179 TESOL QUARTERLY Vol. 37, No. 1, Spring 2003 REVIEWS TESOL Quarterly welcomes evaluative reviews of publications relevant to TESOL professionals. Edited by ROBERTA J. VANN Iowa State University The Practice of English Language Teaching (3rd ed.). Jeremy Harmer. Essex, England: Longman, 2001. Pp. xii + 370. ■ Harmer’s third edition of The Practice of English Language Teaching (PELT) is a guide to the teaching of World English for the 21st century. It presents a comprehensive view of English language teaching theories and practices that is both carefully researched and imbued with uncom- mon sense. As such, it represents a refreshing alternative to ESOL methods textbooks that limit their focus to a single privileged (and predictable) methodological approach or a narrow set of national language concerns. At the same time, its comprehensiveness underlines the problem of trying to fit a bit of everything related to “the science and art of teaching English” (p. x) as an additional language between the covers of one general methods text. PELT runs the gamut of issues related to teaching ESOL, from the current role of English in world affairs to the classroom behavior problems of unmotivated learners. As such, it leads something of a double life; while it advertises itself as a teacher’s guide to be used for in- service training programs and postgraduate courses, its encyclopedic coverage results in a somewhat awkward compromise between a refer- ence work and a course textbook. Indeed, given its nine major sections and 24 chapters, it is difficult to imagine the traditional semester-length college course that could do justice to the entire book. PELT is intended for an audience with some previous EFL classroom experience or training, but even though it is most definitely not an entry- level text, it is written in a clean, easygoing style, fully accessible and relatively free of jargon. Harmer has a light touch that dispels the notion that professional writing must be dry and humorless (his section on behaviorist theory is titled “Pulling Habits out of Rats”). Like the writing style, the layout is clean and attractive, with numerous graphs, tables, and