Humanising Language Teaching
Year 5; Issue 6; November 03

Didáctica de las Lenguas Extranjeras en la Educación Secundaria Obligatoria

The volume edited by Luci Nussbaum and Mercè Bernaus contains contributions by the editors themselves together with those by Beatriz caballero de Rodas, Cristina Escobar and Ma Dolors Masats. With such prestigious colleagues, who bring about their wide experience in the field of language teaching, the reader naturally has high expectations and is not disappointed.

This book offers both teachers and students critical reviews together with clear and objective proposals in several aspects of foreign language teaching in ESO.

As will be seen below, however, the topics dealt with in the volume are also relevant for levels other than ESO. The book is divided into 11 chapters that, as the editors make clear in the introduction, may be read in isolation, according to the reader's specific needs. All the chapters follow the same format.

They begin with a brief but complete introduction, followed by the glossary of key concepts so that the reader may get ready to start the main body of the chapter but also go back to the definitions if necessary. The contents in each chapter are divided into several sections which contain tasks to be carried out either by the reader or with pre/service teachers. At the end of each chapter there is a very brief summary organized in subtopics that allows us to review all the information presented in a very easy way. This format is, from my point of view, one of the book's many good features.

Chapter 1, Las lenguas extranjeras en la formación del alumnado de ESO, deals with foreign language in ESO from the perspective of the European multilingual context and discusses the implications behind the acquisition of a new linguistic system.

In an excellent synthesis, chapter 2, El aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras en medio escolar, presents the most influential methodologies in second language teaching and their evolution up to the present.

Chapter 3, El professor y el alumnado como agents del proceso de aprendizaje, focuses on the role of both teacher and student and reflects upon issues such as strategies, individual variables and motivation, among other aspects.

Chapter 4, El Diseño Curricular Base y sus possibilities de adaptación a las realidades escolares, centres on a very specific topic : the possibility to adapt the Diseño Curricular Base to the reality of the school.

Chapters 5 and 6, El Discurso en el aula de lenguas extranjeras and La gestión de la comunicacion en el aula, respectively, analyse communication in the classroom from two complimentary perspectives: on the one hand, discourse analysis (how it is built interaction and error treatment), on the other hand, the teacher's role when communicating in the classroom.

Related to the main ideas in the fourth chapter, chapter 7, La organización de la enseñanza offers a very well organised reflection upon teaching through tasks and projects and about AICLE together with a number of clear and practical examples.

What instruments can the teacher use to carry all these out? Chapter 8, Materiales para la enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras, tackles this issue by presenting a classification of materials and several proposals to devise our own materials.

Chapters 9 and 10, Las destrezas de la comunicación oral and Las destrezas de la comunicacion escrita, which follows a parallel format, deal with oral and written skills, both receptive and productive. First, communication is defined, secondly we find the analysis of possible micro skills involved in the processes and, finally, we come across several interesting activities to favour both oral and written communication in the classroom.

The last chapter, 11, La evaluación is on evaluation. After reflecting upon the act of evaluating in our daily life, there comes an analysis of all possible aspects that intervene in the process : the teacher's role, the role of both formative and summarise evaluation, the collection of quantitive as well as qualitative information and an exhaustive analysis with plenty of examples of different ways to gather information (interviews, portfolios, analytic scales…)

Such different issues are dealt with in the book in equal depth and with the utmost clarity and objectivity, characteristics which no doubt are present thanks to the authors' experience in the field. This volume is, therefore, a must for any teacher who cares about his or her profession and not only for the new teacher or the pre/service teacher, as the editors modestly claim in the introduction. Merely knowing the foreign language is not enough nowadays, we, the teachers, should also keep up to date through readings that may lead us to either, renew our material or maintain our beliefs. At a certain age and with certain experience, one does not like to be told how to teach foreign languages in a decontextualized way. This is why I strongly recommend this book which focuses on our context and is written by teachers who work in our context.

Review written by M. Luz Celaya
First published in APAC magazine, Jan. 2003