Policies and Practice in Language Learning and Teaching: 20th-century Historical Perspectives

This book brings together studies from Georgia, Germany, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Poland, South Korea, and the UK which explore links between policy and practice in language teaching in the twentieth century. The 14 contributions set out to expand the remit of ‘grounded history’ within the field of History of Language Learning and Teaching (HoLLT) by focusing on language teaching policies and linking these to practices and to contexts, situating policy formulation in particular contexts on the one hand, and exploring the relationship between policy and practice on the other. In this sense, the book shows how the theories, policy pronouncements, curricula, textbooks, and overall teaching approaches which tend to feature in most histories of language teaching always emerge from particular, researchable contexts, and, in the other direction, are interpreted and responded to in practice, again, in particular contexts. In this way, we hope to contribute a context-based perspective that highlights diversity of practices, in opposition to received views that language teaching methodology is ‘universal’ and context-free.

Table of Contents:
I INTRODUCTION (Sabine Doff & Richard Smith) Valorizing practice in 20th-century language learning and teaching II CONTENT (Stefan Kipf) Ovid’s Metamorphoses(Norman Ächtler)Teaching Schiller: Philological discourse and educational practice at Schools of Higher Education in the German Empire – The example of Wallenstein (Sabine Reh) Writing about literature. Examination and text forms in L1 in the French zone of occupation, 1945-49 III METHOD (Joanna Pfingsthorn) Practice escaping an ideological grip: How the CLT agenda slipped through the cracks of error taxonomies (Tim Giesler)‘Teachers may feel that they should …’ – Attempts to align the intended and the taught curriculum in 1980s’ Bremen manuals for communicative language teaching (John Daniels)The quest for Communicative Competence in foreign language learning in English schools, 1968-2010 (Laura Pinnavaia and Annalisa Zanola) Teaching English writing in the twentieth century seen through handbooks for mother-tongue and foreign speakers IV AIMS (Silvia Pireddu) “Too much workload in technical schools!”: Luigi Pavia and the teaching of English in Italian schools on the threshold of the 20th century (Kohei Uchimaru)Yoshisaburô Okakura and the practical value of the study of English in secondary schools in early twentieth-century Japan (Shona Whyte)The British juggernaut: ESP practice and purpose in the 1970s V CONTEXT (Irmina Kotlarska)Sociocultural, political and educational aspects of teaching English in Polish schools in the interwar period (1918-1939) (Ekaterine Shaverdashvili & Nino Chkhikvdze) English as a foreign language in Georgia: From past till present (Sharon Harvey)Language teacher education improvements would valorise practice: A recent history of intercultural language teaching in Aotearoa/New Zealand (Robert J. Fouser)Social attitudes toward ‘school English’ in classroom practice in South Korea from 1970 to the present .