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Book review: The Art and Science of Language Teaching

I’ve just finished reading this excellent book by Dr Lara Bryfonski and Professor Alison Mackey, both highly esteemed researchers and teachers at Georgetown University. As the title of the book might suggest, this is a ‘research to practice’ type of book aimed at language teachers. To cut to the chase, I can strongly recommend it as a text for trainee teachers and those with some experience.

The book consists of 21 chapters, each with the same very clear structure. The starting point of each chapter is the lived dilemmas of practising teachers (‘voices from the classroom’). The writers then examine what research suggests about how to respond to these teachers’ issues, provides practical classroom guidance and points out what is missing from the research (the ‘science’). Questions to consider are also included.

References to research are very light-touch in the main body of the text, with specific references and descriptions of studies and books at the end of each chapter. Sentences often begin with ‘Research suggests… ‘without giving precise references. This approach makes the text very readable for teachers who probably don't read research papers and books a great deal. The ideas and guidance are explained very clearly as a result.

Here is how an example chapter, the one on teaching pronunciation, is structured:


Other topics  covered include strategies, interaction, maximising input, grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, technology, assessment, professional development, lesson and unit planning, classroom content and activities, authentic and literacy skills.

Underpinning the whole book are the authors’ main four principles behind successful language learning. These are: input, production, negotiation of meaning (interaction) and corrective feedback. Throughout the text we are referred back to these principles when asked to think about what might work best in classrooms.

Overall, the book adopts, like others, a ‘no best method’ view of the field, though it becomes increasingly clear as you work through the text, that the authors’ view is that Task-Based Language Teaching is a ‘best bet’ approach for many contexts. This is partly a reflection of the authors’ own research interests.

At various points, the writers remind us that much research in second language acquisition is carried out with university students and may not be easily applicable to younger learners, including those in primary and secondary schools (high schools). Although Bryfonski and Mackey work in higher education, they really do try hard to make their guidance as applicable as possible to the experience of everyday teachers. They largely succeed in doing so. Just occasionally I thought ‘not so sure about that’, for example when it is suggested that teachers make a note after every lesson about what went well and what went not so well. If only there were time! More significantly, some of Task-Based lessons and assessment techniques looked unworkable in many high school classrooms.

Many of the teaching ideas may seem mainstream to experienced practitioners, but will be new to novice teachers, for example information gap tasks, games like Battleships and running dictation.

As far as the research is concerned, readers are introduced to various hypotheses and principles, such as comprehensible input, interaction, spaced repetition, working memory, output, developmental orders, and principles of formative and summative assessment.

Anything missing in the book? Because of its bias towards Communicative and Task-Based Language Teaching, there is nothing much about other more or less widely used approaches such as EPI (lexicogrammar), TPRS, AIM, Knowledge Organisers and even classic Oral-Situational. Drills are treated fairly dismissively, whereas it would have been possible to describe some widely used drills. Further, novice teachers may have welcomed more on the detail of designing lessons. The text doesn’t really go into the fine grain of that area. More about skill acquisition theory would have been useful.

Overall, then, an excellent, welcome book, which should be on every language teacher’s shortlist and which complements another enjoyable book with a communicative leaning, which I reviewed a while ago, Common Ground by Dr Florencia Henshaw and Maris Hawkins.


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