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ISBN: 978 0 19 442360 1
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors and publisher are grateful to those who have given permission to reproduce the following extract of copyright material: p.214 Screenshot from Facebook (http://www.facebook.comhttp://www.facebook.com). Reproduced by kind permission of Facebook.
Sources: p.215 www.wikipedia.comwww.wikipedia.com; p.205 The British National Corpus
Illustrations by: Chris Pavely pp. 26, 38, 53, 56, 72, 87, 89, 106, 118, 135, 153, 172, 183, 188, 193.
This title originally appeared in the series Teaching Techniques in English as a Second Language, edited by Russell N Campbell and William E Rutherford (First Edition 1986; Second Edition 2000).
In memory of my parents, Elaine and Randolph Larsen, with heartfelt gratitude for their love and encouragement
In memory of my mother, Mavis Anderson, and in honor of my father, Elmer Anderson, who both inspired me to be curious and compassionate
Acknowledgments
We thank the readers of the first and second editions of this book. Your invaluable feedback and input have helped to shape this third edition.
The approach we have used in this book, as in the previous two editions, is based on our experience in teaching the methods/approaches course at the Master of Arts in Teaching Program at the School for International Training. This book would not have been written in the first place if it had not been for the influence of colleagues and students there. We are indeed grateful for the time we spent in this wonderful community.
Marti would like to thank Diane for being an inspiring teacher and mentor as well as beloved colleague and friend. Working with her on this project has been a great privilege.
Diane would like to thank Marti for her willingness to join her in this project and her ‘can-do’ attitude throughout. Diane is counting on Marti to make this project her own and carry it into the future.
We wish to thank our life partners for their encouragement and support.
For the initial faith they showed and for their continued encouragement and helpful suggestions, Diane acknowledges with gratitude the editors of this series, Russell Campbell and William Rutherford.
It has also been a pleasure working with the professionals at Oxford University Press. For this edition, we want to acknowledge Julia Bell’s helpfulness especially, and Ann Hunter’s and Keith Layfield’s skillful copy-editing.
In addition, this book has benefited from the fact that leading methodologists and colleagues have generously responded to requests for feedback on portions of this manuscript, either the previous edition or the current one. We are indebted to Earl Stevick (To the Teacher Educator), Shakti Gattegno (Silent Way), Georgi Lozanov, Allison Miller, and Tetsuo Nishizawa (Desuggestopedia), Jennybelle Rardin and Pat Tirone (Community Language Learning), James Asher (Total Physical Response), Marjorie Wesche and Ann Snow (Content-based Instruction), Elsa Auerbach (Participatory Approach), and Leo van Lier and Mat Schulze (Technology). Their comments have made us feel more confident of our interpretation and representation. Any errors of interpretation are entirely our responsibility, of course.
List of Acronyms
To the Teacher Educator
The Work of Language Teaching
The work of teaching is simultaneously mental and social. It is also physical, emotional, practical, behavioral, political, experiential, historical, cultural, spiritual, and personal. In short, teaching is very complex, influenced not only by these 12 dimensions and perhaps others, but also requiring their contingent orchestration in support of students’ learning. When language teaching in particular is in focus, the complexity is even greater, shaped by teachers’ views of the nature of language, of language teaching and learning in general, and by their knowledge of the particular sociocultural setting in which the teaching and learning take place (Adamson 2004). Indeed, research has shown that there is a degree of shared pedagogical knowledge among language teachers that is different from that of teachers of other subjects (Gatbonton 2000; Mullock 2006). Nonetheless, each teacher’s own language learning history is also unique. The way that teachers have been taught during their own ‘apprenticeship of observation’ (Lortie 1975) is bound to be formative. There is also the level of complexity at the immediate local level, due to the specific and unique needs of the students themselves in a particular class at a particular time, and the fact that these needs change from moment to moment. Finally, the reality of educational contexts being what they are, teachers must not only attempt to meet their students’ learning needs, but they must also juggle other competing demands on their time and attention.
Because of this complexity, although this is a book about the methods and methodological innovations of recent years, we do not seek to convince readers that one method is superior to another, or that there is or ever will be a perfect method (Prabhu 1990). The work of teaching suggests otherwise. As Brumfit observes:
A claim that we can predict closely what will happen in a situation as complex as [the classroom] can only be based on either the view that human beings are more mechanical in their learning responses than any recent discussion would allow, or the notion that we can measure and predict the quantities and qualities of all … factors.