5 books I'm looking forward to reading in 2011

Since last week I shared a few books I'm familiar with, this week I'd like to preview a few titles I want to read in 2011.

I've been reading up on the receptive skills recently (reading and listening), so I was glad to hear that the books from the Applied Linguistics in Action series covering these two skills were being revised. If you're not familiar with this series, these books give a thorough overview of research in applied linguistics in a number of different areas including the four skills, motivation, autonomous learning, and more.

Teaching and Researching Reading by William Grabe and Fredericka Stoller looks quite interesting. I spoke to Professor Grabe last month when he was presenting at the ETA-ROC conference in Taipei, Taiwan last month. He said that there have been some major changes from the earlier edition, and mentioned that there would be a new chapter which explains how the two authors think reading should be taught.

One more title in this series, Teaching and Researching Listening by Michael Rost, is another book I definitely want to read. Michael Rost is well-known for many books and articles on teaching listening, and this one should provide a comprehensive summary of the latest research.

Another book with a new edition coming out is Learning Teaching, a classic introduction to teaching English. This is one of my favorite ELT books, and I can't wait to see the changes in the third edition. According to the information on the publisher's website, this new edition will contain a DVD with a sample lesson and demonstrations of several teaching techniques.

Two more books I'd like to have on my shelf are The Company Words Keep and Digital Play, new titles in Delta Publishing's Delta Teacher Development Series. (Sorry, no book cover images for these two books as of today.)

The Company Words Keep by Paul Davis and Hania Kryszeweska is a book of activities for teaching lexical chunks. There's not much information on the publisher's page, but I'm sure this will be updated soon, as the book will come out in Spring 2011. Having read several books by both authors, I think this one should be brilliant.

Digital Play by Kyle Mawer and Graham Stanley, provides teachers with lots of information about using computer games and other ICTs in the classroom. In light of the fact that Taiwan (where I live and teach) has one of the world's largest markets for computer games, I'm sure I will get a lot of use out of Digital Play.

Do you know of any new books coming out in 2011 that I didn't mention? Please post your reading list here. (Authors are most welcome to tell us about your new books.)

Free stuff from publishers

I've been looking over several ELT publisher websites recently, and I've been impressed with the amount of things offered for free. I don't intend to create a comprehensive list here, but just list a few examples.

Many publishers provide book previews. For example, Cambridge University Press offers a few sample activities from their popular handbooks for teachers series, as well as some handouts and activities from their copy collection. Helbling, Delta and Oxford also offer some similar previews. For example, on this page you can try out four sample activities from Daniel Martin's book Activities for Interactive Whiteboards. And here, you can see an activity from David Heathfield's title Spontaneous Speaking. And this page takes you to several activities from Jamie Keddie's Images.

Another free resource is the unique page (or even site) given to a book. Cambridge offers pages for several of their books, including Working with Images by Ben Goldstein, as well as The Internet and the Language Classroom. Macmillan has set up a very impressive site for Lindsay Clandfield's new series, Global. This site features teaching tips, elessons (by It's Magazine editor Robert Campbell, teacher blogs, not to mention a sample chapter from Global Pre-Intermediate. Pearson Longman also has websites for over 70 of its titles. Moreover, they give out lesson plans and practical articles about teaching absolutely free.

Other offerings include blogs from famous names in ELT, author videos, conference handouts and sample chapters. Over at Delta Publishing, you can find a Delta Development Blog, featuring Scott Thornbury, Mario Rinvolucri, among others. The blog currently features Chaz Pugliese, author of the soon-to-be-released Being Creative. Michigan University Press has a series of videos associated with several of their titles. They also provide sample chapters, such as a web-only chapter, Drills, Dialogues and Role Plays, from Tools and Tips for Using ESL Materials by Ruth Epstein and Mary Ormiston. Alta Publishing has a great page of handouts from conferences with a lot of practical activities.

With this many free articles and activities, I look forward to the day when all ELT titles are available online (and at the same time, authors are offered multimillion dollar salaries). Well, maybe I'm dreaming...

I get the feeling I've only scratched the surface here. Anybody out there care to recommend any free resources by the publishers mentioned above that I neglected to mention? Or maybe an ELT publisher that I haven't heard of yet?