Teach english new edition r

anyone post-puberty the chance to study language construction should not be in 
some way ‘disallowed’!
■ talked about the fact that different times have thrown up different theories and 
different methods, including the Lexical Approach (which argues that language 
consists of a series of lexical phrases and that these should be the object of study) 
and methods from the 1970s which purported to have a humanistic emphasis.
■ looked at Grammar-translation (which depended on contrasts between the 
mother tongue and the language being learnt), Audio-lingualism (which relied 
on behaviourist views of learning, and thus involved a lot of drilling), structural- 
situational teaching - and its more modern equivalent P(resentation), P(ractice) 
and P(roduction). We also looked at Communicative Language Teaching (with its 
twin strands of a focus on how language is used and on communicative activities), 
and Task-Based Learning (which takes CLT one stage further and uses tasks as the 
organising units in a curriculum).
■ argued that a ‘principled eclecticism’ mixes elements from all these approaches, but 
says that all (or most) lesson sequences should have three elements, Engage, Study 
and Activate.
■ said that the three elements (ESA) can occur in a different order, depending on 
the main focus of the lesson. We saw three different sequences: ‘straight arrows’, 
‘boomerang’ and ‘patchwork’.
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Describing 
language
■ Meaning in context
■ The elements of language
■ Forms and meanings
■ Parts of speech
■ Hypothetical meaning
Meaning in context
No one who speaks English has any difficulty understanding the meaning of a sentence 
like ‘It’s warm in here’. We all recognise that it is a com m ent on the tem perature in some 
place or other. But why it is being said, and what the speaker wishes to convey by saying it, 
depends entirely on two things: the 
context 
in which it is said and what the speaker wants 
people to understand.
Suppose, for example, that the words are spoken by someone who is either lazy, ill or in 
some position of power. ‘It’s warm in here’ m ight then be either a request or an order for 
someone to open a window. If, however, two people come in out of the cold, ‘It’s warm in 
here’ m ight well be an expression of satisfaction or pleasure. If, to give a third example, two 
people are trying to decide which room to use as their bedroom , the sentence ‘It’s warm 
in here’ m ight serve as a suggestion to choose or not to choose the room. In each case, 
the sentence is perform ing a different