A History of ELT

434 Pages·2004·19.047 MB·English

by  A.P.R. Howatt, H.G. Widdowson

A History of English Language Teaching
Published in this series:
Bachman: Fundamental Considerations in Language Testing
Bachman and Palmer: Language Testing in Practice
Brumfit: Individual Freedom in Language Teaching
Brumfit and Carter (eds.): Literature and Language Teaching
Canagarajah: Resisting Linguistic Imperialism in English Teaching
Cook: Discourse and Literature
Cook: Language Play, Language Learning
Cook and Seidlhofer (eds.): Principle and Practice in Applied Linguistics
Ellis: SLA Research and Language Teaching
Ellis: The Study of Second Language Acquisition
Ellis: Understanding Second Language Acquisition
Ellis: Task-based Language Learning and Teaching
Jenkins: The Phonology of English as an International Language
Kern: Literacy and Language Teaching
Kramsch: Context and Culture in Language Teaching
Lantolf (ed.): Sociocultural Theory and Second Language Learning
Meinhof: Language Learning in the Age of Satellite Television
Nattinger and DeCarrico: Lexical Phrases and Language Teaching
Phillipson: Linguistic Imperialism
Seidlhofer: Controversies in Applied Linguistics
Seliger and Shohamy: Second Language Research Methods
Skehan: A Cognitive Approach to Language Learning
Stern: Fundamental Concepts of Language Teaching
Stern (eds. P. Allen and B. Harley): Issues and Options in Language
Teaching
Tarone and Yule: Focus on the Language Learner
Widdowson: Aspects of Language Teaching
Widdowson: Defining Issues in English Language Teaching
Widdowson: Practical Stylistics
Widdowson: Teaching Language as Communication
A History of
English Language
Teaching
Second edition
A. P. R. Howatt
w ith
H. G. Widdowson
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
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isBN-13; 978 019 442185 o
isbn-io: 0-19-442185-6
Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd, Chennai, India
Printed in China
To the memory of my father (1910-1981)
Contents
List of illustrations x
Acknowledgements xii
Note on spelling xiv
Note on terminology xv
Preface to the second edition xviii
Introduction 1
PART ONE 1400-1800
Section 1 Practical language teaching
1 The early years 9
2 ‘Refugiate in a strange country’: the refugee
language teachers in Elizabethan London 18
3 Towards ‘the great and common world’ 37
4 Guy Miége and the second Huguenot exile 56
5 The spread of English language teaching
in Europe 65
Section 2 On ‘fixing’ the language
6 An overview: 1550-1800
7 Two proposals for orthographical reform
in the 1500s 84
The work of John Hart, Chester Herald 84
Richard Mulcaster’s Elementarle 89
8 Two pedagogical grammars of English for
foreign learners 95
Ben Jonson’s English Grammar 95
John Wallis’s Grammatica Linguae Anglicanae 99
9 ‘Things, words and notions’ 102
viii Contents
10 The language‘fixed’ 106
Latin schools and English schools 106
Swift’s proposal for a British Academy 109
Towards Standard English 110
PART TWO 1800-1900
Introduction 127
English language teaching in the Empire 127
English language teaching in Europe 130
Section 1 English language teaching in the Empire
11 Teaching English overseas: similarities and contrasts 134
Reports on specific territories 136
Teaching English in India 144
Conclusion 147
Section 2 English language teaching in Europe
12 The grammar-translation method 151
The origins of the method 151
Language teaching in schools: some Anglo-German contrasts 152
Language learning by adults: the ‘practical approach’ of
Ahn and Ollendorff 158
13 Individual reformers 166
Overview 166
‘All is in all’: Jean Joseph Jacotot 169
The Rational Method of Claude Marcel 170
Thomas Prendergast’s ‘Mastery System’ 175
François Gouin and the ‘Series’ 178
14 The Reform Movement 187
The scope of the Movement 187
The principles of reform 189
The Klinghardt experiment 192
The role of phonetics 194
The work of Henry Sweet: an applied linguistic approach 198
15 ‘Natural methods of language teaching’ from Montaigne to
Berlitz 210
Learning a language through ‘constant conversation’ 210
Rousseau and Pestalozzi 214
The origins of the Direct Method 217
Contents ix
PART THREE 1900 TO THE PRESENT DAY
Section 1 English language teaching since 1900: the
making of a profession
16 The teaching of English as a foreign or second language:
a survey 231
Phase 1 1900^16: Laying the foundations 232
Phase 2 1946-70: Consolidation and renewal 241
Phase 3 1970 to the present day: Language and
communication 250
Section 2 Aspects of English language teaching since 1900
17 Harold Palmer and the teaching of spoken language 264
Palmer’s life and work 264
Palmer’s methodology 270
18 Choosing the right words 278
Michael West and the teaching of reading 278
The Basic issue 283
Carnegie and after 288
19 Old patterns and new directions 294
The establishment of ELT and the post-war consensus 294
A. S. Hornby and the teaching of structural patterns 297
The early impact of applied linguistics (1941-60) 302
The end of the Empire 309
New directions in language teaching in the 1960s 315
20 The notion of communication 326
The communicative approach 326
Communication and language learning 333
The Threshold Level Project 337
English for Special/Specific Purposes (ESP) 340
The Bangalore Project 346
Conclusion 349
21 A perspective on recent trends
by H. G. Widdowson 353
A chronology of English language teaching 373
Bibliography 380
Index 406
List of illustrations
Figure 2.1 Title-page of Jacques Bellot’s English
Schoolmaster (1580) 21
Figure 2.2 Extract from Jacques Bellot’s Familiar Dialogues (1586) 23
Figure 2.3 Extract from Claudius Holyband’s French Littleton
(1609 edition) 29
Figure 3.1 Extract from Joseph Webbe’s Children’s Talk (1627) 43
Figure 3.2 Title-page of Comenius’s Orbis Pictus (1659) 45
Figure 3.3 Extract from Orbis Pictus (1659) 52
Figure 3.4 Extract from Orbis Pictus (1659) 52
Figure 4.1 Extract from Guy Miège’s English Grammar (1688) 60
Figure 4.2 Extract from Guy Miege’s Nouvelle Méthode pour
apprendre l’Anglois (1685) 61
Figure 5.1 Map: The spread of English as a foreign language
in Europe to 1800 66
Table 5.1 Selected late seventeenth-and eighteenth-century works
for the teaching of English as a foreign language 67
Figure 5.2 Title-page of John Miller’s The Tutor (1797) 73
Figure 5.3 Extract from John Miller’s The Tutor (1797) 74
Figure 5.4 Extract from John Miller’s The Tutor (1797) 75
Figure 7.1 First step in John Hart’s Method (1570) 87
Figure 7.2 Second step in John Hart’s Method (1570) 88
Figure 9.1 Summary of John Wilkins’Essay (1668) 103
Figure 10.1 Extracts from Johnson’s Dictionary of the English
Language (1755) including the famous oats definition,
and Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language
(from the London reprint, E. H. Barker (ed.) 1832) 113
Figure 10.2 Extract from Lowth’s Short Introduction to English
Grammar (1762) 118
Figure 10.3 Extract from Lowth’s Short Introduction to English
Grammar (1762) 119
Figure 12.1 Lesson 50 of Ollendorff’s German course for
English speakers (2nd edition 1841) 161
Figure 13.1 ‘The Labyrinth’ from Thomas Prendergast’s Mastery of
Languages(1864) 179
Figure 14.1 Henry Sweet (1845-1912) 199
List of illustrations xi
Figure 15.1 Maximilian D. Berlitz (1852-1921) 222
Figure 16.1 English language teaching Phase 1 (1900-46):
Strands of development 233
Figure 16.2 An extract from the Oxford English Course 239
Figure 17.1 Harold E. Palmer (1877-1949) 265
Table 18.1 West’s lexical distribution patterns 281
Figure 19.1 A. S. Hornby (1898-1978) 299
Figure 20.1 N. S. Prabhu 348