A History of English Language Teaching (Second Edition) Publisher: Oxford University Press Authors: a P R Howatt with H G Widdowson Despite the Fact That I Could Obviously Judge the Topic of the Book from the Title,

A History of English Language Teaching (Second Edition) Publisher: Oxford University Press Authors: a P R Howatt with H G Widdowson Despite the Fact That I Could Obviously Judge the Topic of the Book from the Title,

A History of English Language Teaching (Second Edition)

Publisher: Oxford University Press Authors: A P R Howatt with H G Widdowson Despite the fact that I could obviously judge the topic of the book from the title, this history of TEFL and TESOL was in no way what I expected before I started reading it. How that was a good and bad thing [...]

Reviewed by Alex Case

Publisher: Oxford University Press
Authors: A P R Howatt with H G Widdowson

Despite the fact that I could obviously judge the topic of the book from the title, this history of TEFL and TESOL was in no way what I expected before I started reading it. How that was a good and bad thing for me is examined below, along with some ideas on who else this book might be of interest to and a summary of some of the most interesting information in it.

Perhaps the greatest surprise for me was the fact that Section 2 (Aspects of English Language Teaching since 1900), which already takes me back further than almost anything I thought touched on my teaching today, takes up only 140 pages of a 417 page book- and that includes 20 pages of A Perspective on Recent Trends by H G Widdowson. With 50 pages being taken up with the Introduction, A Chronology of English Language Teaching, the bibliography and the index, that leaves 220 pages for the teaching of English as a second and foreign language before 1900, a time that I had hardly knew our job existed in. This is dealt with in two parts (1400-1800 and 1800-1900), divided in sections on Practical Language Teaching, On ‘Fixing’ Language, English Language in the Empire, and English Language Teaching in Europe. The post-1900 part is divided into sections on “…the Making of a Profession” and “Aspects of…”. Each section is further divided into chapters, with 21 chapters in total in the book.

The first chapter (Practical Language Teaching- The Early Years) and the story of English Language Teaching starts with most people in England becoming monolingual in...

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