The Historiography of foreign language teaching

A window to the past history of foreign language teaching from the invention of printing to this day. Likewise, there will be updated news on congresses and workshops to be held in Europe and which deal with this speciality. I will also review some of the most significant seminal works dealing with the history of FLT as well as with the first fathers of English Language Teaching.

domingo, 18 de agosto de 2013

An overview

The present blog intends to become a meeting point for all those interested in foreign language teaching (FLT): teachers, researchers, educational legislators, translators and any one keen on FLT. I am currently a PhD candidate and my line of research is the historiography of English in Spain.

Regarded as a branch of Applied Linguistics, ELT historiography is a relatively young branch in the field of the Social Sciences. Nowadays, it has a 'good health', as it were, judging by the number of associations, congresses and workshops held across Europe.

My intention is to disclose our past and trace the evolution of English Language Teaching (ELT) since its origins at the turn of the 18th century until our present day. Nobody questions the value of history in all fields of science as a means to progress and improvement of past practice. Linguistics became a science by the end of the 19th century. Over one century later, its history needs revisiting so that future generations have a better understanding of essential issues such as how language works, the most effective ways to learn a foreign language, the use of pragmatics and so on and so forth.

Everyone is invited to give their say, to share research interests and to add information on topics of special relevance to the historiography of FLT across cultures and countries. I will progressively add all sorts of relevant information concerning this fascinating line of research.