History of English Lang Teaching

Oxford Applied Linguistics

by Anthony P.R. Howatt

This book is intended for Prizes won etc.

Genres: Linguistics, History

408 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1984

About the author

Anthony P.R. Howatt has retired as Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh, of which he is a graduate. After leaving university, he taught English as a foreign language in Cartagena, Spain, and in Cologne, Germany, returning to Edinburgh in the early 1960s to study for the Diploma in Applied Linguistics. After a period in Sweden, he returned once more to Edinburgh to take up an appointment in the Department of Applied Linguistics where he was Head of Department from 1990 to 1993.

His publications include A History of English Language Teaching, published by Oxford University Press, and his current research interests include the history of language in education.

Reviews

[Jarda Kubalik · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is an extensive summary of what was seen as standard ways tot each English throughout the centuries. It was rather academic and did not include many oddities and peculiarities from the classroom as a lay reader may expect.
As the reviewer before me, I think the author chose not to find a unifying theme or a conclusion that there is nothing in English teaching that has not been here before in one form or another. Apart from the tips for exploring many original attempts to crack the foreign language mystery, I believe the the most useful aspect of the book for me was to understand what has the current state of affairs in ELT evolved from - e.g. the difference between TESL and TEFL, testing, EU framework of language competence, business English etc. Very inspiring. OK, so I raise my rating to 5*...

[Lance · Rating 3 out of 5]

Being one of the few comprehensive histories specifically from the point of view of teaching English in multilingual contexts, this book is very useful to get a broad view of the history, limited though it maybe. I particularly found the chapters before 20th century very useful and interesting. It is a good place to start mining for sources since many of these thinkers are rarely referenced in other histories, whether of linguistics or of teaching. Even so, I was often left with the question, "So what?" . . . particularly in Howatt's discussion of the 20th century. On one hand, Howatt' seems to be purposely avoiding drawing contemporary conclusions from the histories, while at the same time hinting that "nothing is new under sun" (and all of today's pedagogies have their predecessors). The result is a book lacking a strong thesis.