pelajaran english

institutionally funded academic study on long

courses. As I read I found myself slipping into the

shoes of one or another in-service teacher with

whom I currently work, trying to view the content

through their eyes.

So, having reviewed some aspects of the book in

terms of its own implied aims, it would also be

useful to consider what characteristics a teacher

educator would be looking for in a book to

recommend for individual reading, to serve as a

reference for the working teacher’s bookshelf or to

use as a class text on in-service courses. I would

like to take five possible principles which could

usefully provide appropriate review criteria, and

judge the book against these.

A key principle one might look for is that the author

moves from the ‘approach’ of the earlier editions to

a broader perspective of ‘approaches’. This is not

to suggest that the style of the earlier versions was

dogmatic, but that the content was judiciously

selected to present a unified view of what

constitutes e¤ective practice. In contrast, a book

for working professionals or teacher education

courses would hopefully view ELT as a field in which

competing paradigms exist, and would raise

awareness of various solutions available for ‘the

sorts of problems that the professional may be

asked to solve’ (Kuhn 1963). The third edition

certainly holds to this principle in important

respects. Chapter 6 contains good examples. The

PPP procedure is carefully contrasted with others;

Scrivener’s ARC, Lewis’s OHE, McCarthy and

Carter’s III, and Harmer’s own ESA. The same

chapter also gives comment on Community

Language Learning, Silent Way, Suggestopaedia,

and Total Physical Response, as well as

Communicative Language Teaching, Task-based

Learning, and The Lexical Approach. All of these

accounts are accompanied by notes on further

reading, and some contain useful cross-referencing

to practical tasks in other chapters which

demonstrate the principles discussed. However, as

I read Chapter 6 I began to appreciate a substantial

di¤erence in this edition: that it provides the

breadth and comprehensiveness of a compendium

but, in doing so, loses the highly illustrative

presentation of the earlier editions. Breadth of

Reviews 403content versus depth of discussion and illustration

is an issue for all teachers’ handbooks, and the

author must have had some very diªcult choices.

The solution chosen—to go for breadth and to

point the way towards further literature—is an

understandable one, but there are risks. One is

that, without further explanation or example in the

form of tasks or lesson plans, it will be hard for

teachers to appreciate significant di¤erences. And

without a more developed critical perspective, it is

diªcult for teachers to appreciate the extent of

influence of each method/procedure, any links

between them, and the degree to which they are

considered mainstream or alternative. The author

is generally careful in this edition not to impose his

own views, but this chapter in particular would

benefit from a more critical approach.

The issue of illustration just mentioned suggests

another expectation we might have of a book for inservice education, namely that it provides data, in

the form of lesson plans, coursebook materials,

classroom transcripts, teachers’ reflections, learner

feedback, etc. Teacher educators will be glad that

the first two are provided throughout, though not in

such large measure as in the earlier editions. For

example, if we take the topic of reading, the 1982

version presented 19 practical examples, the 1991

edition 17, and this 2001 edition 7. Perhaps the

implicit rationale of the author in 1982 was that

such examples had to be garnered from a restricted

number of more progressive textbooks, whereas

now we might assume that working teachers

constantly encounter examples of good practice,

such as reading activities or authenticity of task in

relation to text. But is this true? In my own

experience it is not true for many teachers on

postgraduate courses in the UK and elsewhere,

who come from state education systems where the

method is grammar-translation and the text is a

vehicle for language study. While such teachers will

appreciate the level of discussion found in this

edition, they would probably also appreciate further

illustration and analysis. A third expectation,

especially for those involved in award-bearing

‘academic’ postgraduate courses for teachers, is

that a handbook points teachers in the direction of

the research studies and educational thinking

which underlie practice. On such courses it tends

to be a mark of scholarship that teachers appreciate

the development of ideas through successive

stages of research, thinking, and experience. In this

third edition there is, indeed, constant reference to

the literature. There is also excellent end matter to

each chapter, categorizing and detailing further

reading, including useful web sites.

However, it may be of concern to some potential

users that it is literature which contains synthesis

of ideas, albeit in specialist areas, rather than

original research studies or educational treatises.

Presumably this is because both the purpose and

emphasis of the book is practical. The references

for process writing, for example, are to White and

Arndt, Tribble, Porte, and Ur (all high quality

discussions) but not to Flower and Hayes, Perl,

Emig, or Raimes, to mention just a few originators

of ideas. For learner strategies and learner

autonomy some key primary sources, such as

Holec, Freire, Knowles, Chamot, and O’Malley are

missing. For some audiences, lack of primary

sources will not matter; for others it will.

A fourth criterion for an e¤ective in-service

handbook might be that it encourages teachers to

interpret educational theory in the context of their

own classrooms and institutions, and that

attention is paid to notions of appropriate

methodology and context sensitivity. It is

therefore good to read not only about the role of

cultural assumptions in our perceptions of

learning behaviour in Chapter 3, but also about

methods and culture in Chapter 6, where the

point is made that decision-making is only

e¤ective if it is in line with local values, needs,

conditions, and resources. Perhaps this could

have been followed through with greater

acknowledgement of less privileged conditions

throughout the chapters.

All of the above principles might hopefully result in

a book for in-service teachers which encourages

reflective thinking in the sense originally described

by Dewey (1933) as ‘an act of searching, hunting,

inquiring, to find material’ that will help to resolve

the doubts and perplexities we have in our

professional practice. The wealth of information,

the data provided by lesson plans and learner

materials give teachers opportunities for

comparison with their own experiences and for

‘articulating, examining, and revising their

assumptions’ (Ramani 1987). A particular strength

of the third edition is the set of tasks to follow up

the content of each chapter. These are of various

types, mainly to do with materials evaluation or

adaptation, and the design of lesson sequences

and activities. They could perhaps be

supplemented by more of the ‘enquiry’ type,

encouraging teachers to find out, through simple

procedures like tape recording, exactly what is

going on in their classrooms, and focusing on

learner responses in their own professional

context. They are placed as end matter to the book,

404 Reviewsand I hope they are not lost there as a resource to

the reader.

In summary, whether teachers dip into this book to

follow the threads of a particular issue or topic, or

whether they read it from cover to cover, they will

find it a useful, well-resourced discussion of ELT

practice. The new edition of The Practice of English

Language Teaching not only fulfils the aims implied

in its Preface, but also fits to a large extent the

criteria for an in-service handbook one might set

externally as a teacher educator. A review usually

discusses strengths and then lists criticisms. I’m

not sure that ‘criticism’ is the appropriate word for

some of the points I’ve made. It is simply that the

book has a set of characteristics which teacher

educators will need to match appropriately to the

existing knowledge and experience of teachers, and

the reasons for their reading. Individual teachers

will browse and be self-selecting. Teacher educators