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PREFACExvedly systematic and theory-driven phase. In looking back at the past and inlooking forward to the future, I have tried to create a historical significancefiltered through the prism of my own personal experience and professionalunderstanding. In that sense, this book marks the merging of the personal,the professional, and the historical.One more remark on the focus of this book is in order. In discussing languageteaching methods, I do not see much merit in making any distinctionbetween second and foreign languages, or between teaching English as asecond/foreign language and teaching other languages such as French orSpanish as a second/foreign language. I have always felt that these distinctionsare based more on proprietorial rights than on pedagogical reasoning.In any case, these distinctions do not matter much to an investigationand interpretation of higher order tenets of language pedagogy. For illustrativepurposes, however, I will be focusing on English language teaching;although, most of the issues and concerns treated in this book are applicableto language education in general.As for the readership, this book is intended primarily for graduate students,practicing teachers, and teacher educators. Clearly, they all bringvarying degrees of prior knowledge and precise motivation to the task of deconstructingthis text. It is almost impossible to appeal to all shades of potentialreaders unless everything is reduced to the lowest common denomination;I have not done that. As a result, each group will find some portionsof the text more pertinent than others, and some portions more engagingthan others. Teacher educators may find perspectives that are, in certaincases, different from the ones with which they are already familiar. Practicingteachers may find new connections that give them ideas that they maynot have thought about before. Beginning level graduate students may findthat some sections of the text require a more careful reading than others.Throughout the text, I have tried to explain the concepts and terms in assimple language as possible, without, at the same time, diluting the complexityof the issues, or “dumbing down” the reader.AN OVERVIEW OF THE BOOKAs indicated earlier, I attempt to present in this book a personal and professionalperspective of English language teaching methods—a perspectivethat is founded at once on historical action and contemporary thought.Drawing from seminal, foundational texts and from critical commentariesmade by various scholars, I narrate the profession’s slow and steady marchfrom method to postmethod, and in the process, elucidate the relationshipbetween theory, research, and practice. I mix materials that are old andnew. The book is divided into three parts: (1) Language, Learning, and