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The Language Teacher Toolkit 2nd edition


Updated on 20th June

Our new book is out!

Gianfranco and I wrote and published the first edition of our Toolkit book in 2016. We have been delighted that the book has found thousands of readers and been very useful to so many teachers. The success of that book spurred us on to write two others together: Breaking the Sound Barrier: Teaching Language Learners How to Listen (2019) and Memory: What Every Language Teacher Should Know (2021). For some time I had been thinking that it would be worth producing a second edition of the Toolkit book. This is for a few reasons:

  • The first edition research references were all from before 2016, and there have been new books and research papers to cite from. Having read a good deal since 2016, we had more to write about!
  • Gianfranco's EPI approach has gained a lot of traction in schools since 2016, so I felt we needed to reflect this in a second book. Although the Toolkit is not an EPI book (Gianfranco would want this to be clear), the new edition does have a chapter devoted to lexicogrammar and EPI. The notions of chunking, intensive processing and comprehensible input also strong throughout the book.
  • We wanted to put a greater emphasis on lesson and curriculum planning.
  • We wanted to put a greater emphasis on intercultural competence and so-called culturally responsive teaching.
  • We wanted the new book to have a greater emphasis on listening, reflecting the work we had done on Breaking the Sound Barrier.
  • We wanted to put even more emphasis on cognitive science, alongside second language acquisition research. We were able to draw on the reading we did for our Memory book. So you'll find more about memory, cognitive load theory, dual coding, spacing, forgetting and the rest.
  • We wanted to improve and extend the chapter about meeting the needs of all students, to include sections about primary to secondary transition, helping bilingual and EAL students and more on SEND. We are grateful to teacher Crista Hazell and her publisher for letting us quote freely from her work.
  • We wanted to add a chapter on fluency development - not just spoken fluency in the traditional sense, but 'cognitive fluency'.
  • We wanted to expand on the idea of self-efficacy in the chapter about motivation.
  • We wanted to share our latest lesson ideas - chunking, read-aloud task, starters, communicative games, etc. Our 'boxes of tricks' (tips) remain, but have been reworked.
  • Lastly, and this is just a readability issue, we wanted the book to have a larger font, so this necessitated using a larger format ('trim size', as publishers say), in line with our other two books.
These changes meant we had to remove parts of the first edition, so we chose to remove the chapter on behaviour management, the standalone chapter on games and the section of lesson resources which featured at the end of the first edition. The chapters have also been reordered.

So we now have a heavily revised, reorganised, rewritten handbook of 20 chapters, the titles of which are listed below.

  1.  Language teaching methods                                          
  2.  Listening – it all starts here                                            
  3. Speaking                                                                      
  4. Teaching in the target language                                     
  5. Vocabulary                                                                  
  6. Grammar                                                                     
  7. Fluency                                                                        
  8. Reading                                                                       
  9. Writing                                                                         
  10. Teaching with pictures                                                  
  11. Meeting the needs of all students                                   
  12. A lexicogrammar perspective: EPI                                 
  13. Assessment                                                                  
  14. Teaching advanced level students                                  
  15. Intercultural understanding                                            
  16. Motivation                                                                   
  17. Subject knowledge                                                       
  18. Songs and drama                                                          
  19. Lesson planning for communication                              
  20. Planning a communicative curriculum   
The book is comprehensively referenced, with a thorough index (except in the e-book and Kindle versions). It can be read as an introduction to what's called in the research world Instructed Second Language Acquisition (ISLA). (Some prefer the word 'additional' to 'second'.)

The general recipe is the same as the first edition: evidence-informed practice. It's become a bit of a cliché in educational circles to use the phrases 'evidence-informed' or 'evidence-based', but marrying research findings with classroom practice is always what Gianfranco and I have been interested in. Of course, research does not tell teachers what to do, but it does provide pointers, and helps teachers to be 'reflective practitioners'. The book should be useful both to trainees and teachers with experience.

One interesting aspect which Gianfranco and I are both aware of is how our thinking has evolved in the last few years. This is no doubt the consequence of more reading, reflection and contact with teachers. Language teaching is both very simple and very complex. We need to provide lots of input students understand and are interested in, a chance to communicate with that input and bags of repetition. That sounds simple, doesn't it? But the ways of doing this are many and varied. Our book tries to reflect both the simplicity and complexity, so the overall message has remained one of 'principled eclecticism' - be aware of second language learning principles, the various methodological options - including communicative, audiolingual, task-based, EPI, oral-situational, TPRS/CI - but don't feel obliged to follow a 'method'. 

We all have our biases and our index probably reflects that. The scholars with the most references are: Paul Nation, Rod Ellis, Nick Ellis, Michael Long, Ernesto Macaro, Robert DeKeyser, William Grabe, Stephen Krashen and Jack Richards. As my wife mentioned, all men! Prominent female researchers we also reference include Diane Larsen-Freeman, Tracey Derwing, Patsy Lightbown, Nina Spada and Suzanne Graham.

Our book is independently published on Amazon at £28 (paperback) and £24 (Kindle ad e-book versions) and is available via Ingram Spark and through Piefke Trading. Prices may vary depending on what individual bookshops opt for. See the links below.

Finally, our huge gratitude goes to my wife Professor Elspeth Jones who spent many, many hours proofing, editing and formatting the text. She also contributed ideas, particularly with regard to intercultural competence. If you ever decide to publish independently - get a good editor! 

You’ll find the book in paperback, and for teachers in Australia and some east Asian countries on the Piefke Trading website. The ebook is now widely available at the links below.

USA https://www.amazon.com/dp/3949651969

UK https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/3949651969

Canada https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/3949651969

Australia https://www.amazon.com.au/Language-Teacher-Toolkit-Steve-Smith/dp/3949651969/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1AOCQQUKELZIS&keywords=the+language+teacher+toolkit+conti&qid=1687256613&sprefix=The+language+teacher+toolkit%2Caps%2C249&sr=8-1

Germany https://www.amazon.de/dp/3949651969

France https://www.amazon.fr/dp/3949651969

Spain https://www.amazon.es/dp/3949651969

Italy https://www.amazon.it/dp/3949651969

Poland https://www.amazon.pl/dp/3949651969

Netherlands https://www.amazon.nl/dp/3949651969

Sweden https://www.amazon.se/dp/3949651969

Japan https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/3949651969

Australia and East Asia (via Piefke Trading)  https://www.piefke-trading.com/products/extranjeros-the-language-teacher-toolkit-spanish-sentence-builder-100-authentic-9783949651960

Rakuten Kobo (ebook) https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/the-language-teacher-toolkit-second-edition

Vivlio (ebook) https://shop.vivlio.com/product/9798223073642_9798223073642_10020/the-language-teacher-toolkit-second-edition

Smashwords (ebook) https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1410568

Barnes and Noble https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-language-teacher-toolkit-mr-steven-smith/1123403781?ean=2940167292604

Also check Apple Books if you use their app.

If you prefer to support your local bookshop, ask them. Ingram should be distributing the book via bookshops.



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