Reviews
The Practice of English Language Teaching
J. Harmer
First Edition Longman 1983, 252 pp.
isbn: 0 582 74612 4
Second Edition Longman 1991, 296 pp.
isbn: 0 582 04656 4
Third Edition Pearson Education 2001, 370 pp.,
£16.95
isbn: 0 582 40385 5
1. Revisiting the first and second editions
The first edition of Harmer’s The Practice of English
Language Teaching was published 20 years ago. It
quickly and deservedly became a much-used and
popular teacher training text on pre-service
courses, and a training guide for tutors. Its virtues
included comprehensiveness of content, clarity of
explanation, a wealth of illustration in the author’s
own examples and those taken for analysis from
contemporary coursebooks and, not least, a
confidence of style deriving from the author’s rich
experience as a teacher trainer.
The Preface to the first edition implied as audience
‘the teacher in training or the teacher recently
embarked on a career in ELT ’ and it aimed, for
these categories of teacher, to ‘draw together many
of the theoretical insights of recent years’ and to
put these ‘at the service of a broad theoretical
approach, the balanced activities approach’. The
book did admirably through a three-part
discussion. Part A made accessible to novice
teachers key aspects of theory, looking in turn at
learners, at language, at curriculum, and at
language learning. Part B looked at the practice of
teaching, focusing largely on grammar and skills,
using the traditional division into receptive and
productive skills. Part C looked at the planning and
management of learning with sections on the
teacher’s roles, student groupings, discipline, and
lesson planning. There was no more
comprehensive book at the time which integrated
ELT Journal Volume 57/4 October 2003 © Oxford University
principle and practice in such useful and
appropriate ways for pre-service teachers. It
became an acclaimed and invaluable resource for
teachers and teacher trainers, and with a second
edition, a classic in the field. A younger colleague of
mine describes it as his introduction to TEFL , and
this must be true for many.
The second edition was published in 1991, with
audience and aims unchanged, and essentially the
same structure, but 44 pages longer. The additional
length allowed for inclusion of content which
reflected developing concerns within the previous
decade. Discourse and vocabulary found a place in
the consideration of language and in aspects of
curriculum design. Task-based learning,
humanistic approaches, and self-direction were
given space in the consideration of learning. A new
chapter was devoted to the teaching of vocabulary,
and readers also benefited from the appropriate, if
brief, mention of learner training, experiential
learning through projects, and discovery
techniques in teaching grammar.
2. Reviewing the third edition
The new edition is introduced as completely
revised and updated, and the Preface presents
several reasons for this, which predictably link to
changes within the field of ELT and, in e¤ect,
constitute the aims of the book. They thereby
provide a framework for review. It seems to be a
seven-point framework, and can be set out as:
1. changes in technology: the use of computers
and the Internet, and the development of
computer corpora
2. new areas of research and innovation
3. modifications in attitudes to language study,
with serious attempts to improve classroom
procedures
4. a growing realization that methodology needs to
be culture-specific
5. debate on the role of English in the modern
world
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welcome 401
6. acknowledgement that teacher development is a
key to the quality of student experience
7. the need to update and look with a fresh eye at
familiar topics.
2.1 Meeting the challenge of internal aims
In order to address these challenges, the third
edition follows a new format comprising nine parts,
in contrast to the three parts of the earlier editions.
In Part 1 the first chapter addresses point 5 above,
and gives an account of where English fits into the
world, dealing succinctly with issues of cultural
imperialism, language variety, and appropriate
models. These key issues of globalization provide
an appropriate precursor to a second chapter on
describing language which addresses points 1 and
2 above. New sections here introduce the grammar
of spoken English, the role of corpora in extending
our understanding of vocabulary, and recent
research on lexical phrases. The chapter provides
an up-to-date, refined, summary of exactly what it is
that learners need to learn when they set out on the
task of learning the English language.
Part 2 describes learners and teachers, the former
receiving more attention than previously,
particularly with regard to our growing knowledge
of learning styles, the e¤ect of individual
di¤erences, and di¤erent motivations. I would have
hoped for a little more on task motivation, given
that teachers can make a di¤erence there. Chapter
4, ‘Describing Teachers’, is a useful introduction to
those who have not experimented with a wide
range of roles in their classrooms, though I have to
confess to some disappointment that the author’s
style, which though fluent, lucid, and accessible as
always, slips into the modal verbs of prescription.
The rest of the book keeps to a style which is more
neutral, objective, and analytical.
Part 3 moves into theories, methods, and
techniques, starting with some key background
issues such as noticing and discovery learning,
reviewing a range of approaches and procedures
for the classroom, and ending with issues of
feedback in accuracy and fluency work. Points 2, 3,
and 4 in the framework above are admirably
confronted here, though I will take up some
reservations later.
Part 4 reviews key principles and issues in the
management of students and equipment—an odd
mixture, given that video is treated separately later
in the ‘skills’ section. Discussion of classroom
management is where I felt that familiar topics
were being treated with a fresh eye (point 7 above).
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Di¤erent student groupings are handled
systematically with lists of advantages and
disadvantages of pair work, group work, etc.,
though some reflections from students and
teachers on their own experiences would have
provided lively illustration. The expanded section
on problem behaviour is especially welcome. Even
very experienced teachers often want to discuss
this aspect of classroom management. It is an area
in which ELT seems to isolate itself from
mainstream education where discussion on
disruptive behaviour exists, and could provide
bridges into ELT literature. The management of
equipment is handled in an equally systematic way,
and discussion of the role of computers is followed
by very useful references to literature on computer
technology, and how teachers can make use of it.
Parts 5, 6, and 7 cover the traditional content of a
handbook, teaching grammar, vocabulary, receptive
skills, and productive skills, and the planning of
learning in lessons and courses. All of these
contain a judicious selection of information and
discussion on matters of current concern, for
example, the management of interaction and the
role of extensive reading/listening. A new chapter
on researching language brings together ideas for
encouraging students to exploit a range of
resources, including language corpora, and will
provide teachers with interesting ideas for
innovation. Part 8 is an accessible introduction to
testing students. There are several positive features
about these chapters. They include a focus on what
learners bring with them to the process of learning,
and how teachers can build on their existing skills
and knowledge. This will certainly help teachers to
be more aware of what they are asking their
students to do. The link between learner needs and
teacher response in the sequencing of activities is
powerfully made. And there is material in these
chapters for more recently qualified students
through to the more experienced, even in the
chapter on lesson planning.
Part 9, entitled ‘Looking Further’, which includes
discussion of learner autonomy and teacher
development, deals with point 6 in the framework
above. This, unfortunately, is the only part of the
book about which I had serious reservations.
Teacher development is a diªcult subject to
condense into a few well-chosen principles and
examples. Action research, for example, deserves a
consideration of the tension experienced by the
teacher–researcher (Baumann 1996) and the need
for some training in procedures such as interviews
and questionnaire design for these to be e¤ective.
reviews welcome
The space might have been better devoted to
greater depth of explanation or illustration in other
chapters.
It also struck an odd note with me that I should
come to learner autonomy at the end of the book,
when earlier chapters made reference to
procedures which aim to develop it, such as
discovery learning, researching language, and
extensive listening. Perhaps the fourth edition
could put something more substantial near the
beginning of the book, and create an ongoing
theme throughout the chapters on learner training
and the development of autonomy.
However, reading the new edition was a hugely
enjoyable experience, and I have few reservations.
It will give teachers the reassuring sense that they
are being taken through the key issues by a
supportive colleague. It has the strengths of the
earlier editions, i.e. principled common sense in its
advice, clarity of explanation, a reader-friendly style,
a contemporary position with careful selection of
content, a well-ordered structure, and an
impressive comprehensiveness. I chose 20 topics
to look up, and found clear and concise
information on all but one—critical language
pedagogy. So there will be something to look
forward to in the fourth edition. There is ample
evidence that the book addresses the points it sets
out to confront in the Preface, and meets the
challenges of new ideas, new technology, and new
concerns. This is done within a coherent framework
which allows for discussion of the existing body of
knowledge within ELT , the received wisdom of the
profession, an important element in what
Widdowson (1990) has called ‘the principled
development of pedagogic thinking’. However, in
making interesting links within that framework,
such as the use of music, or student use of
language corpora, the book also encourages
creativity.
2.2 Meeting the needs of in-service teachers
Oddly, it is not until the end of the Preface that the
reader is given the intended audience for the book,
and discovers that this has changed radically from
that of the earlier editions. This third edition is
aimed at ‘practising teachers and those studying on
in-service programmes and postgraduate courses’.
So I found myself reading with quite a di¤erent set
of expectations from those with which I
approached the earlier versions. In fact, I was, and
remain grateful to the author for the opportunity to
revisit a long-standing internal dialogue and
recurrent discussion with colleagues about the
Reviews
ideal characteristics of a handbook for in-service
teacher education. It is a debate complicated by the
diªculty of defining the ‘practising, in-service
teacher’. This is a loose category which covers
widely di¤ering cultural backgrounds, institutions,
systems, and career experiences. Needs can di¤er
from purely self-generated development to
institutionally funded academic study on long
courses. As I read I found myself slipping into the
shoes of one or another in-service teacher with
whom I currently work, trying to view the content
through their eyes.
So, having reviewed some aspects of the book in
terms of its own implied aims, it would also be
useful to consider what characteristics a teacher
educator would be looking for in a book to
recommend for individual reading, to serve as a
reference for the working teacher’s bookshelf or to
use as a class text on in-service courses. I would
like to take five possible principles which could
usefully provide appropriate review criteria, and
judge the book against these.
A key principle one might look for is that the author
moves from the ‘approach’ of the earlier editions to
a broader perspective of ‘approaches’. This is not
to suggest that the style of the earlier versions was
dogmatic, but that the content was judiciously
selected to present a unified view of what
constitutes e¤ective practice. In contrast, a book
for working professionals or teacher education
courses would hopefully view ELT as a field in which
competing paradigms exist, and would raise
awareness of various solutions available for ‘the
sorts of problems that the professional may be
asked to solve’ (Kuhn 1963). The third edition
certainly holds to this principle in important
respects. Chapter 6 contains good examples. The
PPP procedure is carefully contrasted with others;
Scrivener’s ARC , Lewis’s OHE , McCarthy and
Carter’s III , and Harmer’s own ESA . The same
chapter also gives comment on Community
Language Learning, Silent Way, Suggestopaedia,
and Total Physical Response, as well as
Communicative Language Teaching, Task-based
Learning, and The Lexical Approach. All of these
accounts are accompanied by notes on further
reading, and some contain useful cross-referencing
to practical tasks in other chapters which
demonstrate the principles discussed. However, as
I read Chapter 6 I began to appreciate a substantial
di¤erence in this edition: that it provides the
breadth and comprehensiveness of a compendium
but, in doing so, loses the highly illustrative
presentation of the earlier editions. Breadth of
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content versus depth of discussion and illustration
is an issue for all teachers’ handbooks, and the
author must have had some very diªcult choices.
The solution chosen—to go for breadth and to
point the way towards further literature—is an
understandable one, but there are risks. One is
that, without further explanation or example in the
form of tasks or lesson plans, it will be hard for
teachers to appreciate significant di¤erences. And
without a more developed critical perspective, it is
diªcult for teachers to appreciate the extent of
influence of each method/procedure, any links
between them, and the degree to which they are
considered mainstream or alternative. The author
is generally careful in this edition not to impose his
own views, but this chapter in particular would
benefit from a more critical approach.
The issue of illustration just mentioned suggests
another expectation we might have of a book for in-
service education, namely that it provides data, in
the form of lesson plans, coursebook materials,
classroom transcripts, teachers’ reflections, learner
feedback, etc. Teacher educators will be glad that
the first two are provided throughout, though not in
such large measure as in the earlier editions. For
example, if we take the topic of reading, the 1982
version presented 19 practical examples, the 1991
edition 17, and this 2001 edition 7. Perhaps the
implicit rationale of the author in 1982 was that
such examples had to be garnered from a restricted
number of more progressive textbooks, whereas
now we might assume that working teachers
constantly encounter examples of good practice,
such as reading activities or authenticity of task in
relation to text. But is this true? In my own
experience it is not true for many teachers on
postgraduate courses in the UK and elsewhere,
who come from state education systems where the
method is grammar-translation and the text is a
vehicle for language study. While such teachers will
appreciate the level of discussion found in this
edition, they would probably also appreciate further
illustration and analysis. A third expectation,
especially for those involved in award-bearing
‘academic’ postgraduate courses for teachers, is
that a handbook points teachers in the direction of
the research studies and educational thinking
which underlie practice. On such courses it tends
to be a mark of scholarship that teachers appreciate
the development of ideas through successive
stages of research, thinking, and experience. In this
third edition there is, indeed, constant reference to
the literature. There is also excellent end matter to
each chapter, categorizing and detailing further
reading, including useful web sites.
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However, it may be of concern to some potential
users that it is literature which contains synthesis
of ideas, albeit in specialist areas, rather than
original research studies or educational treatises.
Presumably this is because both the purpose and
emphasis of the book is practical. The references
for process writing, for example, are to White and
Arndt, Tribble, Porte, and Ur (all high quality
discussions) but not to Flower and Hayes, Perl,
Emig, or Raimes, to mention just a few originators
of ideas. For learner strategies and learner
autonomy some key primary sources, such as
Holec, Freire, Knowles, Chamot, and O’Malley are
missing. For some audiences, lack of primary
sources will not matter; for others it will.
A fourth criterion for an e¤ective in-service
handbook might be that it encourages teachers to
interpret educational theory in the context of their
own classrooms and institutions, and that
attention is paid to notions of appropriate
methodology and context sensitivity. It is
therefore good to read not only about the role of
cultural assumptions in our perceptions of
learning behaviour in Chapter 3, but also about
methods and culture in Chapter 6, where the
point is made that decision-making is only
e¤ective if it is in line with local values, needs,
conditions, and resources. Perhaps this could
have been followed through with greater
acknowledgement of less privileged conditions
throughout the chapters.
All of the above principles might hopefully result in
a book for in-service teachers which encourages
reflective thinking in the sense originally described
by Dewey (1933) as ‘an act of searching, hunting,
inquiring, to find material’ that will help to resolve
the doubts and perplexities we have in our
professional practice. The wealth of information,
the data provided by lesson plans and learner
materials give teachers opportunities for
comparison with their own experiences and for
‘articulating, examining, and revising their
assumptions’ (Ramani 1987). A particular strength
of the third edition is the set of tasks to follow up
the content of each chapter. These are of various
types, mainly to do with materials evaluation or
adaptation, and the design of lesson sequences
and activities. They could perhaps be
supplemented by more of the ‘enquiry’ type,
encouraging teachers to find out, through simple
procedures like tape recording, exactly what is
going on in their classrooms, and focusing on
learner responses in their own professional
context. They are placed as end matter to the book,
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and I hope they are not lost there as a resource to
the reader.
In summary, whether teachers dip into this book to
follow the threads of a particular issue or topic, or
whether they read it from cover to cover, they will
find it a useful, well-resourced discussion of ELT
practice. The new edition of The Practice of English
Language Teaching not only fulfils the aims implied
in its Preface, but also fits to a large extent the
criteria for an in-service handbook one might set
externally as a teacher educator. A review usually
discusses strengths and then lists criticisms. I’m
not sure that ‘criticism’ is the appropriate word for
some of the points I’ve made. It is simply that the
book has a set of characteristics which teacher
educators will need to match appropriately to the
existing knowledge and experience of teachers, and
the reasons for their reading. Individual teachers
will browse and be self-selecting. Teacher educators
will need to be discerning in their judgement of
who the new edition is now best suited to. The
book will undoubtedly continue its strong
contribution to the ELT profession, but to di¤erent
audiences in di¤erent ways.
References
Baumann, J. 1996. ‘Conflict or compatibility in
classroom enquiry: one teacher’s struggle to
balance teaching and research’. Educational
Researcher 25/7: 29–36.
Dewey, J. 1933. How we think: A restatement of the
relation of reflective thinking to the educative process.
Boston: D. C. Heath.
Kuhn T. 1963 ‘The function of dogma in scientific
research’ in A. C. Crombie (ed.). Scientific Change.
London: Heinemann.
Ramani, E. 1987. ‘Theorizing from the classroom’.
ELT Journal 41/1: 3–11.
Widdowson, H. G. 1990. Aspects of Language
Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
The reviewer
Tricia Hedge is a Senior Lecturer in the Centre for
English Language Teacher Education at the
University of Warwick. She is course leader for the
Doctorate in Education, and teaches Applied
Linguistics, ELT Professional Practice, and
Educational Management on MA programmes,
and short courses for teachers. Her main interests
are in teacher education, curriculum design, and
the teaching of reading and writing. Her
publications include Using Readers in Language
Teaching (Macmillan), Writing (Oxford University
Press), Power, Pedagogy, and Practice (Oxford
Reviews
University Press, co-edited with Norman Whitney),
and Teaching and Learning in the Language
Classroom (Oxford University Press).
Email: P.A.Hedge@warwick.ac.uk
Humanising Your Coursebook
M. Rinvolucri
First Person Publishing/English Teaching
Professional, DELTA Publishing 2002 96 pp., £13.25
isbn: 0 954198 60 3
When I get a new textbook I am as excited as my
students are at the beginning of every new school
year. Usually I spend part of my summer holidays
reading the new textbook, digesting the teacher’s
book, listening to the tapes, or watching videotapes
and doing exercises myself. It is so exciting! I try to
imagine how the activities will work, speculate
about whether the students will accept a particular
task or not, and about whether the materials really
take my students to where I want them to be. But
this enthusiasm of mine, and that of my students,
tends to get less and less by the end of the school
year.
Why? It’s diªcult to say. Maybe partly because a
textbook that might at first seem interesting and
intriguing eventually gets too familiar and
unexciting. For me, no matter how good a textbook
is, after I have taught it twice or three times, I
definitely start feeling more and more bored—I
know the texts by heart, I know all the answers, and
moreover, I even know the mistakes my students
will make. This is one of the issues expressed by
teachers at many teacher-training seminars: they
feel that they have squeezed the textbook dry, and it
has less and less to o¤er. Besides that, there is an
additional danger of losing contact with the
students, and just teaching the textbook.
No wonder, then, that I get through with my
textbook far ahead of the end of the year, and still
see that my students’ language skills and
knowledge are poor. All this leads me to self-doubt,
frustration, and burnout. And at this point, what I
really need is: ideas and yet more ideas that I can
use in order to get in touch with my students again,
survive, and escape the routine. Mario Rinvolucri’s
new book is one that can give you new ideas and
perspectives. An additional bonus of this book is
getting your creative juices flowing—you are
provided with an activity and variations, and all of a
sudden you see that there is much more in the
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