Understanding the Courses We Teach

Understanding the Courses We Teach provides current and prospective teachers of English to speakers of other languages with opportunities to examine teachers' ways of offering complete language courses. By focusing on individual teachers' discussions of instructional plans, decisions, and experiences in specific courses, Understanding the Courses We Teach complements other professional development resources, such as methods course textbooks, which tend to focus on historical developments of English language teaching, generic overviews of instructional themes, and strategies for creating activities for individual lessons or lesson segments.

Chapters 1-5 introduce a unifying framework for examining different teachers' local understanding and explanations of their work. Chapters 6-23 present the teacher-contributors' individual courses. Through these discussions the collection bridges the gap between theory and practice in the field and illustrates contemporary language teachers' context specific approaches to ELT.

An extensive Internet site to describe and support the book may be accessed at the following URL: http://www2.gsu.edu/~esljmm/methods/chapstructure.htm