Customer Reviews

Learning Vocabulary in Another Language (Cambridge Applied Linguistics)

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This book was recommended to me by an English professor whose area of expertise is EFL vocabulary building. If you're an English teacher looking for a book which explains teaching vocabulary to ESL/EFL students in a crystal-clear manner, this is THE book.

This book and its companion volume (Teaching ESL/EFL Listening and Speaking) were the core texts of two courses I took for my MA Applied Linguistics. The central tenet of the books is that EFL/ESL classroom learning should consist of equal amounts of the "four strands" of language learning - meaningful input, meaningful output, fluency, and direct attention to language items.

Compared with the other required texts I read while completing my MA, this book is highly pedagogically relevant (ie: some of the suggestions appear to be actually useful for classroom teachers).

The book contains a lot of suggestions for teachers in terms of tasks and activities. It gives a brief description of the research that underpins the suggestions and also suggests further reading material that might prove useful for writing essays and assignments at university level.

Having said that, I have found that I've used very few of the suggestions in my job as an EFL teacher at a South Korean elementary school. The reason is that the book focuses on specific tasks and activities, rather than explaining how to develop lesson plans that incorporate those tasks/activities. In other words, the book has a narrow focus.

I think this is an excellent book for academic courses and teachers who want some ideas for activities, but somewhat less useful for teachers seeking an overall guide to effective EFL/ESL teaching.

I can't agree more with the previous reviewer. This book is by far the best I've read on the subject--highly informed, highly practical, research-based, and comprehensive. If you're in doubt about whether to buy it, take a moment to look through the table of contents and the excerpts! After reading this book at a library, I can't imagine *not* buying a copy for my classroom.

I have found this book quite useful for teaching. Among the things that I found useful in this textbook were the strategies and techniques that teachers may use to address reading and writing. The author describes intensive and extensive reading and details and explains how each one is useful to a reading curriculum. Also, Nation presents a series of strategies that clarify for teachers how grammar can be used in a meaningful way to aid reading. Although I've read about this particular topic in Grabe's "Reading in a second language: From research to practice" Nation offers vivid examples on how to accomplish integrating grammar with reading. From a theoretical perspective, this book is less comprehensive than Grabe's. But it is precisely that whihc confers Nation the opprotunity to go in-depth in the chapters devoted to reading and writing. If you are an ESL teacher at any level, it is a must.
Note of caution: Since Nation is Australian, there are many words that follow different spelling rules, such as "practise" or "organisation."

This book is indispensable for the serious language teacher. Firmly based on quantitative research, Nation's book contradicts the dogmas of language teaching found in popular figures such as Krashen, who, given his exceedingly weak empirical foundation, might be deemed a charlatan of sorts. Read his book and learn what really works. Don't go to class without it!