>Christopher Brumfit
Individual Freedom in Language Teaching
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ISBN-13: 978 0 19 4421744
Printed in China
For F, R, and S
Published in this series:
Bachman: Fundamental Considerations in Language Testing
Bachman and Palmer: Language Testing in Practice
Brumfit and Carter (eds): Literature and Language Teaching
Canagarajah: Resisting Linguistic Imperialism in Language Teaching
Cook: Discourse and Literature
Cook: Language Play, Language Learning
Cook and Seidlhofer (eds.): Principle and Practice in Applied Linguistics
Ellis: SLA Research and Language Teaching
Ellis: The Study of Second Language Acquisition
Ellis: Understanding Second Language Acquisition
Howatt: A History of English Language Teaching
Jenkins: The Phonology of English as an International Language
Kern: Literacy and Language Teaching
Kramsch: Context and Culture in Language Teaching
Lantolf (ed.): Sociocultural Theory and Second Language Learning
Nattinger and DeCarrico: Lexical Phrases and Language Teaching
Phillipson: Linguistic Imperialism
Seliger and Shohamy: Second Language Research Methods
Skehan: A Cognitive Approach to Language Learning
Stern: Fundamental Concepts of Language Teaching
Widdowson: Aspects of Language Teaching
Widdowson: Practical Stylistics
Widdowson: Teaching Language as Communication
Preface
Two of my research students, both practising teachers, are partly responsible for the shape and form of this book. They both remarked on the consistency of my ideas over the years, and I felt slightly hurt, as if I had been accused of failing to learn from experience.
But when I read papers I had written over the past 20 years, and when I examined the theses written by my students, I realized that there is a pretty consistent view of language in the world struggling to emerge. Articulating this in full theoretical detail is a task which will require substantial leisure and some years of further work. But in the meantime, the chapters of this book attempt to show how these ideas can affect the practice of language teaching (broadly conceived to include work on literature and culture also) in many different settings.
First, though, it may be helpful to summarize the key beliefs underlying the arguments in this book. Most are defended in detail in the following pages, and all underlie the recommendations for improvement of practice that are offered. Each chapter may be regarded as an attempt to address a particular setting, and a particular educational problem, in the light of the following set of beliefs (chapters which argue these points in detail are indicated) :
• the rules of language use, and much of the language system, are inherently fluid and negotiable, but the teaching of languages has to act as if they are stable and unnegotiable in order to offer a supportive base for learners (Chapters 1 and 6)
• because of this paradox, language teaching risks becoming repressive by relying too heavily on generalizations that are no more than artefacts of language study in the past, and thus preventing language being used creatively to express individual and group difference (Chapters 2 and 4)
• because experience (of language and the world) is in constant flux, scholars, teachers, and learners have to cope with the complex and confusing data they receive through their senses; they do this by simplifying, generalizing, and by deriving principles, and all of these involve distortion of experience, though that distortion can be done in a more or less principled way (Chapter 3)
• because of the risk of distortion, all principles, generalizations, and examples derived from experience need to be thought about and discussed with fellow human beings; through such discussion we can reduce the risk of exploitation by anticipating ill effects and error by minimizing confusion or idiosyncratic interpretation (Chapters 12 and 13)
• because
