Rethinking TESOL in Diverse Global Settings: The Language and the Teacher in a Time of Change

Rethinking TESOL in Diverse Global Settings explores what TESOL teachers teach, their knowledge of language, and their attitudes towards it, challenging them to become more ambitious in their aims and positioning themselves as language experts.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 272 pages
Publication date: 07 February 2019
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Shortlisted for the BAAL Book Prize 2020, Rethinking TESOL in Diverse Global Settings explores the substance of English language teaching and the job of an English language teacher. Covering diverse teaching environments, from China to Latin America and the Middle East, and from elementary school to university, the authors take a critical look at TESOL by focusing on the actual substance of the subject, language, and attitudes towards it. Through concrete examples from language classrooms, in the form of vignettes and accounts from native speaker and non-native speaker teachers alike, they explore the experiences of teachers worldwide in relation to issues of identity and professionalism, nativeness and non-nativeness, and the pressures of dealing with the expectations with which English has become invested. While recognising the often precarious academic and institutional status of TESOL teachers, the book pulls no punches in challenging those teachers as a whole to become more ambitious in their aims, positioning themselves not as mere skills providers, but language experts, specialists in their subject, members of a legitimate academic discipline. Only then, the authors argue, will TESOL teachers and their work be taken seriously and their expertise recognised.

Weight: 414g
Dimension: 158 x 234 x 15 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781350033450