Book Review: More Than a Native Speaker
Amanda Baker, eslambx@langate.gsu.edu
Snow, D. (2006). More than a native speaker: An introduction to teaching English abroad (Rev. ed.). Alexandria, VA: TESOL. xi + 363 pp. US$36.95 (TESOL member $27.95).
Context, meaning, and authenticity are three words frequently associated with foreign language learning and teaching today. Numerous resources have been developed to provide broad overviews of teaching methodologies and approaches to a variety of contexts, and these types of resources advocate the application of these concepts to the language classroom (Celce-Murcia, 2001; Harmer, 2001, Richards & Rodgers, 2001). Although these resources are invaluable, they are unable to fully contextualize specialized areas of teacher education. More Than a Native Speaker fills one of these gaps by intertwining teaching methodology, techniques, and lesson plans with some of the realities of living and teaching in a foreign country. As this book is based, at least in part, on Snow's own extensive experience teaching in Asia, it is a tremendous asset to English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers who seek to teach abroad for the first time or for both English as a second language (ESL) and EFL teachers with limited or no training in teaching English to speakers of other languages.
More Than a Native Speaker is specifically targeted toward volunteer teachers or otherwise explorer-minded individuals with a thirst for meeting new people and learning about new cultures in the home countries of these people. Snow goes beyond a treatment of different approaches and methods in language education to bring in issues pertaining to culture and living abroad. User-friendly, avoiding unnecessary jargon or technical terms, and stylistically engaging, this book provides teachers with the tools necessary for surviving overseas. Part 1 of this book outlines the preparations required to successfully teach in a foreign classroom; Part 2 narrows this focus to particular areas of language teaching; and Part 3 provides tips on living abroad. The appendices also include a panoply of ideas for activities for use in the oral communication classroom.
The first part of the book comprises six chapters, all related to planning courses. Chapter 1 reviews the basic theories of language learning and the responsibility of the teacher in the classroom. Chapter 2 provides advice on preparing for the culture and teaching context prior to departure. Chapter 3 starts with the overall development of course planning from goal setting to measures of assessment. Chapter 4 furthers this discussion, looking at evaluation methods, backwash, and types of grading systems. Chapter 5 departs from broader, coursewide issues to the day-to-day handling of lesson planning and skills for survival in the classroom. The final chapter of this section presents typical sample lesson plans for seven different types of courses a teacher may be asked to instruct, ranging from beginning general English to TOEFL preparation to The English Club. As with many chapters throughout this book, each ends with a short section on valuable suggestions for the teacher to further think about, discuss, and act upon, including, but not limited to, predeparture questionnaire tasks, portfolio assignments, sample language-learning projects, student feedback, grade curves, and more. For beginning teachers dealing with unexpected course changes or uncertainty on how to build a course, these chapters and tips are especially useful.
Part 2 examines the specifics of teaching the diverse skills needed for English language learning. Chapters 7 through 13, respectively, concern the teaching of listening, speaking, reading and decoding, writing, vocabulary, grammar, and culture. For each skill or content area, Snow describes its importance, analyzes problems and goals relevant to it, and imparts a large assortment of time-tested tasks and techniques for successful learning and development both inside and outside the classroom. In terms of listening skills, one example of an activity described that students might find entertaining is recording your own stories of adventures you have had in the host country and making them available for students to listen to in the language laboratory for extracurricular listening practice. The final chapter of Part 2 contextualizes the foreign teaching situation even further by outlining some of the common challenges teachers encounter, such as managing large classes and dealing with students who participate too little or too much, and suggesting possible ways to handle them. These chapters are quite literally a treasure trove of useful activities for enhancing your teaching and making language learning an enjoyable experience for students.
Part 3, consisting of two chapters, departs from language teaching and concentrates instead on other aspects of living abroad. Chapter 15 provides a variety of helpful recommendations for how to adapt to and learn the host culture and language as well as how to deal with unrealistic expectations and to manage culture shock. The remaining chapter discusses the next steps for those teachers who have discovered a meaningful career in teaching EFL and wish to pursue professional training in this area. Many teachers, myself included, having discovered a passion for intercultural communication, language learning, and teaching, have returned home or gone online to obtain a degree in teaching EFL/ESL.
One of the most useful aspects of the book is its comprehensive appendices, especially Appendix B, which offers a substantial collection of "culture-topic activity ideas for oral skills classes." As a teacher who several years ago transferred from teaching kids in Japan to teaching college students in a Teachers College in China and discovered, only 2 days before classes started, that I would be teaching oral English to first-, second-, and third-year English majors (no textbooks provided!), I can certainly attest to the fact that these appendices would have saved me a fair amount of time and frustration. Appendix A suggests numerous general goals for each of the skill areas in addition to level-specific (beginner, intermediate, and advanced) goals. In fact, for those teachers who are without a textbook, More Than a Native Speaker may even form the foundation of an entire course.
As Snow hopes to cover a variety of topics relevant to foreign language teaching, depth of coverage is necessarily limited. One area in particular that is surprisingly deficient is the teaching of pronunciation. Although a part of the chapter on the teaching of speaking addresses pronunciation, an entire chapter devoted to this aspect of the English language would be beneficial. Further discussion of the various elements of pronunciation and activities for teaching them would improve this part of the book.
For the teacher with restricted luggage capacity, a book with extensive descriptions of foreign language contexts and language-teaching rationales, goals, methodology, tasks, activities, and techniques would be prohibitively bulky. Instead, as Snow suggests, the outward-bound teacher could target a few other resources to supplement this book such as a book on the host culture and one or two books on specific skills he or she expects to teach; however, even without these resources, More Than a Native Speaker is an indispensable guide to English teaching as a foreign language and living abroad-a must for all teachers embarking on new adventures or surviving existing ones.
Amanda Baker is a doctoral student in the Applied Linguistics program at Georgia State University. Her research interests include pronunciation instruction, discourse prosody, oral communication, and teacher education. She received her MA in TESOL at Trinity Western University in Langley, British Columbia, and has taught EFL/ESL in Japan, China, Canada, and the United States.
References
Celce-Murcia, M. (Ed.). (2001). Teaching English as a second or foreign language (3rd ed.). Boston, MA: Heinle and Heinle.
Harmer, J. (2001). The practice of English language teaching (3rd ed.). Harlow, England: Longman.
Richards, J. C., & Rodgers, T. S. (2001). Approaches and methods in language teaching (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
SLW & CALL October 2007 Volume 11 Number 3: Table of Contents
