English Language Teaching in its Social Context

8 INTRODUCTIONkey theme in the paper by Assia Slimani which follows. From a teacher-researcherperspective, what is significant about her paper is the way in which she matches learners’own statements about what they believed they had learned, with thc evidence offered byanalyses of the recorded talk of the lessons concerncd.This provided Slimani with a meansof evaluating what themes, topics and learning items suggcsted by learners had actuallyfigured in their classroom interactions. Closely connected with this comparative mode ofanalysis is Michael Breen’s second paper in this collection where he concentrates on what herefers to as the different discourses of the classroom that learners need to ‘navigate’. Again,our cartographic metaphor offers perhaps some cxplanatory valuc. For Breen, the classroomis full of distinctive discourses, in part pedagogically oriented, in part socially, in partindividually. These discourses invoke a range of different meanings and contexts. Learnersare faced with the considerable challenge of finding their ways through this obscured terrain,drawing on their natural language instincts and analytical capacity to make sense of asemantically and pragmatically complex environment.Mapping the territory of second language learning and teaching has been the guidingmetaphor for this collection of papers.The cartography of this territory may be left as theprovince of researchers, or it may be also colonixd by reflective teachers eagcr to exploreand understand more of second language learning in action in their own classrooms.Indispensable to such a project, however, is the capacity to describe classroom interaction.This is the theme of the final paper in the collection, by Joan Swann, in which she setsout some procedures that English language teachers can uscfully follow if they wish todescribe, interpret and explain the interactive processes of their own classrooms or those ofcolleagues. We think that Swann’s paper is an admirable way of closing a theoretical and apractical collection of papers.What are the general principles that we may derive at the end of this particular journey? Fromthe argumcnts in the papers hcre, we would likc to identify thc following:A need to focus on thc distinct roles, activities and purposes for teachers and learnersthat are constructed through classroom practice;A need to recognize language learners as individuals, working together in theclassroom, but whose learning is shaped by the context of their wider expcricnce ofliving and learning outsidc the classroom;The requirement on teachers to take an active, guiding role in ‘scaffolding’ the learningof their students, remembering that this is not to downgrade in any way the need forlearners to become actively and increasingly engaged in the processes of classroomlanguage learning and their direction;An appreciation that the patterns of interaction between learners and teachers, and theuse of certain procedures by teachers, can have both positive and negative effects onlanguage learners.