Learner English (Swan & Smith)
Learner English (Swan & Smith) is a recommended TEFL/TESOL title from the Global English reading list, available to buy on Amazon.
What it is. An edited reference from Cambridge University Press that goes first language by first language and sets out what speakers of each one predictably find hard about English. It is an edited collection: Michael Swan and Bernard Smith are the editors, and the chapters are contributed rather than written by the editors themselves.
How it is built. It proceeds one language or family at a time - among them German, French, Spanish, Greek, Russian, Polish, Arabic, Turkish, Japanese, Chinese and Korean. Every chapter follows the same shape: a short account of the language, then phonology, then orthography and punctuation, then grammar and vocabulary, each written as a direct comparison with English, closing on a list of typical errors. Which languages are covered is not identical from one edition to the next, so check the contents list for the one you actually need before you order a particular printing.
Who it suits. Any teacher facing a monolingual class, and any teacher who has just been told which country they are going to. A read through the relevant chapter before your first lesson tells you which sounds to expect trouble with, which tense will be over-used, and which article errors are systematic rather than careless.
What it does not do. It predicts difficulty; it does not diagnose an individual. Learners differ, and not every error a Spanish speaker makes is a Spanish error. It also stops at the point of prediction - what you do about the problem comes from your own teaching and from the error-correction work on your course.
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