PROLOGUE
Gabriel Díaz Maggioli
Welcome to this book on the status of the art and science in English Language Teaching (ELT) within global contexts. As you read it, bear in mind a few facts. When this book was published, it became one of the 400,000 books that were published around the world on that specific date. This means it was one of the 650 million books to be published during 2023 and, as such, among the 129,864,871 billion books to be published since Gutenberg invented the printing press (Bowker, 2020).
You may be wondering what these figures have to do with the purpose, content, and composition of this book. Seen within the context of these international figures that were provided by the publishing industry, one can say this is merely one more book on ELT published on a particular date during a particular year. However, the why, what, and how of this book makes it stand out from the rest of the publications in 2023.
To start with, this book is the product of a strong process of collaboration across borders, specialties, institutions, and colleagues. It was born out of a specific collaboration between Paraguay and the United States of America (USA) in the form of a Fulbright grant, which is a government-supported program for studying, teaching, or conducting research in a collaborating country. More specifically, this collaboration began with two people—our editors—Valentina Canese, Director of the Higher Institute of Languages at the National University of Asuncion, Paraguay, and Susan Spezzini, Professor of English Learner Education at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA.
This collaboration was spurred by Valentina’s goal to help initial teacher education candidates gain access to knowledge in our ELT field. Living and working in the Global South (a grouping of countries along the lines of socio-economic and political characteristics), Valentina is keenly aware of how the pre-service teachers in her university’s education program often need to rely on second-hand and even third-hand sources because of the lack of availability of such sources at the local level. This, of course, poses problems to those students who are not afforded the same learning opportunities as their peers in other parts of the world. Hence, Valentina invited Susan to join her on a quest to put together a multi-chapter book with a primary focus on producing an open-source volume with up-to-date content and quality editing. When compared to other similar publications, one important innovation offered by this book is how it combines a rigorous editing process with open access to digital material that is freely available to all. Thus, this book provides equitable and democratic access to knowledge.
This initial collaboration between our editors—Valentina and Susan—soon expanded to include 61 like-minded professionals from nine countries on five continents who wrote 55 chapters. In this sense, the makeup of the editors and the chapter authors truly echoes the title of the book: Teaching English in Global Contexts: Language, Learners, and Learning.
One key concept behind the term “global” is diversity. After all, we live in a multicultural world where learning and teaching can act as bridges among nations and cultures. Hence, the notion of diversity is at the center of this book and its contents. Just as in real life, this book addresses the concept of diversity from multiple perspectives. There is diversity in the language we teach as evidenced by how World Englishes continue to gain momentum and are recognized as valid varieties of English. There is also diversity in the learners we teach in terms of ages, learning needs, orientation to learning, language proficiencies, and institutions where they receive instruction. Lastly, there is diversity in the approaches, techniques, and emphases that teachers use in their classes to promote learning.
Consequently, because of everything mentioned above, the voices in this volume are representative of the true diversity in the field of ELT. Authors come from different parts of the world and, through their writing, showcase the professional lessons they have learned from their students and their contexts. However, they never overlook the fact that some developments outside their context have a strong potential to impact the way they perceive their profession.
Contributors to this volume are also diverse in terms of their professional background. The book makes salient the voices of classroom teachers, teacher educators, educational administrators, materials writers, researchers, and policy makers. Additionally, writers come from elementary, secondary, and higher education institutions—both private and public. This diversity, no doubt, contributes to making the book a faithful image of the ELT profession in the early 2020s for its use in today’s multimedia world.
If we mention diversity, we must also consider the variety of topics that the book has incorporated. Its 55 chapters have been organized into nine main parts. This was done for the purpose of organization, but it does not mean that each part and the chapters within that part can stand alone. On the contrary, when the editors put together the table of contents and sought authors for the various chapters, their intention was to provide a holistic overview of the field without losing sight of the specialist areas that continue to influence the development of ELT. Hence, every chapter makes explicit connections to other chapters in the book that have a close connection to the topic of the chapter in question or that can enrich how a given chapter is understood by the readers.
Part I World of English Language Teaching presents a view of how the field of ELT is being shaped by forces of the early 2020s. Following an introductory chapter on teaching in global contexts (first half of the book’s title), each of the other chapters in this first part focuses on one aspect in the second half of the book’s title: the evolution of World Englishes (corresponds to Language), the diversity of English classes (corresponds to Learning), and a reconsideration of the power of humanistic language teaching (corresponds to Learners). Hence, this first part orients readers to the book and to the state of the art in the ELT field.
Part II Language Learners focuses on helping readers understand the learners both as social and emotional individuals, and as language learners and users. These chapters also explore specific age groups and how pedagogy varies according to this variable.
Part III Language Learning and Use concentrates on language as an object of learning and the use of language as a resource for communication. Language learning is explored from a wide variety of angles that include translanguaging practices, technology-mediated learning experiences, approaches for providing feedback on learners’ output, support for building language awareness, and the role of explicit and implicit instruction on second language acquisition.
Part IV Context for Teaching and Learning examines the contexts in which language teaching may occur as well as the physical, social, emotional, and pedagogical issues that may impact those contexts. This part focuses on topics such as inclusion, community-building, interaction and interactivity, classroom discourse, technology integration, and effective planning.
Part V Content and Language Integration highlights the integration of content and language, a feature of ELT that is becoming increasingly popular around the world. Chapters in this part explore how language and content can be successfully integrated by implementing various activities such as drama, music, literature, gamification, and translation.
Part VI Methods and Approaches presents the main trends in the field during the early 21st century by briefly tracing the history of trends that were first developed in the 20th century and that continue to impact the field. Such is the case of approaches such as Task-Based Learning, Sociocultural Learning, Communicative Language Teaching, inquiry-based teaching, and other widespread and alternative approaches used by teachers around the world.
Part VII Teaching Strategies explores strategies to teach listening, speaking, reading, writing, integrated skills, pronunciation, and vocabulary. If methods and approaches (Part 6) are the frames for the art of teaching, then these specific strategies and techniques (Part 7) are the canvas for teaching the different skills.
Part VIII Assessment positions assessment as a parallel activity to teaching. The chapters in this part provide clear assessment categorizations, assessment tools, assessment systems, and assessment criteria. Also explained is how all these positively influence ELT classrooms in different ways.
Part IX Career Development and Enhancement is the final part and includes chapters that are oriented toward providing teachers with resources, ideas, and strategies to engage in continuous professional development. To that end, readers are encouraged to develop new competencies by participating in reflective observations, conducting research, and building personal learning networks and communities of practice.
How is this book organized?
Each chapter is purposefully organized so that it promotes growth in the theory of ELT and the practice of ELT through reflections experienced by professionals who are becoming well-acquainted with both theory and practice. Each chapter starts with an Abstract that summarizes its content and provides keywords from the professional lexical system that readers need to know to understand the chapter’s topic. This is followed by the main text which is composed of four sections:
Introduction—summarizing the main theoretical lines influencing the development of this topic
Background—offering an overview of historical and other aspects related to this topic
Major Dimensions—providing relevant aspects of the topic needed for teaching and learning
Pedagogical Applications—building a bridge between theory and practice, describing how the concepts, principles, skills, and dispositions depicted in the chapter can be successfully applied in the classroom
These text sections are followed by activity sections to enhance the reading of this chapter by pre-service teachers within their teacher preparation program or by experienced educators for their self-selected professional development. These activity sections are as follows:
Key Concepts— summarizing the issues raised
Discussing—providing prompts for class discussions or independent reflections
Taking Action—suggesting concrete steps for putting this topic into practice
Expanding Further— listing online resources for learning more about this topic
Each chapter finishes with two sections of references as follows:
See Also—identifying other chapters in this collection that are relevant to the topic of this specific chapter
References—providing the sources used to inform the writing of this chapter
As a coda to each chapter, a short About the Author section helps readers contextualize the idea of the chapter within the author’s reality. Also included are the author’s number in the Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier system (known as ORCID) and an email address in case the readers wish to contact the author/s.
How can this book be used?
Because the goal of this book is to provide a broad panorama of ELT as a field and profession in the early 21st century, it stands to reason that it will be used to support teaching and learning about ELT. Here are some ideas that might help teacher educators use these materials in a purposeful and interactive way.
Assign the same chapter to groups of four students and ask them to provide a summary in the following way:
Student A summarizes the facts presented in the chapter.
Student B writes from 5 to 10 questions based on the chapter.
Student C compiles a glossary of key terms (and definitions) from the chapter.
Student D builds a checklist for the implementation of ideas in the classroom.
These summaries are shared with the rest of the class so that every group receives a copy of the summaries prepared by all the other groups.
Select one of the nine parts in this book. Within this part, assign each chapter to a different student. In class, students meet in groups (with one student representing each chapter), share and compile their information, and create a graphic organizer on the overall theme represented by the chapters in this part.
Assign the different sections within a given chapter for students to read between class sessions. Focus first on the Background section and Major Dimensions section. Along with this reading assignment, provide students with a list of questions (preferably inferential) to be discussed. In the next class, divide students into groups and have them discuss the questions without looking at the book. In preparation for the following class, students read the Pedagogical Applications section. For your students’ next class, create a teaching scenario. In class, students plan and demonstrate an application of the teaching suggestions as a microteaching exercise.
Turn the chapters around. In class, divide students into groups and direct them to the questions in the Discussing section. Students try to answer all questions based just on what they already know and without having read the chapter. Next, discuss each of the questions by having groups share their respective responses to the questions with the whole class. Invite groups to create additional questions if they feel this can help them better understand the topic in this chapter. Finally, have students read the chapter. Bring the class together to discuss what has been learned. This discussion would not necessarily be responding to the questions. Rather, when compared to what students didn’t know before reading this chapter, students discuss what they know after having read it.
Provide a temporal and physical space (i.e., time and place) during your classes so that students can practice the activities suggested in that chapter’s Taking Action section.
In anticipation of the next class, assign students to four roles (A, B, C, D). Based on their assigned role, students do the following as a homework assignment:
Student A reads the Introduction section, gathers additional information by exploring the websites listed under the Expanding Further section, and prepares to report on this information.
Student B reads the Background and Major Dimensions sections and prepares to report on this information.
Student C reads the Pedagogical Applications section and prepares to report on this information.
Student D reads the whole chapter and prepares answers to the questions under the Discussing section.
In the next class, divide the students into groups of four with each student in each group having one of the four roles (A, B, C, D). Student D leads the discussion. The other three students (A, B, C) contribute from what they had been assigned to read and report. All students take notes based on what their groupmates share.
Ask students to work in pairs. Both students in each pair read the same chapter and, together, create a two-page handout as if they were going to make a presentation on their chapter the following month at a professional conference.
However, before individual instructors can select one of the strategies suggested above when using a specific chapter in their respective teacher preparation courses, the administrators or a faculty council in their pre-service teacher education program might wish to first designate specific chapters for specific courses. For example, Chapter 2 The Diversity of Global Englishes would be a perfect fit for a sociolinguistics course. Or perhaps an institutional decision is made for all chapters within one part (from among the nine parts of this book) to be used in a certain course. If so, then all four chapters in Part VIII Assessment would be a perfect fit for an assessment course.
I started this Prologue by citing numbers and statistics, which seem to be the norm for describing the value of something or someone. However, to me, the true impact of any human endeavor can only be gauged by the changes in the lives of others that it has managed to affect. In that respect, I believe this collection of chapters on research and practice in the teaching and learning of English has the potential for great impact. Let me wish our future colleagues reading this book, and their instructors, all the very best as they embark on this journey of discovering new professional horizons in the world of ELT.
Gabriel Díaz Maggioli
Institute of Education, Universidad ORT Uruguay
diaz_g@ort.edu.uy
President, International Association of Teachers
of English as a Foreign Language
Ankara, Türkiye
REFERENCES
Bowker. (2020). Self-publishing in the United States, 2013-2018: Print and ebooks. Bowker, LLC. https://www.bowker.com/siteassets/files/pdf-files/bowker-selfpublishing-report-2019.pdf