The practice of English language teaching; by Jeremy Harper (fourth edition),2007, Pearson Education Limited

developing or developed world do not have access to very modern technology. Yet this does not prevent students – and has never prevented them - from learning English successfully.” (page 176)
Mr. Harmer thesis of this book is rather convincing because it is based on his own experience and the experience of the teachers he has interviewed for the purpose of writing this book. His main subjects of discussion throughout all the chapters in the book are, of course, the processes of learning and teaching English as a second language and he shows that there are many different types of students (first according their age and then to the level of aptitude and intelligences). It is convincing mostly because it shows his aim to provide a successful guidance for the teachers in this process in every chapter in his book. Also he doesn’t make a direct negative comparison nor between the teachers, neither the students and he doesn’t give us a strict accusation that someone/something is the main issue why a specific method or technique is not proven as successful. Another thing I personally found interesting about this book is that he has a chapter based of the different types of teachers as well. With this chapter, we are convinced what is his aim for writing this book, mostly, because he is not only describing the students, their needs, competences and cognitive skills, but also gives us a description of teacher’s roles inside the classroom and helps us (as teachers) understand which role is the best for certain activity and as well, show us how to deal with different types of learning contexts.
The chapter which is dedicated to teachers and their roles in the classroom is consisted of exact and precise descriptions of the roles of a teacher. Although many of the readers of this book might be already familiar with the roles of controller, promoter, participant, resource and a tutor, the author gives us the description and also shows us why we should use a specific role or in other words why the teacher should act as a resource for example, and that this role would be helpful in the classroom and makes him/her available to his/her students. Also, the author states that the type of a role a teacher might take in that specific classroom activity is dependent as we have seen what are the needs of the students and what we want them to achieve:
“What we can say with certainty, is that we need to be able to switch between the various roles we have described here, judging when it is appropriate to use one or the other of them. And then, when we have made the decision, however consciously or subconsciously it is done, we need to be aware of how we carry out that role, how we perform.” (p. 111)
The roles that a teacher takes in the classroom mostly depends of the activities that are taking part of that lesson. There are activities which can only be successful if the teacher takes a specific role and makes it possible for the students achieve what they are aiming for, or what has been planned for them to achieve. Despite the examples the author gave in the book as how the roles of the teachers and the activities are connected, there is also a correlation between native-speaker teachers and non-native speaker teachers. But, although Mr. Harmer shows the advantages and disadvantages of both native and non-native speaker teacher, he doesn’t take a side. He gives us real-life situations from a period of time when teachers which were non-native speakers of the English language were not allowed to teach in schools or in other words they were considered incompetent or not able to provide students with the right knowledge. As we know, this situation is now changed and no difference is made between native and non-native speaker teachers, and somehow non-native speaker teachers are considered more adequate because they have experience and understanding of the process of learning English as their students do now.
“As recently as ten years ago it would have been impossible to find a single non-native speaker teacher working in a language school in, say, Britain or Australia. But that is no longer the case. Process may be slow in this respect, but there are signs of such progress. In the end, provided teachers can use the language (and know about it), it is the quality of their teaching that counts, not where they come from or how they learnt or acquired English.” (p.120)
As we go further with reading the books, taking the next chapter, we are more convinced that the book is a guide for teachers and it gives us a detailed analysis of the issues relevant to English language teachers. The author in the next chapters of his book shows the mistakes that students usually make in this process and how, we, as teachers should manage to deal with those mistakes. It helps us deal with the classroom behavior problems of the unmotivated students and by dealing with it, a teacher creates a successful environment for everyone who takes part of that lesson. The book has a chapter which includes everything a teacher needs to know in order to create successful lessons and classroom atmosphere. In order to be successful, as a teacher, first you need to find out why specific problems occur which when it comes to students may be family influences, their learning expectation or something the teacher does. In order to prevent or help problems like these not to occur, as a teacher identify the problem and try to modify the problem behavior. There several ways of how to deal with this and they are presented in the ninth chapter of this book.
Personally, as an English teacher with not much of experience in the practice of English language teaching, I find the next chapters very useful and consisted with everything I need to get started. This is because the next chapters of the book include a description of approaches to teaching language systems such as grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation and to teaching language skills (speaking, writing, listening and reading). Each of these language systems and skills have a separate chapter which is consisted of an introduction, discovering the system or the types of the language skills, the practice as well as games and exercises which we can use in the process of teaching. Through learning English, learners will develop the confidence to communicate effectively in speaking, listening, reading and writing English that will enable them to participate actively in a global society. That’s why to us, as teachers, is very important to find the best ways to help them acquire the level of knowledge they need to develop the confidence and be successful in using the languages for different purposes. The activities and games provided by Harmer in this book are very well described and also they include the age and the level of knowledge which the students possess of the language and what it focuses on. In the description of every activity the advantages of the activity are shown which helps us decide whether the given activity is good for the students we are working with.
With the last four chapters of this guide book you can easily come to a conclusion of its continuality and its general aim. After the exercises, games and practical help the author provides to teachers about the ways to teach languages systems and how to help students develop their language skills, he starts with giving useful information and advices on how to make a successful lesson plan. As a good teacher, you always need to be prepared for every lesson and give your best when it comes to planning activities which will help you in making your lesson a success. Everyone involved in the process of teaching has a specific role and the main role, of course, belongs to the teacher. He or she needs to be aware of students needs and to give the lesson an aim and objectives. But, as Mr Harmer says:
“A lesson will often have more than one aim. We might well say, for example, that our overall objective is to improve our students reading ability, but that our specific aims are to encourage them predict content, to use guessing strategies to overcome lexical problems and to develop an imaginative response to what they encounter.” (p.371)
This not only includes reading activities but almost everything that takes part of a lesson (activities, games, exercises) either for reading, writing or any other language skill should not only help the students improve that specific language skill, but also to develop their logical thinking, imagination and to help them overcome lexical, morphological or pronunciation problems, as well.
Another important part of this whole process is the last one which includes testing and evaluation. Maybe tests, at first, seem like an easy task but it takes time to make the perfect test which will make the students get the best grade and the teachers the best way to find out how much knowledge does the student possess of the material. The author in the chapter dedicated to testing and evaluation gives us description of the direct and indirect test items and advices on how to make and mark tests. In previous methodology books, I am familiar with the different types of tests. The most common types of test are easily acknowledged as being used everywhere and by everybody. These test types, according to the stages during the teaching and learning process are : placement tests, diagnostic tests, progress tests/ achievement tests, proficiency tests. The author of the book, takes progress tests, somehow as being the same as the achievement tests because both types are actually designed to measure learners’ language and skill progress in relation to the syllabus they have been following during some period of time. Although there is a difference, because progress tests are taken usually at the end of a unit and achievement tests at the end of the term, Harmer states that both types should:
“...should reflect progress, not failure. They should reinforce the learning that has taken place, not go out of their way to expose weaknesses. They can also help us decide on changes to future teaching programs where students do significantly worse in (parts of) the test than we might have expected” (p.380)
In order to judge the effectiveness of any test and to show if it is a good test in order to show what the students have accomplished, the author states that the most important characteristics of a good test are, of course, the validity and the reliability. Although, as a student I came across these characteristics in many methodology books for teaching English and many more (such as: practice, relevance, comprehensiveness, balance) it was good to be reminded that the validity which shows the same kind of results to some other measure and the reliability of a good test that gives us consistent results and it is enhanced by marking the test instructions absolutely clear, restricting the scope for variety in the answers and making sure that test conditions remain constant.
When it comes to the scope of this book and the parts which are covered in it or not, I think that this book is quite voluminous and includes a large number of information and details about the process of English language teaching and learning. Not that all the details which are included in the book are not important and there are no specific parts which I could separate from the content but maybe the only negative side of the scope is that the author included a lot of unnecessary information in the historical background and the description of the form and meaning of the language. In my opinion this book concerns and it is on the reading lists of teachers or students who are training to become English teachers and they have all this information as part of their previous knowledge. Maybe the pages which are covered with these two chapters could be used in the part of activities and examples of how we can use different technological tools into an English teaching classroom.
The organization of “The practice of English language teaching” allows the reader to easily follow the whole process of English language teaching and it is logically constructed in a way that the chapters are well organized and one chapter leads to another. This guide book for English teachers is divided into 10 parts and 24 chapters and it is neither confusing for the reader, nor repetitive. Every part focuses on a specific theme which is connected to the methodology, the methods and techniques or the learners and the teachers. In other words, everything that it is included in the process of English language teaching process is described and it is written in a way which is easily understood. The construction of the book meshes well with its organization and lends itself successfully to the study of different time periods in which the process of learning and teaching has developed. Each chapter is broken down into different number of sections, which fits logically into the topic of the chapter. All chapters are composed of several defining parts that maintain a sense of continuity throughout the volume as I said before, one chapter leads to another one. At the end of every chapter there is a bibliography, or as it is written in the book “Chapter notes and further reading” which includes books or articles from different authors and, of course, a note of why this information was important for further discussion and a review from Harmer. Also, we can easily see that this book is well- referenced and it has a skillful use of the sources which are used. At the end of the book, of course, there is a large bibliography and every source he used while his research is included in it.
One of the things I personally admire in the way in which this book is written is the objectivity of the author and his style of writing. He does not make a negative comparison between teachers or the different periods of time or in other words, he does not have a bias. Although, he provides us with a lot of information in every chapter, he also made me think about different issues in the process and what can I accept and use while teaching or all the information which I read here made me come to my own judgement. His style of writing is not frustrating or boring, in fact, it is rather instructional and helpful and makes the reader go further with the book, eager to find out more about every part in the process of teaching and learning.
The general points of this guide book, which by my opinion are helping teachers in before they start their carrer as teachers of English, as well as, students in their post-graduate studies do not differ much of the general thesis of the author. The first edition of this book was published, more than thirty years ago. Jeremy Harmer’s studies and researches are based on these subjects and he writes these guide books in order to make teachers closer to the advances in the technology that are now available to teachers and students, both inside and outside the classroom. So, he has followed all the noticeable changes in the process of English language teaching and learning.
However, the fundamental questions of how best to teach and learn a language remain the same since his first book was published. This 4th edition of this book is informed by past theory and practice and by books and articles written by teachers and researchers in recent years. It also examines current issues, such as the rise of digital testing and marking, amongst many others, and provides a snapshot of the state of English language teaching today. That’s why I think that this book is very useful and helpful not to post-graduate students only and to teachers who are new to the process, but also to older teachers which are experienced and they have a need of guide books such as this one that will be of great use so they can easily cope with the new ways of digital teaching, testing and marking. As a good English teacher and seminar leader, the author Jeremy Harmer knows that by sharing the knowledge of how good teachers think and work, we can ensure that we help our students to communicate as effectively as they can. With the interviews and information he has collected from his collegues and other writers that have studied this subject, “The practice of English language teaching” is a successful guide book and this forth editions offers an input for digital teaching, mixed ability classes and assessment.