Practical English Language Teaching: Listening by Marc Helgesen and Steven Brown (ISBN-13: 978-0-07-111842-2) is a book that I recieved as a door prize at a CALLSig event. As I’ve mentioned before I’ve been intending to writing a review of this book for some time.

I found this book to be very engaging and easy to read. It is clearly written for the average teacher and not academics in an ivory tower. Reading the book I can hear Helgesen speaking as I’ve seen him present twice and the book reminds me of his entertaining, engaging, and informative style. I haven’t seen nor read anything by Brown before but in my opinion he gets points for being associated with Helgesen.

Structure
The book has five chapters, an audio CD, appendix 1 listening tasks, appendix 2, audio scripts and a glossary packed into 169 pages.  The five chapters are:

1. What is listening?
2. Listening for beginning level learners
3. Listening for intermediate learners
4. Listening for advanced level learners
5. Key issues in teaching listening

Each chapter is broken down into a number of subsections that look at different tasks, exercises and principles of learning and teaching listening. These ideas are presented through analysis of different textbooks listening exercises and author anecdotes.

Throughout the book readers are encouraged to reflect on what they have read through a number of prompts that are either related to a concept that was introduced or a sample activity in the book. The sample activities in the book mostly come from published textbooks where the appropriate page is reproduced with the audio available on the accompanying CD. Additionally there is information about how to assess listening at all levels and the type of assessment that is more appropriate depending on the levels of the learners.

In the final chapter Helgesen and Brown discuss learner strategies and styles and learner autonomy, a favorite of mine. A favorite quote of mine is “As teachers, we need to support this outside work with structures that guide the students. It’s not enough just to say, ‘Go home and listen.’ We need to give them ideas.” (pg 136). This is something I already do with my classes and have recieved positive feedback from many students. It is good however to see published support for what I do in the classroom.

The final pages of chapter five have a Top Five Things to do to Teach Listening by several published authors. The points are divers and provide many ideas for teachers to consider and try out in their classroom. The point I found most interesting, useful and will try out in the future coimes from Tony Lynch.

Make your listening tasks realistic
Base the tasks you create for learners on what you have understood of the listening text on first hearing. When devising tasks, it is very easy to get into the habit of allowing yourself to replay an interesting text several times—and even to make a transcript—before you decide on questions and activities in class. Put yourself in their position; work from once-only earing, not multiple hearings, and work from the spoken word, not a transcript.

Recommendation
I highly recommend this book both for veteran teachers as well as new teachers. The next time I head to the book store I’ll be picking up other books in this series; Methodology, Grammar, Speaking, Young Learners, and Assessment. I won’t be buying Young Learners because I would rather clean toilets than teach children. Overall Practical English Language Teaching: Listening by Marc Helgesen and Steven Brown (ISBN-13: 978-0-07-111842-2) get’s 5/5 from me.