Review of Provoking Thought - Memory and Thinking in ELT by Hall Houston

I would highly recommend this activity book for teachers who are curious about the thought process and its role in language acquisition. It would be especially useful for teachers with a good deal of experience who wish to deepen their understanding of the learning process, as well as have plenty of creative ideas to help spice up their lessons. The clear layout of the activities and step-by-step instructions can help any teacher take advantage of these ideas.

Review of Provoking Thought - Memory and Thinking in ELT by Hall Houston is chock full of learning activities for the busy ESL or EFL teacher. However, the book doesn't just provide useful English teaching activities. It strives to provide a wide range of activities for "teachers who want to help students improve their English as well as develop thinking skills that can useful in everyday life."

Provoking Thought is therefore not only a book to help out harried teachers, but also a guide to integrating deeper learning through a well developed guide to the thinking process as it relates to language learning. Luckily, it also does a great job of helping those harried English teachers with a wide range of activities that take little or no time to prepare.

The book is divided into five chapters which start off with well synthesized overviews of different aspects of thought and memory and how they can be leveraged to provided a richer learning experience. The central thesis of the book is that providing learning activities that foster thought and memory will provide more satisfying, and ultimately successful language acquisition. The ESL / EFL teacher is clearly the facilitator in this approach, and the book provides helpful information on how to put theory into practice.

Each of the activities provides the aims, time and preparation required, as well as step by step instructions to the activity. Often, text and/or suggestions are provided to get things going, but there are no photocopier handouts that accompany the activities. Activities are organized by the thinking / memory process they help encourage, so teachers looking for match-ups to a standard grammar-based curriculum might have some difficulties pairing the activities to specific grammar concepts. The real treasure of this book lies in its creative and original approach to providing activities that will help students become master of the language through the expression of their own thoughts.

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