Social and Political Education

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Firstly, there is the issue of whether language teaching is mainly about coaching a skill, or whether it should strive after broader objectives. I would argue that there are many groups around the world (business people, diplomats, international students, secondary school pupils studying it as a foreign language), whose main interest in learning English is instrumental, for whom its cultural baggage and ideological embedding is largely irrelevant. They are concerned to develop an adequate proficiency as efficiently as possible, and will look favourably on any activities which facilitate this. Here, of course, questions of syllabus and materials design and teaching methodology become important. Akbari is quite right to lament the anodyne nature of Breitling Replica Watches most commercially produced textbooks, although he acknowledges that this is largely the result of publishing companies trying to meet very widespread demand without giving offence. He is equally right to question methods which exclude the learner’s native tongue, though he recognizes that outsiders might have problems if they are not familiar with local languages. One might add too that the emphasis on communicative methodology is also often misplaced, and that greater respect needs to be paid to local pedagogical traditions.

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