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colorlessgreenideasThis was my text book for ESL Error Analysis, and I read about half of it then. With comps coming up in less than a month, I'm doing a more thorough reading of the books on the reading list.
This was a decent resource of teaching models and theories over the past few decades, as well as considerations in language teaching. Learning styles, motivation, etc were all covered. It's well laid out and easy to digest, if rather dull to read in the large junks I just did. Cook obviously has tons of experience in the field and shared from his own language teaching background, especially the mistakes along the way. Mostly, though, he drew his material from textbooks, rather than day-to-day classroom activities.
The book's biggest failing, I think, is the lack of more concrete examples of effective strategies. It's great to explain, say, the communicative method, and give an example of a text book which uses it, but more specific direction would be useful. On the other hand, I have other ESL teaching textbooks that do a fine job with that, and less with the theory, so it balances out. Another failing is the asumption that ESL learners are literate in their first language, which is far from true in all cases. He acknowledges this lack, however, and warns the reader about his own assumptions. Cook also occassionally writes something that runs totally contrary to my own knowledge, such as "adult learners of Chinese should have no problem mastering the tonal differences," or stating that English and German have "difference writing systems."
This was a decent resource of teaching models and theories over the past few decades, as well as considerations in language teaching. Learning styles, motivation, etc were all covered. It's well laid out and easy to digest, if rather dull to read in the large junks I just did. Cook obviously has tons of experience in the field and shared from his own language teaching background, especially the mistakes along the way. Mostly, though, he drew his material from textbooks, rather than day-to-day classroom activities.
The book's biggest failing, I think, is the lack of more concrete examples of effective strategies. It's great to explain, say, the communicative method, and give an example of a text book which uses it, but more specific direction would be useful. On the other hand, I have other ESL teaching textbooks that do a fine job with that, and less with the theory, so it balances out. Another failing is the asumption that ESL learners are literate in their first language, which is far from true in all cases. He acknowledges this lack, however, and warns the reader about his own assumptions. Cook also occassionally writes something that runs totally contrary to my own knowledge, such as "adult learners of Chinese should have no problem mastering the tonal differences," or stating that English and German have "difference writing systems."
