Synopses & Reviews
The starting point for this collection is a chapter by Dick Allwright on the language learning and teaching classroom experience entitled
Six Promising Directions in Applied Linguistics. The other distinguished contributors respond to this discussion with their own interpretations and from their own experience. The collection problematizes prescription, efficiency, and technical solutions as orientations to classroom language learning. Complexity and idiosyncrasy, on the other hand, are recognized as central concepts in a move towards centralizing teachers' and learners' own understanding of "classroom life", in the contexts of language learning, adult literacy education and language teacher education.
Review
'Once in a while you come across an edited volume that is hard to put down. Understanding the Language Classroom is one such rare volume...you will soon find yourself wanting to read evermore, for the views expressed in this volume are as diverse as the sixteen individuals that contributed to the wealth of information contained in this well-crafted work...it is an important addition to anyone's list of edited volumes on second languages and the complexity of learning, and I recommend it most highly...' - The Reading Matrix
Table of Contents
Figures * Foreword--K.M.Bailey * Acknowledgements * Notes on Contributors * Introduction * Six Promising Directions in Applied Linguistics--D.Allwright * What Do We Mean by 'Quality of Classroom Life'?--S.N.Gieve & I.K. Miller * What Happens Between People: Who We Are and What We Do--A.Holliday * Managing Classroom Life--T.Wright * Who Does What In The 'Management of Language Learning'? Planning and the Social Construction of the 'Motivation to Notice'--D.Woods * Darwin and the Large Class--H.Coleman * Recognising Complexity in Adult Literacy Research and Practice--M.L.Tseng & R.Ivanic * Language Lessons: A Complex, Local Co-Production of all Participants--E.E.Tarone * Take 1, Take 2, Take 3: A Suggested Three-Stage Approach to Exploratory Practice--J.F.Fanselow & R.Barnard * Collegial Development in ELT: The Interface Between Global Processes and Local Understandings--M.P.Breen * Language Teacher Educators in Search of 'Locally Helpful Understandings'--M.A.A.Celani * Teaching and Learning in the Age of 'Reform': The Problem of the Verb--D.Freeman * References * Index