Teacher Discussion Forums

Mr. Fluff mentioned Howatt's A History of ELT, but looking at the table of contents for this book, it is too extensive for my current interests. I'd rather get a more general, user-friendly book that gives a gentler overview. Is Richards and Rogers such a book? If not, please give me a title I can hunt down. Something that gets into the history of how English has been taught as a foreign language throughout the world.

During my college time, I had learnt some English teaching theory, and I know some famous educator, you can search them through the Internet, and you can have a look. If you have some questions, you can send me e-mails.

The R&R should be fine for your purposes, Brad, but if I think of anything else I'll post the title here.

So Fluff, the R&R book you're referring to is etitled "Approaches and methods in language teaching", no?

Does this get into the history of EFL teaching around the world?

Yup, that's the title. Make sure you get the Second edition (2001?) though, as it expands substantially upon the original (which was published way back in 1986 IIRC, and therefore a bit out of date). I made some comments about it on your "Berlitz immerision" thread.

As for history, sure, there is enough, a fair bit (indeed, there has to be some) in the book in order for it to be able to introduce and contextualize (i.e. locate in its historical context) each method, and the "falling away" in the Second edition of, for want of a better word, "fringe" methods means that the essential nature of ELT surfaces more clearly (not that it is nowadays entirely monolithic, but still), so this can at a pinch substitute for Howatt (though Howatt is still interesting for anyone wanting to know that bit more about even halfway empirical influences such as the 'vocabulary control movement').

Oh, and for a potted yet still reasonably interesting read with a useful list of References and Further Reading, perhaps check out Adamson's chapter ('24: Fashions in Language Teaching Methodology') on pages 604-622 of the Blackwell Handbook of Applied Linguistics (this chapter is however unfortunately not entirely previewable on Google Books at the moment of typing).

Scott Thornbury seems to be very interested in the history of ELT at the moment, so you can pick up loads of nice nuggets from his blog and here:

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/blogs/scott-thornbury

Thanks for the link, Alex - seems interesting from the quick glance I've just had, so I'll try to take a closer look sometime soon at what Thornbury, and all those who've replied/commented on his bloggings, have written!

Thank you for the detailed answers, Fluff.
Now then, on a somewhat related topic, if you were to answer my other post about the Orff method, in your fluffyhamster kind of way, perhaps you could start another interesting discussion

The only Orff I've heard of is the composer, so I can't really comment on your other thread, Brad! (I could of course Google away and try to form an opinion, but then I'd only know as much as the next guy, and doubtless less than you. Has it occured to you to start a thread in which you give us your thoughts on a topic, rather than apparently always preferring to ask us ours? ).

By the way, McArthur's Oxford Companion to the English Language has little histories of ELT in (entries for) specific countries e.g. China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia etc.

Right-e-o Fluff! I'll go ahead and respond to my own post by telling what little I know about the topic ( I presumed you guys would know a lot more) and round it off with a link to boot! Exciting stuff, eh?

Yes, it's exciting, waiting to see if a thread will be interesting!