This is a fully cross-referenced alphabetical guide to ELT designed for all teachers of English whether they be trainees, practising teachers or teacher trainers. It explains the terminology of English-teaching methodology, language and linguistics. The list of entries includes terms and skills that are central to language teaching, such as listening and assessment, as well as topics that are easily confused, such as inductive and deductive learning.
This book takes a pragmatic approach to terminology in the sense that every concept is embedded into a practical context. It is more than just a glossary or a dictionary. It is also an encyclopedia where each entry provides a short summary of the major issues, debates and practical implications associated with each concept, as well as making connections between related concepts. Using this book you can gain a more wide-ranging understanding of a specific topic of interest by reading around the topic and following up its network of crossreferences.
The book is divided into three main fields: language, learning and teaching. In turn, these are subdivided into the following categories: language-related topics, including discourse (and pragmatics), functions (and notions), grammar, linguistics, phonology, sociolinguistics and vocabulary; learning-related topics, including psychology (and psycholinguistics) and second language acquisition; and teachingrelated topics, subdivided into methodology, professional development and testing. These categories are used as labels to classify each of the 376 entries. The entries themselves have been chosen, the author points out, ‘because their headwords figure prominently in the syllabuses of training courses, or in the indexes and glossaries of the standard reference books for teachers’.
I have recommended this book to my linguistics and language students at college, telling them that it will help them gain a global insight into what we, teachers or trainee teachers, do in the classroom and why we do it. I have also used some sections in my own teaching. While most languagerelated and teaching methodology topics are clearly explained, I found some of the grammar explanations to be a little oversimplified: for example, with inversion, it is not clearly shown why and when we invert in the first and in the second clause. At the back of the book, there is an index which includes all the terms and people referred to that don’t have their own entries. Entries are fully crossreferenced.
Although there is no biographical information about writers or scholars, their contributions to the field are included in the book, and for users who are interested in following up particular areas there is a list of further reading. Here, useful resources are listed under the 12 main topic headings used to label the entries.
Sebastian Amado Buenos Aires, Argentina

Read and Reflect (Introductory level)
by Lori Howard and Jayme Adelson-Goldstein (series editors) Oxford University Press 2006 0-19-437731-8
This book is suitable for introducing upper teenagers and young adults to some of the reading strategies needed in an academic setting. Skills are taught in the context of learning about American culture, and some topics, such as ‘Success in the USA’, are so specific that it might be awkward using the material in a non-American context. However, much of the rest of the material would have relevance for southern hemisphere students entering the world of western or northern hemisphere academia wherever they need to study in English. Skills taught include predicting content by previewing titles, pictures, headings and questions.
The use of pronouns, scanning, using context to understand new words and interacting with the text while you read are also explicitly covered. Less explicit but very useful is the inclusion of pictures that require interpretation, cartoons and comic dialogue. Graphics include a pie chart, graphs, timelines, tables, a Venn diagram and mapping of ideas. There is also the use of a website, word puzzles and a floor plan of a house to read and interpret. These are all vital reading skills that are often missing from my students’ education and from textbooks on reading.
One of the strengths of the book is the way that vocabulary is recycled. Each topic has 18 exercises, and each of these teaches or practises a different skill, using pre-taught vocabulary or gradually introducing new vocabulary. Carefully constructed oral pairwork that promotes reading, speaking and critical evaluation is also a feature of the book. Each unit ends with a controlled writing exercise, based on a model and making use of the schema acquired in previous exercises.

Preventing Plagiarism: Tips and Techniques
by Laura Hennessey DeSena National Council of Teachers of English 2007 978-0-8141-4593-7
‘Book reports are out, critical analysis of primary sources in and many of the problems of plagiarism in the academic classroom will be solved’, is the message DeSena has for us. This 117- page book is an eloquent treatise by an English literature teacher, aimed primarily at teachers of L1 English literature at high school and university. She shows teachers how to set assignments that prevent students from being able to plagiarise. She also outlines ways of spotting plagiarism – something that most of us can do with ease in the ESL classroom – and then she gives some hints for proving and policing the practice.
Some strategies she advocates include use of free writing, outlining, setting somewhat creative topics and conferencing with students. She defines plagiarism and gives examples of adequate and inadequate integration and citation of sources, but there is little to help the student actually learn the skills needed for this complex task. The book also does not really aid the ESL teacher in identifying and building the micro skills needed to help students from countries where reproduction of the work of others is the norm to make the transition to the western academic classroom and the world of cited referenced essays. The book ends with a reminder to us all that writing styles are culture specific and that western, linear logic essays are not the norm in every part of the literate world.
Sandy Willcox Addis Ababa, Ethiopia