Defining Issues In English Language Teaching

This text goes back to basics by investigating fundamental assumptions about the way English should be defined and taught as a foreign language. It looks at different attitudes to English teaching, and critically examines proposals for course content.

Issues in English Teaching invites primary and secondary teachers of English to engage in debates about key issues in subject teaching. The issues discussed include: *the increasingly centralised control of the curriculum, assessment, and pedagogy in the school teaching of English in England and Wales as a result of initiatives such as the National Literacy Strategy *new technologies which are transforming pupils' lived experience of literacy or literacies *the accelerating globalisation of English and the independence of other versions of English from English Standard English. A National Curriculum with a nationalist perspective on language, literacy and literature cannot fully accommodate English *what has become 'naturalised' and 'normalised' in English teaching, and the educational and ideological reasons for this *hierarchies that have been created in the curriculum and pedagogy, identifying who and what has been given low status, excluded or marginalised in the development of the current model of English. Issues in English Teaching will stimulate student teachers, NQTs, language and literacy co-ordinators, classroom English teachers and aspiring or practising Heads of English, to reflect on the identity or the subject, the principles and policies which, have determined practice, and those which should influence future practice.

The Routledge Encyclopedia of Language Teaching and Learning is an authoritative reference dealing with all aspects of this increasingly important field of study. Offering a comprehensive range of articles on contemporary language teaching and its history, it has been produced specifically for language teaching professionals and as a reference work for academic studies at postgraduate level. In this new edition, every single entry has been reviewed and updated with reference to new developments and publications. Coverage has been expanded to reflect new technological, global and academic developments, with particular attention to areas such as online and distance learning, teacher and learner cognition, testing, assessment and evaluation, global English and teacher education. Themes and disciplines covered include: Methods and materials, including new technologies and materials development Contexts and concepts, such as mediation, risk-taking in language learning and intercomprehension Influential figures from the early days of language teaching to the contemporary Related disciplines, such as psychology, anthropology and corpus linguistics It covers the teaching of specific languages, including Japanese, Chinese, Arabic and African languages, as well as English, French, German and Spanish. There are thirty five overview articles dealing with issues such as communicative language teaching, early language learning, teacher education and syllabus and curriculum design. A further 160 entries focus on topics such as bilingualism, language laboratories and study abroad. Numerous shorter items examine language and cultural institutions, professional associations and acronyms. Multiple cross-references enable the user to browse from one entry to another, and there are suggestions for further reading. Written by an international team of specialists, the Routledge Encyclopedia of Language Teaching and Learning is an invaluable resource and reference manual for anyone with a professional or academic interest in the subject.

There are several issues in English teaching on which applied linguists take very different positions: e.g. linguistic imperialism, the validity of critical discourse analysis, the pedagogic relevance of corpus descriptions of language, the theoretical bases of second language acquisition research, the nature of applied linguistics itself. This book presents exchanges between scholars arguing different positions, and directs attention to the key points at issue.

Authenticity is one of the most rampant buzzwords in ELT (English Language Teaching). Many have weighed in on what authenticity should mean and on how it may be achieved. The book at hand is an extensive analysis of authenticity as a term and as a concept within the academic field of ELT. The research data comprises virtually all definitions and conceptualizations of authenticity in the international ELT literature. However, only a limited number of texts contributes to what can be called an explicit negotiation of authenticity. A discourse analytical approach is taken to disentangle the hubbub of commentaries and to eventually extrapolate from it six distinct concepts which are attached to the term 'authenticity'. Michel Foucault's seminal theories are invoked, affording additional insights into discourse dynamics and power structures among individuals and institutions in ELT.

This collection of 16 reflective accounts and data-driven studies explores the interrelationship of religious identity and English Language Teaching (ELT). The chapters broaden a topic which has traditionally focused on Christianity by including Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim and non-religious perspectives. They address the ways in which faith and ELT intersect in the realms of teacher identity, pedagogy and the context and content of ELT, and explore a diverse range of geographical contexts, making use of a number of different research methodologies. The book will be of particular interest to researchers in TESOL and EFL, as well as teachers and teacher trainers.

This edited volume, envisioned through a postmodern and poststructural lens, represents an effort to destabilize the normalized “assumption” in the discursive field of English language teaching (ELT) (Pennycook, 2007), critically-oriented and otherwise, that identity, experience, privilege-marginalization, (in)equity, and interaction, can and should be apprehended and attended to via categories embedded within binaries (e.g., NS/NNS; NEST/NNEST). The volume provides space for authors and readers alike to explore fluidly critical-practical approaches to identity, experience, (in)equity, and interaction envisioned through and beyond binaries, and to examine the implications such approaches hold for attending to the contextual complexity of identity and interaction, in and beyond the classroom. The volume additionally serves to prompt criticality in ELT towards reflexivity, conceptual clarity and congruence, and dialogue.

The contributions to this volume explore several focal issues related to the global spread of English and their implications for English language teaching, providing both theoretical and empirical perspectives on recent research and implications in educational terms. The volume is divided into three thematic sections, namely "Developments in ELF research and pedagogic implications", "Raising teachers' awareness of ELF", and "ELF and ELT practices". The book provides up-to-date perspectives on the issues, implications and repercussions that findings in ELF research can have for ELT practices. The contributors are all scholars and researchers who have long been engaged in ELF-related research, and who have undertaken operational and practical work in the field, and, as such, offer novel perspectives on the effects of EFL research on the teaching and learning of English. The volume also presents the findings of innovative projects in teacher education, involving pre- and in-service teachers, providing exemplificative good practices of possible new routes into pluralistic, ELF-aware and ELF-oriented didactic perspectives.