by A P R Howatt with H G Widdowson

Publisher: Oxford University Press 2004

ISBN: 0-19-442185-6

This 2004 revamping of the 1984 original is an unashamedly esoteric tome, chronicling the development of ELT over the last six centuries. It is divided into three sections of similar length, covering the periods 1400–1800, 1800–1900 and 1900 ‘to the present day’. The book charts diverse territory, including the bilingual grammars of the 17th and 18th centuries, the spread of English during the rise and fall of the British Empire, the role of the British Council, and the work of 19th- and 20th-century pioneers such as Ollendorf and Palmer. However, Howatt’s narrative comes no closer to the present day than the work of Prabhu and the COBUILD project of the 1980s. It is left to the series editor and book’s coauthor, Henry Widdowson, to provide an extra chapter, ‘A Perspective on Current Trends’.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it is the almost unbelievably arcane teaching methods adopted so earnestly throughout the ages which make for some of the most interesting reading in the book. Take Thomas Prendergast, whose Mastery of Languages manipulated model sentences in order to demonstrate how the language worked. Taking two ten-word sentences, he assigns each word a number (1–20), and then, on a diagram ominously titled ‘The labyrinth’, itemises all possible permutations of these words, easily filling a full page with number after number in tiny print. And this was intended to teach! And then there was François Gouin, who created exercises based on a blowby- blow account of some physical despite a criticism from Gouin’s contemporary Sweet that they were ‘as uninteresting as they are useless’. While these methods have thankfully not survived, it is fascinating to see how several of our ‘modern’ insights into language and language learning do in fact have a long and distinguished pedigree: word-frequency lists, and prefab chunks of language, to name but two. Prendergast was fascinated by the ability of young children to reproduce these chunks, describing them as ‘the rails on which the trains of thought travel swiftly and smoothly’. Parallels with contemporary corpus-based notions of lexis and multi-word units will be clear to today’s readers: and Prendergast was writing in 1864!

The quality of the writing is as good as we have come to expect from this OUP series. However, the relevance of the material covered may be a cause for concern for some potential readers. Howatt’s interest in ELT seems to peak in about 1920, with much space devoted to the likes of Sweet and Palmer, and developments closer to the present day receive less attention. The book’s title may lead some potential readers to expect more detailed descriptions of processes familiar to all contemporary readers, such as wood-chopping: ‘The maid goes and seeks her hatchet, The maid takes a log of wood, The maid draws near to the chopping block …’

Seventeen sentences later, when the deed is finally done, today’s reader may breathe a sigh of relief, but these series of sentences formed the basis of a methodology for teaching languages which enjoyed real popularity for a time, ‘fringe’ methodologies such as the Silent Way or Total Physical Response, though these in fact get little more than a cursory mention. Yet, these omissions aside, A History of English Language Teaching provides a wealth of information, which will be much appreciated by those wanting a broader picture of the development of our profession.

London, UK