Course syllabus

Introducing LANGTCHG 741 on-line

This MTESOL course is in two parts. In the first part, we are concerned with general concepts in language teaching. Language teaching is a vast and complex endeavour involving literally millions of learners and many thousands of teachers the world over. In order to make sense of such a huge enterprise, educationalists have (of necessity) developed a whole series of concepts which enable us to talk, in very general and abstracted terms, about the various contexts for and types of language teaching. Thus, for example, we have terms to distinguish between different kinds of syllabus design (e.g. the structural syllabus', the 'task-based syllabus'), and different approaches to teaching methodology (such as 'communicative language teaching').

But whilst we need to have a set of very general, idealized terms which are used universally, to what extent do such idealizations reflect the reality of language teaching in particular contexts? In the second part of the course, we look critically at some of the reasons why no two language classrooms are the same. From the teachers' perspective, we ask the fundamental question 'why do individual teachers teach the way they do?' and we consider why and how different teachers teach the 'same' approach quite differently. From the perspective of the language learner, we investigate why it is that different learners may interpret the 'same' lesson in quite distinct ways. More generally, we investigate some of the reasons why approaches to teaching and learning vary so much from one cultural context to another.

Course Objectives

By the end of the course participants should be able to:

• Recognise, understand and explain the key characteristics of and differences between different types of curriculum, syllabus and methodology
• Diagnose and evaluate different course design options in terms of the assumptions they make about teaching and learning.
• Explain some of reasons why teachers teach and learners learn in different ways, and relate these ideas to their own teaching.
• Analyse and explain how cultural factors impact upon the use of different classroom methodologies.

Course lecturer

Rob Batstone

I spent a number of years teaching English as a foreign language in Italy (private language school) and in Egypt (British Council) before moving to London University's Institute of Education to do my PhD. Having survived that, I joined the teaching staff at the Institute and spent the next 10 years teaching on various masters courses (including a distance MA). I came to Auckland in 2003 (London can get tiring after 10 years!). My main research interest is in socio-cognitive aspects of second language learning, about which I've written a number of articles and an edited book (Batstone, R. (Ed). 2010. Sociocognitive Perspectives on Language Use and Language Learning. Oxford University Press).  In a previous life I wrote a book about grammar for language teachers, imaginatively called 'Grammar', also published by Oxford (Batstone, R. 1996. Grammar. Oxford University Press).

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