标题：TEFL in Secondary Education (Handbook and Workbook), Neil McLaren, Daniel Madrid and Antonio Bueno (eds.) (2005). Granada: Editorial Universidad de Granada
出版社：Universidad de Granada * Departamento de Didactica de la Lengua y la Literatura
摘要：Trying to offer a brief account of such a long, complex and informative book as this in just a few pages is always difficult. This is why I am here concentrating on those aspects which, from my point of view, are most innovative in this new book adapted to the urgent, and growing, needs of the Spanish University system in the area of TEFL. And I am here speaking of the needs of the Spanish University system because, in spite of its title, or precisely because of it, this publication is offered to those current, past and future students of English studies who want to have a broad panorama of the different areas of teaching, skills and resources for a present or future teacher of English in the secondary school level. As an updating of other previous approaches by the same editors, this title concentrates on those aspects which, in this kind of world, have mostly changed in the last ten years or so. As a result, the introduction itself, let alone the rest of the chapters, is a brief but intense reflection on the laws that regulate the system and how it is absolutely necessary for a secondary school teacher to be aware of all the changes and novelties that it demands. The organisation of the book into chapters is also well balanced and, in itself, highly informative of the kind of approach intended by the editors, as we could say that it contemplates general background (chapters 1-6), skills (chapters 7-10), aspects of language (chapters 11-14), and resources, assessment and research (chapters 15-18). And, again dealing with very general matters, the internal organisation of each chapter is simply prodigious, as they contain: a) index; b) theoretical background, conceptual framework and discussion; c) summary; d) further reading; and e) tasks for papers. All these sections, in themselves, are useful and show that you can offer astonishingly clever and deep views on a series of issues concerning teaching matters, and also that you can do this coherently, in the sense that it would be a paradox if you simply did all this without considering the way in which your readers have to proceed the enormous amount of information offered to them in over seven hundred pages of compact text. In this case, I am quite sure that the editors have quite consciously decided on a course of action, and their enormous expertise as teachers and researchers has helped in this rather arduous task. Another common feature to all the chapters is the very interesting inclusion of a series of highly informative elements, in a different format, for those who either want to use them in class with their students of TEFL or want to use them for autonomous learning. These elements, included in all the chapters, really are a must for all conscious teachers of English, mainly (but not only) in the secondary level, since I must say that I have personally gathered a lot of relevant information that, either consciously or unconsciously, I am sure I will incorporate to many actual teaching situations at the tertiary level. And, without wanting to judge what I cannot properly judge, I am sure many primary school teachers could do something similar about their own teaching practice.
