignettes in each chapter illustrate authentic learning and teaching experiences. What the teacher should know and What the teacher can do sections link pedagogical research with classroom techniques. Concrete tips in each chapter provide practical suggestions for planning, teaching, and assessing a language class. Activities in chapters and appendices provide classroom ideas for implementing each tip. Photocopiable handouts with example activities from popular listening texts can be used in class with minimal preparation. Glossary provides concise definitions of commonly used terms. Audio CD includes MP3 audio files for select handouts. The Tips for Teaching series (H. Douglas Brown, Series Editor) covers topics of practical classroom-centered interest for English language teachers. Written in clearly comprehensible terms, each book in the series offers soundly conceived practical approaches to classroom instruction that are firmly grounded in current pedagogical research.

Teachers as Course Developers is a book about how language teachers themselves rather than curriculum specialists develop and implement their own courses. It uses a unique case study approach featuring the stories of six teachers who successfully designed their own courses in different settings in Japan, the U.S., and Latin America. The book provides a framework for the processes of course development which any teacher can use in developing his or her own courses. Each chapter highlights a different aspect of the framework based on the particular teacher s approach and examines how the teacher has utilized or departed from the framework in meeting the challenges of a particular situation. Each narrative is followed by a set of tasks and discussion questions. An annotated bibliography is also included.

This easy-to-read book groups methods according to what they have in common, even if separated in time. At the same time, it rehabilitates some lost or forgotten methods, with a view to challenging current orthodoxies, especially with regard to such topics as translation, rote learning, authenticity, and communication. In doing this it aims to unpack, not just the history of methods, but the beliefs that underpin them and the benefits that still might possibly accrue from experimenting with them. Through its inclusion of interesting characters, intriguing anecdotes, and often bizarre techniques, the material is absorbing and engaging.