This website is dedicated to all English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers.
PDF #77 – Algeo, John – The Origins and Development of the English Language 6th ed. 2010
This book continues to focus on the facts of language rather than on any of the various contemporary theoretical approaches to the study of those facts. The presentation is that of fairly traditional grammar and philology, so as not to require students to master a new theoretical approach at the same time they are exploring the intricacies of language history.
PDF #76 – John Algeo – The Earliest English Grammars, 1985
We who are the heirs of four hundred years of English grammar writing and who benefit from the intense recent speculation on grammatical theory (much of it focusing upon English) can hardly appreciate the difficulty faced by the earlist English grammarians.
While Western states like Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and Idaho all were likely to have German speakers, places like Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas are home to a large population of households that speak Vietnamese.
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PDF #75 – Sinclair 1988 Lexical Syllabus
An EFL syllabus is a set of headings indicating items which have been selected, by a language planner or materials writer, to be covered in a particular part of the curriculum or in a course series. Its content is usually identified in terms of language elements and linguistic or behavioural skills. Sometimes there is a methodology built into it, although syllabus and methodology are in principle distinct.
PDF #74 – Joseph Priestley – The Rudiments of English Grammar Adapted to the Use of Schools, London 1772
Language is a method of conveying our ideas to the minds of other perfons; and the grammar of any language is a collection of observations on the structure of it, and a system of rules for the proper use of it.
On a given day, Joonas Korpisalo might be speaking Finnish with Markus Nutivaara. Pierre-Luc Dubois, Alexandre Texier and David Savard could be chatting in French. And Vladislav Gavrikov and Elvis Merzlikins might be teaching Dubois a new Russian word or two.
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This article offers an overview of historical developments in EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teaching methodology over the last 250 years. Being based on periods rather than methods, it is intended as an alternative kind of account to the ‘method mythologies’ which have tended to dominate professional thinking for the last thirty years.
Since the publication of Howatt (1984) thirty years ago there has only been a limited amount of original research into the history of English language teaching for speakers of other languages. This contrasts strongly with work in relation to French, which has burgeoned over the last twenty-five years (see Besse, this issue). The historical research studies on The History of Teaching English as a Foreign Language which have been carried out since 1984 go some way towards fulfilling Stern’s (1983: 83) call for ‘studies of particular aspects’, although much remains to be investigated. Some important monographs have been published about English teaching in particular countries, largely in languages other than English; note especially the work published in German by Klippel (1994); Lehberger (1986; 1990); and
Macht (1986; 1987; 1990). Indeed, since 2000 there has been a marked increase in substantial doctoral work on the history of English teaching in Germany (Doff, 2002; 2008; Franz, 2005; Kolb, 2013; Ruisz, 2014), mainly under the supervision of Friederike Klippel at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. In Japan, no fewer than two academic societies have existed in recent times for the history of English studies there: Nihon eigakushi gakkai (The Historical Society of English Studies in Japan) and Nihon eigokyoikushi gakkai (The Historical Society of English Teaching in Japan).
However, in the UK, just three doctoral theses over the last thirty years — to our knowledge — have adopted a fully historical approach to aspects of English language teaching (Evans, 2003; Smith, 2005a; Hunter, 2009). There has been additional foundational work by Howatt & Smith (2000; 2002) and by Smith (1999; 2003; 2005b), and the development of the ‘ELT Archive’ at the University of Warwick (<http://www.warwick.ac.uk/elt_archive>) has begun to raise consciousness of needs for historical research within the wider profession. Finally, monographs on the history of two specialist areas — EFL learner dictionaries (Cowie, 1999) and English language testing (Spolsky, 1995; Weir et al., 2013) — deserve to be highlighted, as does a recent comprehensive history of the teaching of refugees and immigrants in Britain (Rosenberg, 2007).
I am discussing some of the topics of this site in my Youtube channel.
It is important for instructors and staff to understand the various cultures represented in their student populations.
View language and culture as a lens for learning for all students, in particular, English Language Learners. All teachers, regardless of their classroom demographics, should engage in culturally relevant teaching to stimulate getting students to the deepest levels of thinking and the highest levels of personal achievement.
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PDF #72 – Charles Knight – William Caxton The First English Printer, London 1877
To the celebration of the Quarcentenary o f the Introduction o f Printing into England.
Apps offer languages – real or invented – not popular enough to be taught at evening classes or most universities. Esperanto, invented to create world peace, Avatar’s Na’vi, Elvish and Star Trek’s Klingon are all on the table. Guy Baron, head of modern languages at Aberystwyth University, said there had been “snobbishness” towards apps, but wants technology used in teaching. Learn more about this topic reading on BBC.