How to Teach English

In this video, I review the book, "How to Teach English," by Jeremy Harmer (Longman, Pearson Education). 2005 (First published in 1998.)

  

Hello, my name is Steven Starry from MadridTeacher.com and I’m going to review this book for teachers of English who are just starting out in their careers. This book is by Jeremy Harmer and is titled “How to Teach English.” It’s published by Longman, or Pearson Education. My main objective is to help give you an idea of whether you’d like to read this book or not in under 10 minutes (sorry for rushing).

I do think it’s an excellent idea for an English teacher who is new to the business to read this book before you even start teaching or doing a TEFL course. And maybe the best way to explain why is to start at the end in the final chapter titled, “What if?” This chapter describes what some of the most frequent problems are in classes in a fairly basic way. Basically, it talks a little about what to do when you have any of a few different problems pop up during your courses. These problems include dealing with mixed-levels and abilities, very large groups, students continuously speaking in their own language, uncooperative students, students not wanting to talk, students not understanding the listening tape and students finishing early before the others in the class.

Now, these little problems aren’t uncommon, but the root cause of a teacher having any of these problems will often simply be poor preparation in the first place. An ounce of prevention will probably save you a lot of hassles. This book is full of a lot of practical advice on how to handle a variety of situations including the main problem itself, standing up unprepared in front of a class of students and asking yourself, “now what?”

Now, the first four chapters of the book start off by describing the general culture of language learning and teaching. This is where you learn how to “talk the talk,” which makes students, bosses and fellow teachers think we actually know what we’re talking about.

The first chapter talks about what students expect of us as English teachers. It’s worthwhile to take some time out to think a few of these easier concepts through before you get started in English teaching because it will make a difference. When you’re in the thick of it on your first job and you’re getting hit from all sides with all sorts of problems at once, you’ll probably appreciate having done so.

A few basic ideas developed here are “what is a good teacher?,” “how should you talk to your students?,” (giving instructions, etc.) “how much should you talk to your students?,” “what does a good lesson consist of?,” and “how important is it to stick to your lesson plan?” Introduced here are the very important ideas of developing a rapport with your students, or of having an affinity with your students, or even of having empathy for your students. The main idea is to focus on the students and give them what they want, which usually is to help them “learn English.”

Chapter 2 talks about different factors, like “motivation,” “doing homework,” and so on, which make good students, and of how to work with whomever we’ve got sitting in front of us to help them learn English better. For example, what are the differences between teaching adults and children? What are the different levels and how do we teach them? I think one of the main ideas in this chapter is to get teachers thinking about what the students’ role is in all this learning process. Our concepts of how students learn will, after all, affect how we teach them. I think the main idea here is to find what the students are interested in and try to give them a bit more of that because it’ll be more motivational. Also, try to give them a bit less of what they don’t like for the very same reason.

The third chapter talks about the practice of classroom management. This is mainly about becoming more aware of how to orchestrate your classes. How close should you get to the students? How appropriate is crouching in order to get “eye to eye” with your students? Should you stand in front of the class, move around it or sit down? How should you speak, a lot, in an exaggerated way, loudly? How should you move from one stage in the lesson to the next? How and where should the students sit, or stand? How can you and should you group your students in different activities?

The fourth chapter is the most important in the book regarding how English lessons are structured. The basic stages described in this chapter are to “Engage,” “Study” and “Activate,” or “ESA.” In other words, you usually have to somehow first get your students interested or hooked on your lesson. For example, if you’re going to do a lesson on travel language, you might start off by asking your students a few questions about where they went for their last holidays. The “Study” phase is usually next, though not always. For example, you might give the students a text about somebody’s vacation for them to read where the students have to do some sort of question-building or answering activity in order to work with the text. Finally, in the “Activate” phase the students might ask each other the questions and answer them more freely.

The fifth chapter is a good worthwhile introduction to our own grammar and to how we describe it to our students. There’s no better way to cause problems on the job and in your classes than to not know your grammar.

The sixth chapter is about how to teach that grammar. Basically, this unit develops the Engage, Study, Activate sequences further by talking more about these basic concepts: 1) how to present the language we want the students to learn, 2) how to help students understand the meanings and form in language, 3) how to help them study the grammar in order to understand its construction and 4) how to practice it like in the travel activity I talked about earlier. Also, this chapter deals with how and when to correct students.

This chapter also explains more about how to become more flexible with the ESA sequences. For instance, you might add in some other phases in the travel activity I talked about. For example, you might add in a “Study” phase where you focus on the grammar of question formation and/or another one about the past simple. One of the objectives of the chapter is to help teachers become more agile with the “Engage, Study, Activate” lesson prepping structure. The better you understand it, the better you will be able restructure textbook lessons in order to keep the same old material fresh and/or simply to be able to add in supplementary materials for extra much needed grammar practice.

Next, I’m going to jump ahead to talk about chapter 11, which is about how to use textbooks. The question is not whether to use or not to use, because you’ll have to use them sometime in your career at least to start with. The problem is that you’re usually going to have to really work to keep those textbooks useful, fresh, and to keep the students (and/or yourself) from rejecting them (and sometimes they do and sometimes we do). You’re going to find that some English teachers have really hard feelings about textbooks in general (and about specific books too), but in my opinion, they’re usually throwing the baby out with the bathwater. This chapter will teach you how to make the most of whatever textbooks you’re stuck with by your Directors of Studies, or if you’re in the position to choose your own textbooks, of what to look for in a good textbook.

Next, I’m going to go back just to touch on chapters 7, 8, 9 and 10, which deal with why and how to teach reading, writing, speaking and listening. As I said before, you can’t even hope to follow a textbook “as is” and have a successful class. It just doesn’t happen because every group is different. You have to change, adapt, add to, replace or simply remove some lessons altogether. The 40-odd pages of these 4 chapters are an excellent orientation to how we orchestrate lessons using texts, “listenings,” role-plays, you name it.

Chapter 12 deals with lesson plans, or why and how to plan lessons. The most important reason for having a lesson plan is to help you process through what do to in your class and how to do it. With time it comes naturally, but at first you really need to do it step-by-step. By the way, on TEFL courses you’ll be required to produce a somewhat formal point-by-point lesson plan, which will be really similar to the type of lesson plan outlined in this book.

Finally, I should mention that the 13 chapters of this book are followed by another 50 pages of a “task file” with practical exercises to help you practice the ideas that are presented in each of the chapters of the first 135 pages.

In conclusion, I think that reading this book before you start teaching English and putting the ideas into practice will help you to become a more successful teacher. Don’t forget, however, that you would do well to read a grammar book as well and do a TEFL course. Apart from that, all you need is a good head on your shoulders, a good heart in your chest and a good salary for your pocket.

Thank you for watching. My name is Steven Starry from MadridTeacher.com.