LEARNING TEACHING by Jim Scrivener

Details of the selected book

Name of the book: LEARNING TEACHING by Jim Scrivener

Name of the editor: Adrian Underhill

Publishing year: 1994

Publishing press: Macmillan Private Limited

Price: Paperback $63.36

About the Author

              Jim became an English teacher as a temporary measure until he could decide what career to choose. His first post was with Voluntary Service Overseas in a rural school in Kenya, and since then he worked as a Lecturer with the British Council in the USSR, as Director of Education at International house Hungary and as Director of Studies of Teacher Training at International House, Hastings. He has run numerous short courses around the world and is a regular conference speaker.

               Jim was leader of the team that designed the EURO language exams. He has written Teaching Grammar (Oxford) and is author of teacher’s books and resource materials for the Straightforward coursebook series. He writes a monthly ‘teaching tips’ column for the Guardian Weekly and onestopenglish.com. He has an MA in Creative Writing but has not yet worked out what he can do with it.

Introduction

               Learning Teaching is a book of ‘Macmillan Books for Teaching’ series. These books are for trainee teachers, practicing teachers or teacher trainers. They help you to develop your skills and confidence, reflect on what you do and why you do it, improve your practice and inform it with t theory and become the best teacher you can be.

               The book written from a humanistic and student-cantered perspective offers practical techniques and ideas for classroom activities, key insights into relevant background theory and ways to apply techniques and insights into your work.

               The author Jim Scrivener is himself a teacher and trainer. He takes a ‘learning as you go’ approach in sharing our experience with you. This book helps us to reflect on ways we can facilitate learning and bring our personal strengths to work.

               The book offers insights from research into language and language learning and suggest ways of using these insights in the classroom.

               This book encourages us to experiment and to develop variety and choice, so that you can understand the how and why of work and develop confidence in our own teaching and in our ability to respond creatively to new situations.

 

Analysis

 

            The book Learning Teaching is an essential guide for the first years as a language teacher and an invaluable resource for teacher training courses. The author is a teacher with many years of experience who has worked in many countries and currently works as Director of Education for a branch of a chain of language schools.

               The book is unusual because it has many distinct parts to it. There are technical parts on the theory of how to teach – how to arrange your classroom, the nuts and bolts of lesson planning, tests and exams – but there are also some much more practical chapters on ideas for fillers and games, with some photocopiable resources for use in class, and there's also a brief introduction to the parts of speech, for those teachers who can't quite remember the difference between an adjective and an adverb.

               The book discusses a lot of ideas we may be already familiar with from our course, but usefully includes the proper names for things. It is a chicken and egg thing to know which came first, this book or the widely used methods of teaching it discusses, but several chapters are word for word what we learn in some of the input sessions, and therefore serve as a useful, permanent reminder.

               The book is clearly written by someone familiar with the EFL classroom, and realistic about demands placed on teachers working in this arena. This book mentions 'proper' lesson plans but it also details some more user-friendly alternatives such as flow charts or brief running orders, which make much more efficient use of planning time. The section on planning courses should be appreciated. Similarly, section on conversation classes  is highly beneficial.

               This book is accessible and easy to read, as well as interesting. It is a textbook, but it is not boring, and the anecdotes keep it interesting.

               The book contains a section on English for Special Purposes, a reference guide at the back split into two sections, key terminology, and abbreviations and also many other important sections on English language teaching.

               On the whole the book is well organised with thorough contents and index, plus an additional 'help index', so it is easy to find the topic you are looking for. The book has many uses – it could be read in lieu of doing a course and get all the theory necessary. We could use it when we are stuck for inspiration or need a new game for a class who are flagging. However, we use it, I guess learning teaching from a book is possible after all.

 

Conclusion

                Learning Teaching has been one of the most successful guides to English since it was first published in 1994. Its no-nonsense approach has made it a superb teaching textbook for initial training courses, and also an essential handbook for practising ELT teachers.

                This is a book for language teachers. Mostly it is a guide to methodology. The book gives instructions on what might work in the classroom. Learning Teaching can help you learn to teach in more effective ways. It is about a kind of teaching where you are also learning. However, it is not a book about the right way to teach. The author gives a toolkit of possibilities from which we can take those ideas and options that we find most useful.

References

 

 

·     Scrivener Jim – Learning Teaching- 3^rd edition

·     www.goodreads.com/book/show/25155487-learning-teaching