Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

What English Language Teachers Need To Know

2012; Oxford University Press; Volume: 67; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/elt/ccs074

1477-4526

Mary Spratt,

Second Language Learning and Teaching

What English Language Teachers Need To Know consists of two volumes, Volume I: Understanding Learning and Volume II: Facilitating Learning. It is organized around the question: ‘What do teachers need to know and be able to do in order for their students to learn English?’. The authors state that it is designed for ‘pre-service teachers and teachers new to the field of ELTJ (see http://www.scribd.com/doc/45567908/What-English-Language-Teachers-Need-to-Know-Volume-I-Understanding-Learning). Volume I in its four parts provides the reader with background information on different aspects of ‘Identity and context’, ‘Language awareness’, ‘Learning’, and ‘Professionalism’, while the three parts of Volume II focus on ‘Planning’, ‘Instructing for learning’, and ‘Assessing for learning’, i.e. they move towards the classroom. Each chapter follows the same format. It begins with a vignette that gives a description of an actual learning, teaching, or training situation and serves to contextualize the chapter in a true to life way, to bring the subject matter off the page. The chapters are then interspersed with reflect, explore, and expand tasks, and finish with questions for discussion, references to further reading including websites, and chapter references. These interactive features break up text that is in quite small print and academic in style, though clear and well written.