The Cambridge Guide to Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages is a book that works as comprehensive overview to everything a teacher needs to know about TESOL. It is useful for those about to embark on some form of TEFL training.

The book calls on various leaders in the field of TESOL to write individual chapters on a wide range of topics. Amongst other things the text covers teaching methods, syllabus design, using computers and the Internet to aid teaching as well as how to introduce literature into the classroom. Each chapter also contains a useful bibliography section.

This is a great all round book for teachers who want to gain a grasp of the main issues in TESOL.

Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching is a useful book to help teachers understand a variety of TEFL teaching methods.

The text reads more like a history of language teaching rather than a practical guide that can used in the classroom. It’s a book that would suit more experienced teachers or those doing a higher qualification such as the DELTA or an MA in Linguistics. It is a helpful guide to understanding the different ways you can approach learners with the same material.

The book serves as a critique to the various language teaching methods around the world. Methods such as grammar translation and communicative language teaching are surveyed in the text. There is also a section on multiple intelligences. This chapter explains the theory of different intelligences and how a teacher can make their lessons appeal to each one.

Looking for some TEFL lesson ideas? Five-Minute Activities is a fantastic book with lots of ideas to fill in those gaps at the end of the class, and gives plenty of activities to augment various parts of your lesson.

This book has almost 100 original activities that you can adapt for different levels of learner to help reinforce the language points of your class. The book is best for intermediate levels and above. The activities generally do take a little more than five minutes of class time, on average 10-15 minutes, though preparation time is usually less than five minutes and many activities take no time at all to prepare.

Each activity specifies which language issue it is focused on and there are also examples of different variations of the activities. You can use the book to make a rather dry topic entertaining. Also it can be used to introduce an alternative approach to learning the same material, if the class you are teaching has a set course book for example.

This book is something you will forever be dipping into. It’s a really good book to take to all your classes, as a back up in case you run out of material or as a good way to change to pace of your lesson and wake up the students.

Teaching Tenses by Rosemary Aitken is a handy book for TEFL teachers to use in preparation for introducing tenses to students.

The book is comprehensive and all the different tenses are logically explained. Lots of examples and uses are given to put the rules into context and help the teacher convey the meaning more clearly to the students. Alongside this tables and time lines are included as another way to present and understand the various tenses.

This is a good book for new teachers and those on the TEFL course to get hold of but also one that is going to be used regularly throughout a teachers career. There is a lot of photocopiable material included that can be introduced into classes. This contains helpful drawings that can be used to elicit tenses from students.

Are you keen to teach English as a foreign language but think your grammar will let you down? Then a good book for your TEFL course would be English Grammar for Dummies.

The book is not written exclusively for TEFL, but is a good starting point for budding teachers who currently have a very poor grasp of grammar or are worried about this aspect of the course. The book starts off explaining very basic concepts and does so in an easy to follow and lighthearted way. There are tons of examples and lots of good advice. As you gain confidence more difficult grammatical concepts are introduced. All aspects of English grammar are covered in a very comprehensive way, from adverbs to adjectives, punctuation to pronouns.

If your grammar is fairly good then I would recommend a more involved grammar book such as English Grammar In Use to start out with.