Customer Reviews

Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching (Cambridge Language Teaching Library)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Unlike some books on English language teaching, "Approaches and Methods" by Richards and Rodgers is a logically organised, relatively jargon-free and easily grasped book. It is almost certain you will not be diving for the headache tablets after this book.

Covering a large range of the historical and current second language teaching methodologies, the book discusses methods in a logical format that is the same throughout. They discuss three broad areas: Approach, (the theories and ideas underpinning the method), Design, (roles, materials and so on), and Procedure, (what happens in the classroom). This makes each chapter exceptionally well-organised.

The book covers a lot of different methods, including those that are less in favour these days, as well as some that are more recent. However, some very recent developments are not included, such as the controversial Dogme of Thornbury and Medding. What *is* in the book includes Suggestopaedia, TPR, NLP, Natural Way, Multiple Intelligences and more. All of them come with a brief discussion on the background that they came from.

This is an incredibly valuable book for a run down on the methodologies that have come and gone, (some still on the way out). It is an excellent resource that serves well as a reference, or something to be read from cover-to-cover. Or both.

The table of contents that Amazon has listed here is from the 1986 edition and is very misleading and an injustice to this important and valuable book. The new 2001 edition has 19 chapters and is very expanded and reorganised to include many new communicative approaches. Look at another online bookseller for a proper table of contents.

This book provides a great overview of all of the major, and some of the minor, approaches to language teaching. This book is laid out into three major sections. In the first section the authors deal with major trends in twentieth century language teaching. This gives an excellent historical look at where language teaching has come from and the thought process that accompanied such trends. The second sections deals with alternative approaches and methods. These include TPR, suggesopedia, whole language, etc. These methods are not commonly used on their own anymore, but used in small ways in overall teaching. The last section is current communicative approach. This is a great chapter on the origin of communicative teaching and how it has changed over the last 20 years.

What is really useful in this book is its layout. Each method is titled in the table of contents for easy access. Then once you are at the appropriate chapter it is subtitled with such useful headings as: approach, method, design, teacher's role, student's role, and types of activities. This really made each method easy to understand and see how it would work in the classroom.

I read this book for my graduate class and also used for my private group study. Overall this book is an excellent theoretical overview of various approaches and methods of teaching languages, especially English.

Pro - very systematic and organized. A good book to start with. Various kinds of resources.

Con - Too theoretical. If you are not an experienced teacher, you might want to start with Teacher's Handbook: Contextualized Language Instruction. Also, because it's all text-based, it's sometimes hard to understand what it's talking about. The authors might better help readers by adding video clips of different methods and approaches.

I recommend this book.

It's a very detailed book for those who would like to have a general idea about some of the most traditional approaches and methodologies in Language teaching. I like it very much.

This book surprised me greatly. I was familiar with the first edition of the book. When I bought the book I expected improvements in this second edition, but to my surprise the improvements were a lot more than I had expected. I highly recommend the book for any trainer or trainee.

This book provides a useful overview of different approaches to language teaching. It discusses various tested methodologies in considerable detail. Although a theoretical text, it does not contain excessive jargon and concepts should be easy to grasp by the lay reader.

Interesting book where you will find diverses methodologies and approaches most used through the history. There are some parts that its kind of difficult to understand but it is not a big deal. It has a lot of citations.

While I do think that this book does offer some valuable information, I also think that a reader can only get so much information out of a book that is thoroughly unenjoyable to read. The book would be far more effective if reading it wasn't such a painful task. The material is very dry and many of the explanations within the text are very unclear. I found myself reading the same pages over and over again because the book just couldn't hold my attention . Overall, I do not recommend this book. It's far too dull to get much out of.

This is one of Jack's finest books in that it explains what others take hundreds of pages to explain in the simplest and easiest way possible and in a short easy to read book.