Featuring extensive updates and revisions, the 3rd edition of Materials and Methods in ELT offers a comprehensive and useful introduction to the principles and practice of teaching English as a foreign/second language. A popular and practical guide for teachers, teachers in training, and for students studying methods and materials. Features a new chapter on IT in English language teaching, new samples from current teaching materials, plus a new section on technology for materials and methods. Covers how to approach materials and methods, evaluation and adaptation, technology for materials and methods, and teaching in under-resourced classrooms. Examines the different methods available to teachers for organizing and managing an ELT classroom, including group and pair work, individualization, and classroom observation.

Explicating clearly and concisely the full implication of a praxis-oriented language pedagogy, this book argues for an approach to language teaching grounded in a significant scientific theory of human learning―a stance that rejects the consumer approach to theory and the dichotomy between theory and practice that dominates SLA and language teaching. This approach is based on Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory, according to which the two activities are inherently connected so that each is necessarily rooted in the other; practice is the research laboratory where the theory is tested. From the perspective of language education, this is what is meant by the ‘pedagogical imperative.’ Sociocultural Theory and the Pedagogical Imperative in L2 Education Elaborates a new approach to dealing with the relationship between theory and practice―an approach grounded in praxis―the dialectical unity of theory and practice Presents an analysis of empirical research illustrating praxis-based principles in real language classrooms Brings together cognitive linguistics and sociocultural theory ─ the former provides the theoretical knowledge of language required of praxis and the latter furnishes the theoretical principles of learning and development also called for in a praxis approach Offers recommendations for redesigning teacher education programs Its timely focus on the theory-practice gap in language education and its original approach to bridging it put this book at the cutting edge of thinking about Vygotskian sociocultural theory in applied linguistics and SLA.