English Teaching Professional Strongly Recommends Compelling Conversations!

English Teaching Professional is a leading industry magazine for English Language teachers and trainers, EFL instructors, and  language school directors published in England.

Key quotes and excerpts

 "In my own teaching, I have found questions and quotations to be highly effective in promoting student discussion. Questions are useful in that they require a response from the listener. Asking them also helps students master the tricky rules of the interrogative."

"Quotations are brilliant flashes of wit expressed in the shortest space possible, often just a sentence or two. The authors have compiled a formidable collection of quotations by famous people from Napoleon and Aristotle to Tom Cruise and Sylvester Stallone. Some will have the students roaring with laughter 'My movies were the kind they show in prisons and airplanes because nobody can leave.' - Burt Reynolds), while others require careful introspection ('Love is not just looking at each other; it's looking in the same direction.' - Antoine de Saint Exupery)."

"The authors also add some wise proverbs here and there. My two favourites were 'Recite "patience" three times and it will spare you a murder' and 'When money talks, truth keeps silent', which are from Korea and Russia."

"In sum, Compelling Conversations is a recommended resource for teachers who want to make their conversation classes more learner-centered," wrote reviewer Hall Houston. "It should be especially appealing to those who who to escape the confines of the Presentation-Practice-Production approach and do without a formal grammatical or functional syllabus. It reflects the authors' considerable professional experience, and would be a notable addition to any English teacher's bookshelf."

Review by Hall Houston
The January 2009 issue,  p.44 in Issue 60.
Subscribers can access the full review at www.ETProfessional.com.

Hall Houston, an English teacher and writer in Luzhu, Taiwan wrote the review in a British magazine about a book self-published in the United States.