Anderson, Jason (2016) Intentions and signposts. Modern English Teacher, 105 (1). pp. 4-6. ISSN 0308-0587.

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Abstract

One of the biggest differences in notions of best practice between the fields of ELT and mainstream education relates to how we begin our lessons. Consult any guide for primary, secondary or tertiary teaching and it will say the same: irrespective of the subject, it is essential to make your intentions clear to the learners at the start of the lesson. However, consult Jeremy Harmer’s The Practice of English Language Teaching, Jim Scrivener’s Learning Teaching or any of the other bestsellers in our discipline, and you will find very few, if any, concrete recommendations on whether we should do this, or how.
This may not come as a surprise to many language teachers. For several decades we have considered that language teaching is different from other spheres of education. Data supporting natural sequences of acquisition, and evidence that teaching doesn’t always lead to learning – or, indeed, that practice doesn’t necessarily make perfect – have convinced many in our field that we have no need to conform to the rules governing what happens in mainstream classrooms. This evidence, while rather patchy and often contested, has nonetheless had a profound impact on methodology in language teaching, espousing the strong version of Communicative Language Teaching, the Natural Approach, Task-based Learning and more recently Dogme ELT. Proponents of all these approaches will generally favour a process-oriented approach to planning, in which procedures – or even procedure types – are all that is specified in advance, and the outcomes are left open-ended. As such, they also tend to argue that it is impossible to present such emergent outcomes at the start of the lesson. But that is not necessarily what I’m arguing for …

Item Type:	Journal Article
Subjects:	L Education > L Education (General) L Education > LB Theory and practice of education
Divisions:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Centre for Applied Linguistics
Journal or Publication Title:	Modern English Teacher
Publisher:	Pavilion Publishing and Media Ltd
ISSN:	0308-0587
Official Date:	2 July 2016
Dates:	Date Event 2 July 2016 Published 10 May 2016 Accepted
Volume:	105
Number:	1
Page Range:	pp. 4-6
Status:	Not Peer Reviewed
Publication Status:	Published
Access rights to Published version:	Restricted or Subscription Access

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