My new book, Provoking Thought, is now in print. Similar to my first book, The Creative Classroom, this book is a collection of activities for the language classroom. Each chapter covers a different theme: thinking, memory, creativity, critical thinking, and expressing thought in writing.

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Reviews for Provoking Thought:

"I am very happy to have run across this book! After many years of teaching languages and researching language acquisition, I've finally found a single volume that integrates key principles of language development and practical classroom activities. Great work! Language acquisition requires lots spoken input, as well as "negotiation of meaning" (actively working out what other people are thinking and saying), "pushed output" (being compelled to express ideas and forms that you may not initially be comfortable expressing), "relearning" (revisiting partially learned content and making new connections), and "noticing the gap" (figuring out what you need to know before you can complete your idea or understand what someone else means). Provoking Thought provides concrete resources for doing ALL these things - and having a great time teaching actively. I'm sure students of all ages and backgrounds will benefit from their teachers using Hall Houston's book."

- Michael Rost, author of Teaching and Researching Listening

"A useful, teacher-friendly guide that is often fun to use for teachers and students alike. Teachers wishing to stimulate and enhance their students’ thinking skills will certainly find much to like in Provoking Thought: Memory and Thinking in ELT."

- William Mooney, Hwa Kang English Journal

"Provoking Thought shows instructors a myriad of ways to `get inside your students head', improve their understanding, increase their retention and memory, and get them to better express themselves- all things that can apply to any realm of teaching- but are especially important in the language learning environment where students don't have the luxury of communicating, and/or even thinking in their own language. Additionally, the book does not just show the teacher the principles of `Provoking Thought' but backs them up with proven and easy to understand lesson plans that apply them from Hall's own classroom. An informative read for not just ELT instructors, but other kinds of teachers as well."

- Chuck Johnson, author of Phat English

"If you’re any way interested in making your learners’ time in your classes more interesting & effective, you should get hold of the excellent Provoking Thought. Highly recommended."

- Alistair Dickinson, Developing Teachers

"A brilliant collection of out-of-the-box and totally engaging humanistic teaching gems...[Hall Houston] has both a deep understanding of typical teaching issues and an unerring knack of imagining thoughtful activities to stimulate our students' imaginations and keep their motivation high...if you want to zap up your lessons with tons of highly inventive new ideas, I'd certainly recommend Provoking Thought to all educators in need of inspiration or simply on the lookout for offbeat new teachbites."

- Sab Will, Hotchpotchenglish.com

"This systematic book demonstrates how to engage students and create a far more creative, dynamic English classroom. Filled with practical lesson plans and revealing interviews, this powerful teacher's resource inspired revisions to my course curriculum to include new exercises, and modify old classics. Part journalism, part teacher resource, and part philosophy, this original and reflective ELT textbook will "provoke thought" on how we teach English for both experienced and novice instructors. This is my favorite ELT book of 2009 - by far!"

- Eric Roth, author of Compelling Conversations

"A really great source of activities, especially for warmer and filler activities. The unique aspect of the activities in this book is that the author, Hall Houston, hasn’t just created activities to get the students to use new language. The activities he has chosen also make the students think about how they use language in general while teaching them ways to make the language learning process easier."

- Alison Susans, TEFL.net

"Written very much in the humanistic ELT tradition, it contains a bank of classroom tasks for adult learners...the tasks routinely practise a variety of language skills at one time...Without much imagination or preparation time from teachers, many of these tasks can be opened up, adapted and grafted together to suit particular class contexts and learners...there are likely to be quite a few tasks in this book which teachers in a variety of teaching situations should be able to use or adapt in their classes and which learners will benefit from, both linguistically and intellectually."

- Peter Lyn, English Teaching Professional

"There is great value, both pedagogically and monetarily, in Houston's resource. It certainly belongs on the shelves of most resource rooms I've been in...there is some great classroom material here as well as some pedagogy to help you brush up."

- Fiona Bramble, Fiona's ESL Blog

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Advance praise for Provoking Thought:

“An original, practical and very useful collection of activities. If you think that it's a good idea that your students think more for themselves then I think this book is for you.”

- Lindsay Clandfield, author of Dealing with Difficulties (Delta) and The Language Teacher's Survival Handbook (iT's)