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284
Sysrem, Vol. 17, No. 2, pp. 284-286, 1989
Pergamon Press plc. Printed in Great Britain

DOFF, ADRIAN, Teach English, A Training Course for Teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press (in association with The British Council), 1988. Trainers Handbook 286
pp., f7.50; Teachers Workbook 139 pp., f4.95.

There is a key section in Adrian Doffs Introduction

quoting in full.

to this set of materials which is worth

Most people involved in teacher education are aware of the existence of two separate worlds.
One is the world of native-speaker teachers and teacher trainers, who work in small, flexible
classes with adequate resources and who are mainly responsible
methodology.

The other is the world of most other teachers,

for developing new ideas in

who work in large classes to a

set syllabus, and who attempt to apply the new methodology to their own teaching. It is the
great difference between these two worlds that accounts for the failure of much teacher training;
they are differences not only in resources and physical conditions, but also in underlying
assumptions (e.g. about language, about learning, about the teachers role) and in degree of
freedom (e.g. freedom to experiment, to create material, to approach class relationships in
a new way).
(P. 8)

It is just one of the merits of this training course that the nature of the world in which
the great majority of teachers work is fully recognized and understood. Accordingly, the
material is designed specifically for those who:
teach in large, inflexible classes with few resources;
follow a set syllabus and textbook, and have little control over course content or choice of
materials;
are not native speakers of English;
have little time available for lesson planning or preparation.

This air of realism about the context in which the materials are likely to be used would
be welcome enough, but the really good news is that which is actually put before the
prospective trainees amounts to a remarkably sustained stream of excellent practical advice,
presented in a form that should serve as a model for language teaching methodology courses.
Adrian Doff demonstrates an admirable ability to give the teacher trainer very precise
instructions as to how to carry out the training sessions while allowing the trainees to exercise
their own initiative in developing personal solutions to teaching problems. With its emphasis
on activity and participation it is a set of materials to be worked through rather than a
book to be read and one of the stated aims of the course is to provide material that can
be used by relatively inexperienced teacher trainers or even self-help groups of teachers.
Whatever the context, the core of the material is contained in the Trainers Handbook.
It is there that the essential wisdom and structure is to be found. The Teachers Workbook
contains the raw material used in the training sessions.
There is considerable guidance for the trainer, but he or she is counselled in the Introduction
not to impose his or her own ideas too rigidly and to accept different points of view
(p. 3). This may give an impression of a training session as an unfocussed free-for-all, but
each unit in the course is so well structured and contains so much good practical teaching
advice that the aim of deepening understanding and awareness of methodological
possibilities stands a very good chance of being achieved.

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There is no fixed format for the units. The organization of the activities stands as a good
example of what might be called the dynamic approach to course organization as
compared with the more traditional static approach in which there is a regularly recurring
programme of lecture followed by fixed discussion groups and seminars. In the dynamic
approach employed here each theme is dealt with as seems most appropriate for the content
matter, combining short presentations from the trainer (NOT lectures), whole-group and
small-group discussions-with or without some sort of stimulus material-demonstrations
by the trainer, small-group work or pairwork to answer questions or construct examples
of materials and lesson planning. A special feature of each unit is a self-assessment exercise
in which the trainee teachers are invited to reflect on a lesson they teach following work
on a particular unit in order to consider to what extent they have made use of any new
ideas or to what extent their consideration of the topic influenced how they taught the lesson.
Trainees who successfully complete a course based on these materials will have had a good
grounding in a methodology that lays a well-balanced emphasis on communication. The
methods and techniques included in the material are intended to represent a common
core, drawing on what is of value both in traditional and in more recent approaches (p. 9).
For once, a claim for balance is justified. The author places appropriate value on structure
tables and controlled writing exercises as well as stressing the importance of meaning in
exercises and encouraging the use of groupwork and free role play.
The material is full of simple but essential advice and covers a very wide range of basic
language teaching topics including all the skills and most aspects of required technique.
The topics are not organized according to any obvious sequence and the user is encouraged
to dip in where appropriate. The material is helpfully cross-referenced, however, and
careful reading of the introductions to each unit could help a prospective user to decide
an appropriate form of sequencing. The practical units are interspersed with four
Background Texts on Reading, Structures and Functions, Learning a Language
These are short, but somewhat more theoretical
and Preparing for Communication.
reading texts and are designed to provoke useful discussion among the course participants.
Every unit is accompanied by references to sources of further reading in the relevant topic.
Every individual teacher trainer who uses this material will want to put his or her emphasis
differently from that of the author from time to time, but that is entirely in keeping with
the recommended approach. I have some difficulty in accepting Reading and Listening
as stages of a lesson (Unit 8) and while the unit on Classroom Tests (Unit 22) contains
a great deal of typically good, practical advice, I feel it is, perhaps, the one section of
the course that will produce somewhat superficial results. None of this, however, dims
my admiration for what Adrian Doff has achieved in this set of material. It reflects in
its approach the essential elements of communicative language teaching by providing the
trainer with the means of control while allowing a high degree of initiative to remain with
the trainees, and the relationship between Teacher and Learners in this course is one
of co-operation in the mutual exploration of ideas and solutions. Such an approach implies
an attitude to education and training, let alone to language teaching, that is by no means
universal. The idea that trainee teachers should be encouraged to think for themselves is
still a novel one in many parts of the world. This course could, however, be a valuable
ally for those many ELT trainers who fly off to more or less exotic portions of the globe
with at least one of their objectives being that of subverting local education systems by
introducing ideas about student-centred learning and freedom of action for classroom
teachers. Any inexperienced teacher trainer who followed this Trainers Handbook to the
letter could not fail to have some beneficial effect on his or her trainees, and the experienced
course leaders who typically consider themselves self-sufficient in training material-and

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proudly lug it all round the world in cardboard boxes, milk crates or cabin trunks-will
find Teach English a refreshing and salutory source of ideas and might even find they can
leave the cabin trunk behind next time.
David Scarbrough
Department of Language Studies
City of London Polytechnic
Old Castle Street
London El 7NT
United Kingdom

System, Vol. 17, No. 2. pp. 286-288, 1989

Pergamon Press pk. Printed in Great Britain

OMAGGIO, ALICE C., Teaching Language in Context. Proficiency-oriented

Boston: Heinle and Heinle Publishers, Inc., 1986, 479 pp.

Instruction.

For quite some time the foreign language teaching profession has lacked an extensive and
comprehensive treatment of methodology which incorporates more recent findings in
learning theory, psycholinguistics and cognitive psychology, and integrates them into
modern foreign language teaching theory. Alice Omaggio claims that her book Teaching
Language in Context gives such a treatment, and on the whole this claim is justified.
In her preface, the author defines the purpose of her book in the following words: It
does not propose yet another revolutionary theory of language acquisition or promote new
methodologies. Rather, it seeks to extract from our rich heritage of resources and practices
those elements that seem most sound and to suggest a way to organize that knowledge
and expertise so we can maximize opportunities for the development of proficiency among
our students (pp. xi, xii). As an obviously experienced practitioner and imaginative teacher,
she states, in addition, that her approach is only one among a variety of possible models
which can be developed on the basis of our knowledge of language teaching and learning.
The central idea behind Omaggios approach is that language teaching should be proficiencyoriented, i.e. all methodology should aim at building up and improving the learners
proficiency in the L2. According to the author, proficiency should be seen as intimately
related to what has been called communicative
competence
in linguistics and
sociolinguistics. Her view on communicative competence is very similar to the one expressed
by Canale/Swain, who use the term in referring to both underlying knowledge about
language and communicative language use and skill . . . (Omaggio, p. 8). In Omaggios
concept of proficiency the basic notions of this definition are made more precise: the term
proficiency includes specifications about the levels of competence attained in terms of
the functions performed, the contexts in which the language user can function, and the
accuracy with which the language is used (p. 8). The author is of the opinion that this
notion of proficiency provides a secure basis for the development of a proficiency-oriented
approach in classroom second language teaching.