areas of critical discourse analysis, educational

linguistics, academic literacies, and the use of

multimedia applications in language education.
Email: mbessie@enl.uoa.gr
An Introduction to Foreign Language Learning and
Teaching
K. Johnson
Pearson Education 2001, 336 pp, 17.99
isbn 0 582 29086 4
This is the 18th book in the Learning about Language
series. The series editors, Professors Georey
Leech and Mick Short, had dealt with many facets
of language before they arrived at foreign language
education. At last! But how does An Introduction to
Foreign Language Learning and Teaching t into the
academic climate of its predecessors in the series?
Very well, Im glad to say, making good the promise
in the blurb, that An Introduction to Foreign
Language Learning and Teaching presents an
engaging, student-friendly guide to the elds of
foreign language learning and teaching.
Speaking of student friendliness, it is not always
easy to achieve. In my experience, there are two
types of bad textbooks. At one end of the spectrum
is the textbook which is as dicult to digest as a
Persian carpet. At the opposite end, we nd texts
written in such simple language that they seem to
regard the readership as a bunch of mentally (and
linguistically) retarded infants. However, Keith
Johnson knows the ropes, and the result is a very
ne book.
Another yardstick for classication is whether it is
an edited or a single-author volume. Edited
textbooks are motivated, I suspect, by the desire to
evade responsibility: Look, our eld has too many
ramications to tackle single-handedly, runs the
editors apologia. The trouble is that such
textbooks, despite painstaking editorial work, tend
to be uneven in terms of discourse, style, and
content, and beset with gaps and overlaps. Single-
author textbooks, on the other hand, are usually
more coherent, and thus more apt to give a
homogeneous picture of the intricate relationships
between the components of TESOL. To be sure,
Johnsons book is both well-informed and
coherent.
An Introduction to Foreign Language Learning and
Teaching consists of three parts, which literally
follow the constituent words of the title. Whereas
Part 1 is concerned with setting the scene, Parts 2
and 3 respectively deal with aspects of learning and
teaching the foreign language. Each part is roughly
50 pages longer than the previous one, indicating,
as it were, that the authors main focus is on
teaching.
Part 1 illustrates the complexities of the
teaching/learning operation by introducing ve
dierently motivated learners, and ve well-known
teaching methods. OK, but what is there to learn?
the author then asks, and in reply provides a
framework built around three competencies:
systemic, sociolinguistic, and strategic. He goes on
to clarify the conceptual dichotomy between
behaviourism and mentalism, and the eect this
conict has on the practice of language teaching.
Part 1 concludes with a brief description of the
sociolinguistic revolution, which paved the way
for the spread of communicative language
teaching.
The pivotal theme of Part 2 is a comparative
analysis of acquisition and learning. Using learners
errors as a springboard, the author presents
Krashens acquisition model and the critiques
thereof, and Schumanns acculturation theory, and
then examines the distinctive features of
acquisition versus formal learning. Shifting the
focus from the learning process to the learners
personality, the last two chapters of Part 2
respectively examine individual dierences
between learners, both cognitive and aective, and
the issue of what being a good language learner
entails.
In Part 3, various aspects of language teaching are
highlighted. First, we are taken on a brisk walk
through recent times, from the grammar
translation method to task-based teaching. After a
brief examination of the political level of decision-
making, issues of syllabus design are discussed,
with the pride of place granted to the structural and
the notional/functional syllabus. While the main
concerns of the methodology chapter are the three
Ps (the presentation, practice, and production of
new language items), the skills chapter separately
discusses comprehension and production skills,
paying special attention to the development of the
writing skill. Closing the teaching loop, as it were,
the last chapter describes basic types and concepts
of language testing, and ways of testing each
specic language skill.
One laudable feature of the book is the authors
balanced judgement of the role that theories and
methods have played during the history of
Reviews 333
language teaching and learning. In displaying such
theories and methods, he attaches no more
importance to any of them than they deserve. As he
points out, We may be tempted to describing one
as better than another, as if it were possible to
apply some absolute criteria to them. But in fact
these theories and methods are constructs which
have more or less plausibility, more or less power,
but not more or less objective truth. They are
nearer to political beliefs than they are to empirical
science (p. 209). I consider this as a tactful way of
expressing his reservations about missionaries,
gurus, and zealots.
Johnson hastens to add, however, that the rejection
of a best way of doing things should equally apply
to ourselves, arguing that we may be just as
culturally determined and as relative as the views
we nd so strange in other cultures. Really wise
teachers are blessed with the sense to recognize
what their own ctions are. And to recognize them
as ctions, not facts (p. 209). In other words, his
aim is to describe, not prescribe; his approach
consists in putting forward an argument, analysing
it in detail and then presenting counter-arguments.
Indeed, this is the only fair way of writing a
textbook: the uninitiated should have their eyes
opened, not blinkered.
As pointed out above, the book is student-friendly.
This implies, on the one hand, that the author
manages to translate complex ideas into digestible
discourse, instead of sending the reader o to the
original sources, which in many cases would be far
too dicult to read, and often even to obtain. On
the other hand, student-friendliness is ensured by
provision of examples and activities framed in
boxes, funny anecdotes, and a reliable system of
cross-referencing. Thanks to the authors knack for
avoiding unnecessary details and dry taxonomies,
the reader will see the forest for the trees; after all,
TESOL is a discipline where all the branches grow
out of the same trunk. As I was reading the book, I
sometimes resented omissions, but then I asked
myself: So what? You cant have everything, can
you? Unity in a textbook is more important than
division.
Nevertheless, the absence of certain names and
topics strikes the eye. Where are Dewey and Piaget,
Bakhtin and Vygotsky, Firth and Searle, Jackson and
Lortie? And what about contemporary applied
linguists, such as Carter, Freeman, Kramsch,
Larsen-Freeman, Swales, or van Lier? Why doesnt
he refer to Schn (reective practice), Celce-Murcia
(language competencies), Lewis (lexical chunks),
and Sinclair (language corpora)? What accounts for
the silence regarding more recent work done by the
Council of Europe? Why is task-based teaching
given such short shrift, when far less cutting-edge
ideas are accorded long pages? How come the role
of computers in language education is mentioned
in one single note, and the only book referred to in
this rapidly-developing area was published in 1984?
Another critical remark concerns the bibliography
more directly: I perceive it as somewhat outdated.
Only 28 per cent of the references come from the
1990s, while 31 and 20 per cent respectively are
from the 1980s and 1970s. As if justifying his
position, Johnson writes: We often view the past as
moving from extreme to extreme, believing it is
only today that we are enlightened enough to adopt
some sensible middle position! (p. 49). I would
nd it easier to accept his warning if the perspective
from which he surveyed the past were more rmly
rooted in the present.
My other quibble has to do with form rather than
content. The tinted and clear boxes occasionally get
mixed up (11.7 and 13.1), and the system of
underlining new pieces of terminology is arbitrary
and often inconsistent. What is more, at one point
a list of six items is promised, but only two get
referred to (p. 238). Firstly is not followed by
Secondly and possibly Thirdly (p. 35), and out of
four names mentioned, only two have their
contributions to the eld discussed (p. 41). One
more run through the text might have helped weed
out messy sentences and misprintsafter all,
textbooks have to set an example.
But these words are just counsels of perfection
compared to the overall high quality of the book.
Whenever I have to give a summative assessment
of a teacher I have observed, I ask myself: Would I
like her to teach my own son? In similar vein, now
that I am commissioned to give a general
evaluation of An Introduction to Foreign Language
Learning and Teaching, I ask myself this question:
Would I like to use this book on my pre-service or
in-service training course? And my answer is a
resounding YES.
The reviewer
Pter Medgyes CBE is Director of the Centre for
English Teacher Training at Etvs Lornd
University, Budapest. He has written numerous
professional books and articles, including Changing
Perspectives in Teacher Education (Heinemann; co-
edited with A. Malderez), The Non-native Teacher
(Hueber Verlag, 2nd edn.), and The Language
Teacher (Budapest: Corvina). He is also co-author
of a coursebook series entitled Criss Cross (Hueber
334 Reviews
Verlag), for Central and Eastern Europe. His
forthcoming book is Laughing Matters (Cambridge
University Press). Professor Medgyess main
professional interests lie in teacher education,
language policy, programme management,
curriculum design, and materials writing.
Email: medgyes@ludens.elte.hu
Individual Freedom in Language Teaching
Christopher Brumt
Oxford University Press 2001, 207 pp., 17.95
isbn 0 19 442174 0
This book covers a more than usually wide eld,
encompassing EFL, ESL, and the teaching of
foreign languages in the UK. It is essentially an
exploration of the complex links between the
individual, society, language, and education. This is
a dauntingly ambitious project.
There are six parts, each comprised of between one
and three chapters:
Part One Language and education
Part Two Second-language learning
Part Three Language in British education
Part Four Literature and education
Part Five The politics of language teaching
Part Six Research and understanding.
In my view, Parts Two to Four are relatively less
important, reected in the fact that they make up
only 5 of the 14 chapters of the book. That is not to
say that they are uninteresting: each presents a
coherent and clear account of the issues. For
instance, Part Three, Chapter 6, Language in British
education: coherence or chaos, oers a fascinating
and remorseless analysis of the recent history of
language education in the UKa ship of fools if
ever there was one! Part Four will also be of interest
for those involved in the teaching of literature, in
particular for its discussion of power and the
canon, and issues in the assessment of literary
competence. For the most part, however, these
topics have been dealt with equally well elsewhere.
They do not break new ground.
We nd the grist of the book in Parts One, Five, and
Six. It is here that the authors main concerns
emerge most clearly, and where his struggle to
reconcile intransigent contradictions is most
evident.
Some of the recurrent themes of the book surface
for the rst time in Chapter 1, Language,
linguistics, and education. In particular, there is
the issue of individual freedom in language
use in conict with institutional constraints, and
the tension between the pragmatic activity of
teaching and the building of understanding
through research and theorizing. On the one hand,
he claims that the attempt to understand
processes of education is needed both as part of
our need to understand our environment and in
order to inform discussion of educational policy.
(p. 5.) On the other, he concedes that A rich and
complex area of human activity such as education
cannot be treated as if understanding and
explanation alone suce to cause desirable
change. (p. 7). He sees the solution in the
collaborative eorts of all concerned: it does seem
to be a realizable ideal as long as researchers,
advisers, materials writers, and other practitioners
can interchange roles, collaborate, and have
eective support for such close relationships.
(p. 7) I have italicized the operative condition here,
precisely because it is so rarely, if ever, realized.
The author himself goes on to underline the
issue:
Matching research to human practice is only
simple in the minds of tyrants not because it
cannot be done; rather, it is because the
complexity and creativity of human behaviour
makes simple answers valid only at a high level
of generality. Specic behaviour may operate
within these generalizations, but a long process
of discussion and interpretation, and of trial and
error, provides the only means of avoiding
mismatches between general statements and
individual lives. Because of this, it is probably
more honest to talk about the implications of
theory and research for practice than the
applications. (p. 8).
Perhaps, but this does not resolve the tension. I
shall return to this point later.
Brumt then moves on to examine the implications
of language uses and language in the classroom for
language in teacher education and for language
policy.
Chapter 2, Understanding and the acquisition of
knowledge, argues for a widening of the base of
understanding from linguistic analysis to include
psychology, sociology, and general education. The
inadequacy of a linguistic basis alone, and the need
for language education to draw on the total context
of learning, is another of the continuing concerns
of the book. The issue of the tension between
creative interpretation and social convention is at
the heart of this chapter.
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