English Language Teaching in its Social Context offers sociolinguistic, ethnographic, and social-psychological perspectives on TESOL teaching and learning and introduces the relevant literature on second language acquisition. Together with its companion volumes, it presents English language teaching in a variety of specific institutional, geographic and cultural contexts. The articles - a range of seminal and specially commissioned pieces - have been carefully chosen to present four major principles of English language * they focus on the roles played by teachers and learners * recognise the individuality of language learners * support teachers in the provision of active guidance for students' learning * examine both positive and negative patterns of interaction between learners and teachers. This Reader offers people unfamiliar with research in this field an overall impression of English language teaching issues while allowing the more experienced reader the opportunity to relate his or her own experiences to the theories presented.
I suspect that the theoretical nature of this book would turn most people off. But I found it to be very engaging. The editors did a great job of collecting a fairly wide variety of perspectives and the variety of issues alluded to and treated is fairly wide. Probably most distinctly, this is a collection of essays that are well-written. A lot of material in this field is not actually very well written. 95% of this collection is top notch writers at their peak.