From Language Learner to Language Teacher An Introduction to Teaching English as a Foreign Language

Today, there are about four nonnative-speaking English teachers for every teacher who is a native speaker. More English teachers work in non-English-speaking settings than in English-speaking settings, and most are natives of the countries in which they teach. This volume focuses on the challenges faced by English teachers for whom English is a second (or even third or fourth) language. Four themes receive special emphasis: communicative language teaching, proficiency, language learning, and practicality. Chapters 1–5 cover issues of classroom survival: basic principles of language learning and teaching and course and lesson planning. Chapters 6–13 discuss the language skills of listening, speaking, reading, writing, vocabulary, and grammar; the role of culture in language teaching; and some of the problems that recur in EFL classrooms. An afterword suggests paths for teachers who want to pursue further study, and appendixes offer a starter kit for course planning, sample course plans, culture-topic activity ideas for oral skills classes, and print and Internet resources for teachers and students.

Don Snow holds an MA in English/TESOL from Michigan State University and a PhD in East Asian language and culture from Indiana University. He has taught language, culture, and linguistics for many years in the United States, Taiwan, mainland China, and Hong Kong, and has worked with a number of organizations that send volunteer teachers abroad. At present he is Director of Duke Kunshan University’s Language and Culture Center.