English Language Teaching in its Social Context

2 INTRODUCTIONprocess evoke and create shared knowledge and use it for making sense together, in a senseconstructing the overarching context for successful language learning.No collection of papers about English LanguageTeaching can hope to be comprehensive.The world of ELT in its diversity, of learners, teachers, of schools and institutions, cultures,countries, contents, and pedagogies cannot bc captured even in a series ofthree books.Whata structured collection of selected papers like this can do is to map out the territory, and fillin enough of the topographical features so that the beginning reader can obtain an overallimpression of its cartography, while the experienced reader can bring hcr or his own richexperience of travelling and map-making to fill in the details of those territories of whichthey have special awareness and knowledge. We need to be cautious, however. No map isneutral.Thc first maps were products of the cartographers of Europe, so their world was aEuro-centric one, and, in their own Sino-centric way, those devised by the Chinese were justas biascd. Readers have been alerted, therefore, to a natural tendency towards a particularprojection. Our ELT map in this book offers a social and socio-cultural perspective onlanguage learning. At the same time, maps have to be true to thcir territories, and it wouldbe absurd to ignore a psychological perspectivc on language learning, one which highlightedthe cognitive processes of the individual learner, engaging with the intricacies of a newcommunicative code. Maps are not only to be followed, however. They have always servedas incentives for further and more rcfincd map-making. In the same way, teachers do not justfollow a sct of presented instructions, they actively create and chart their own progressthrough the territories of learning in their own classrooms. Accordingly, it is important thatsuch a focused collection as this gives a major placc to classroom-based research, in particular,research which examines the processes of teaching-and-learning, using that evidence whichis most to hand in classrooms, namely the productive talk of teachcrs and learners.What a collection of papers needs to have, is an argument, one which carries the readcrtowards engagement with particular issues and questions, offering through its structure justthat amount of guidance necessary. Ultimately, though, whether we have gauged the rightdegree of that guidance required, or simply led readers by the nose, only you can say. Whatwe have done as a guiding structure is to take three main perspectives on English languageteaching: an explanation of some hypotheses about language learning and its processes; aninterpretation of learncrs’ anti teachers’ strategies and goals in the classroom context, theirpurposes and their beliefs; and, finally, a description and analysis of teachers’ and learners’behaviours and practices, who they are, what they do, what they think about languagelearning and what their attitudes are.How is language learning explained?The argument begins with a focus on the explanation oflanguage learning with a paper byRosamund Mitchell and Florence Myles. The authors outline a model of second languagelearning and identify its key factors.Thrce key questions underpin all these factors: What isthe nature of language? What is the nature of the language learning process? What arethe characteristics of the second language learner! In addressing these questions the paperidentifies the complementarity of nature and nurture in language learning, and relates whatresearch has to say about language learning with what we know about learning moregenerally. At the same time, the paper highlights one of the abiding questions about teachingand learning, the tension between yaternaticity and creativity in learners’ performance.Language learning is clearly not just about processes. It involves learners. So, asking questionsabout who thcsc learners are and what learner characteristics and factors affect language