Key Issues in Language Teaching – A comprehensive and extensively researched overview of key issues in language teaching today. This essential text for English language teachers surveys a broad range of core topics that are important in understanding contemporary approaches to teaching English as a second or international language, and which form the content of many professional development courses for language teachers.
A wide range of issues is examined, including a consideration of the nature of English in the world, the way the English teaching profession works, the development of teaching methods, the nature of classroom teaching, teaching the four skills, teaching the language system, and elements of a language program.
The elevation of English to the status of an international language has brought with it the reconceptualization of many traditional issues as well as the emergence of new insights in the language-teaching profession. All of these happened so quickly that busy practicing teachers may find it hard to keep abreast of all the significant developments in the field. Luckily, Jack C. Richards, a notable scholar in applied linguistics, has helped to put everything together neatly in this weighty book of 826 pages. As the title suggests, the book provides the most up-to-date encyclopedic account of the central issues that are both historically grounded and recently emerging in the field of teaching English as a second or foreign language.