Jeremy Harmer ELT

Issues in language teaching methodology

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about

I am a teacher, teacher trainer, speaker, facilitator in the world of English as a Foreign Language. Among my books are The Practice of English Language Teaching, How to Teach English, & Essential Teacher Knowledge (all published by Pearson), Jeremy Harmer’s 50 Communicative Activities (published by Cambridge University Press & Assessment – who also published three Extensive reading titles of mine, The Double Bass mystery – level 2 – Trumpet Voluntary – level 6 – and Solo Saxophone). I am also one of the authors for Jetstream a 6-level adult course published by Helbling.) I am also a performer of music, both classical and as a singer-songwriter in the folk tradition.

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  • This writing business. Why?

    Why do people write? Why especially would anyone write when all you have to do is to ask Chat GPT to do it for you? Speaking personally, why am I still writing at all? Is it just a hangover from an earlier time and I’m just going on repeating patterns of behaviour like all older…

  • What’s the point of books in Digiland?

    I like writing books. I’ve been doing it for years. Despite the loneliness, the impossibly hard slog, the fear of going blank, the emotional ups and downs and the backache, the writing process is almost always challenging and invigorating (except on the days when it isn’t!). Add to that the joy of meeting someone who…

  • When is vanity professional?

    That may seem like a very strange question to ask, and before we go on this little piece is nothing to do with modern ‘influencers’ who peddle beauty products. At least I don’t think it is! Recently I was at a big conference and in one of those convivial publisher evening events I asked a…

  • A never-ending saga of competing interests and passions: why assessment provokes so powerfully

    Recently I was asked to do a survey of some of the Cambridge Elements for Language Teachers for the ELT Journal (Harmer 2025) and one of the titles I looked at was Assessment in Language Teaching (Phakiti & Leung 2024). It sets out some of the basic issues in assessment but, and perhaps uniquely (and surprisingly in many ways,…

  • Hello Grammar, are you there?

    Back then grammar was all the rage! I mean, of course, in the 1970s and 80s. It certainly formed the way I started teaching. Most lessons I offered (or was asked to offer) were based on a grammar structure, with vocabulary slotted in so that students could make sentences to talk about something. Of course…

  • Nirvana or Apocalypse: assessing Artificial intelligence in the world of language teaching

    “I first encountered the term Artificial intelligence (AI) in the early 1980s,” writes Nicky Hockly in her recent book Essentials for Using Artificial Intelligence (Hockly 2024: vii) and as she points out “With the amount of hype and hysteria that surrounded the arrival of ChatGPT in 2022, you’d be forgiven for thinking that AI is a completely…