To teach students effectively is the main aim of the teachers. To do this, teachers have been looking for many ways to improve their teaching techniques over the past years. Thousands of books are available and claim that inside their books are the answer to address different challenges in the classroom. Although many TESOL books are already published, still, only a few are available, especially for topics like Linguistics and TESOL.
The author, Hannah Valenzuela, is a TESOL module writer who was inspired to create this book since over the past four (4) years, she was not successful in her search for books that discussed linguistics in such a way that trainees and seasoned practitioners alike would be able to take the knowledge straight into classrooms. The hope of this author is to make this a reference book that contains different areas in TESOL and different classroom activities that she gathered from the past twenty-five years (25) of teaching. This book, which was entitled Linguistics for TESOL Theory and Practice, has 214 pages and nine (9) chapters. Each chapter is packed with a straightforward explanation of concepts that are both related to TESOL and linguistics.
Chapter 1 began with the basic and fundamental question, What is Language? In this chapter, the author discussed how language is defined by different authors like McWhorter and Ferdinand de Saussure. This book discussed how language from just merely a system to how language enables students to communicate and express what is on their minds.
Chapter 2, entitled Variation, answers the question What is English, and What is it Not? The author began this chapter by narrating how English in American and Europe spread to other countries and slowly covered up country after country. This may contribute to why many people are eager to study and teach English since many historical events led to English being spoken in many countries around the world, either as a first language, second language, lingua franca, creole, or pidgin. This chapter also discussed how American English and British English are the StandardEnglish to the acceptance of World Englishes from the author Braj Kachru. Kachruu explains how English varies from one country after the other and the use of his circles.
In the following chapter, the author discussed essential topics in English such as phonemes (Chapter 3), pronunciation beyond phonemes (Chapter 4), morphology (Chapter 5), grammar (Chapter 6), semantics (Chapter 7), pragmatics (Chapter 8), and discourse (Chapter 9). Each chapter contains a very comprehensive discussion about its topic. Graphs and tables are provided to give a better understanding of the concepts that are being discussed.
After identifying the book's points, issues, and concepts, the reviewer highly recommends it. This book serves the authors' goal: new teachers and seasoned teachers can share this book, and activities will be used right away. This book is very comprehensible. The author's writing style is very chill, and readers will not find it very intimidating. The reflection and suggested activities are beneficial and practical. Some books gave many activities in which you cannot be used in others, but this book gave activities that both the class and the teacher would enjoy and can also be done right away. Supplementary videos and other reading materials are also very timely and helpful. Pre-service teachers can gain new ideas, and seasoned teachers will also refresh the things they may already know
