style="font-size:15px;"> Who is this book for?
This book is for people who:
• are keen to teach and eager to learn
• realize that their own previous and continuing experience plays an important role in what they learn and how they teach
• recognize that learning from experience involves more than just having experience
• believe that understanding a situation is more important than abstract theory, but that learning new concepts and terminology can help them to understand a situation better
• want to turn their experience (as language learners and teachers) into knowledge, so as to improve the quality of their future teaching.
If you recognize yourself in any of the above, this book is for you.
About theory and practice
You may often hear a teacher say, It’s all right in theory, but it doesn’t work in practice. However, as authors and teachers, our position is that, if something is not useful in practice, then it is not all right in theory, either. In fact, this book moves away completely from the view that teaching is about applying theories. The position taken here is that:
• good practice is central
• practice can always be improved
• the most likely way for teachers to improve practice is to understand their experience of it
• to understand this experience, teachers need to be able to talk about it
• to talk about practice, they need to learn relevant concepts and terminology
• as they talk about their practice in new terms, teachers build their practical knowledge out of their experience
• this process of expressing and extending their understanding enables them to develop their theories of what is happening
• on the basis of this expanding knowledge, teachers can improve their practice.
So, this book does not ask teachers to apply theory. What it does propose is that it can be personally and professionally liberating to theorize one’s practice, in the sense of understanding and questioning the whys and wherefores of experience. The book aims to involve its readers in that process of developing in tandem what we know and what we do.
Good practice, but no best way
When we say that there is no single ‘best way’ of teaching English, that does not mean that each teacher has to start from scratch, as though there were no agreement on what counts as good teaching. This book, therefore, gives examples of a variety of reliable teaching methods related to sound principles. It makes suggestions, gives advice, and recommends titles for further reading.
On a daily basis, however, each teacher has to make appropriate decisions for his or her own particular classrooms. Good practice is an interaction among people in a situation, guided by teachers who use their intelligence, experience, knowledge, skills, sensitivity, creativity, and awareness to help other people learn.
In order to do that, you need to understand why this book makes the suggestions that it does, and on what basis you might want to move away from them. So, having offered reliable methods that you can depend on and alternatives for you to try out, we also introduce ways of thinking about the work that will help you develop your own style. You can make the book even more useful by doing the review activities at the end of each chapter.
About terminology, tests, and materials
The book is not tied down to any specific course or exam, but there is advice on classroom observation and on how to write about teaching, as well as explicit HIGHLIGHTING in the index of key concepts, as tested by the Cambridge ESOL Teacher Knowledge Test.
The expression, English Language Teaching, and its abbreviation, ELT, is used throughout the book to cover what is also referred to as Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL), Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL), and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL).
The examples used have been taken from genuine classroom interaction and actual published materials wherever possible, but some examples have been made up where either brevity or clarity seemed the more important considerations. The convention of using * to indicate non-standard English usage has been used throughout. Words in small capitals in the text are listed in the Glossary at the end of the book.
An open invitation
Teaching English to speakers of other languages in the twenty-first century is a global activity that requires local sensitivity in order to be at its best. In a similar spirit, this book is offered as a common basis for particular individual and collegial growth. The authors hope that it will help you establish the teaching identity you wish for, both in your own professional context and as a member of the international ELT community.
PART ONE
Familiarization
The first part of this book explores the English Language Teaching (ELT) classroom in order to examine what is to be found there. The main elements of ELT in any situation are:
• the people
• the processes of language learning and teaching
• aspects of the language itself
• the language learning materials usually available
• the classroom environment and kinds of equipment you might use.
At the same time, the way in which these elements are involved in practical teaching techniques will also be considered.
In one sense, you know all this already from your experience of such classrooms, either as a language learner, or as a language teacher, or both. But if you investigate that experience more carefully, what more might you learn?
While you work on the ideas in this book, think about the actual details of your own situation, or of situations you have known. Do the ideas in the book match up with your experience? Can you be specific?
The activities at the end of each chapter also summarize the chapter. They are meant to help you enrich your reading with your experience and enrich your experience with your reading. They will be of most use if you have a friend or colleague to discuss them with. In that way, you can develop your ideas as you talk and listen.
1
PEOPLE
This chapter looks at the people most obviously involved in ELT: learners and teachers. We start by looking at similarities and differences among learners wherever they are in the world and what this means for teachers. We then go on to look at teachers and the roles they take on in the ELT classroom.
Learners
All learners are the same: outside the classroom, they have a family, friends, work, study or play, responsibilities, a place to live, and all the joys and sorrows that come with those things.
