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Innovation in English Language Teaching: A Reader
This reader provides both theoretical perspectives and practical tools for analysing and understanding how ELT classroom curricula can be analysed, developed and evaluated.
The commissioned and classic texts place curriculum change in a philosophical framework and also explore the political and institutional considerations. A series of case studies are provided to highlight both the role of the teacher in curriculum innovation and various processes of planning and implementation. The final section deals with evaluating curriculum and syllabus change.
The commissioned and classic texts place curriculum change in a philosophical framework and also explore the political and institutional considerations. A series of case studies are provided to highlight both the role of the teacher in curriculum innovation and various processes of planning and implementation. The final section deals with evaluating curriculum and syllabus change.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published November 16, 2000
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March 20, 2013
A paper towards the end of this collection offers a more Whiggish view of ELT history by focusing on the evolving syllabus of the Australian office responsible for teaching English to newly arrrived immigrants. It concludes with a discussion of the genre-based teaching which has evolved out of Michael A.K. Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics. I was sufficiently impressed with SFL to have based my project for the associated Open University course on a little bit of genre teaching myself. The results were far from impressive, not that I'm blaming SFL; on reflection the problem was an insuficient look at the grounds for my innovation in ELT. That a particular theory of language strikes me as more coherent, or more complete is not a particularly good reason for innovation in methodology.
It could be a general criticism of this collection that whereas there is plenty of attention on 'what' and 'how' to innovate in ELT there is insufficient discussion of 'why'. Apart from theoretical commitment, that is; I suppose this is part of the much discussed separation between academics and professional teachers, the former priortises theory, the latter practice. As a practising teacher I find myself 'innovating' on a micro scale from lesson to lesson and from year to year. The reason for all of this innovation is the need to find a way of getting my students - and to be honest myself - to respond to language in a positive way. And this is where Howatt's parallel with fashion may come in - we all of us need novelty, and I think that is a legitimate need, it only becomes silly when we dress it up in theoretical clothes.
It could be a general criticism of this collection that whereas there is plenty of attention on 'what' and 'how' to innovate in ELT there is insufficient discussion of 'why'. Apart from theoretical commitment, that is; I suppose this is part of the much discussed separation between academics and professional teachers, the former priortises theory, the latter practice. As a practising teacher I find myself 'innovating' on a micro scale from lesson to lesson and from year to year. The reason for all of this innovation is the need to find a way of getting my students - and to be honest myself - to respond to language in a positive way. And this is where Howatt's parallel with fashion may come in - we all of us need novelty, and I think that is a legitimate need, it only becomes silly when we dress it up in theoretical clothes.
Displaying 1 of 1 review