Current issue: Volume 21 Number 2 (December 2011)

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In this edition, the first two articles focus on the practicum component of TESOL teacher education courses. Thomsett, Leggett and Ainsworth report on an action research project initiated to identify the benefits and sustainability of a workplace learning activity within a Graduate Diploma of Education (Secondary) course. They conclude that this newly-introduced component addressed pre-service teachers’ needs, was highly valued by the participants and strengthened school/university links.

The article by de Courcy, which follows, also describes the experiences of teachers undertaking a practicum in a graduate TESOL course, but from a different perspective – in this study the participants were already practising teachers and so came into the course with a different set of skills and expectations. The findings from this study emphasise the importance of the continuing process of reflection on practice.

The final article, by Petraki and Hill, takes up the long debated argument of the importance of explicit grammar teaching in language lessons. It begins by reviewing research which supports the importance of teachers being able to explain the grammar of a language to L2 students. The authors lament the inability of many language teachers to feel confident when it comes to specific language focus in lessons and explore the reasons why this might be. , and takes up the question of how teachers select and make use of such materials. Surprisingly, instructional materials have received little recent attention relative to other aspects of ESL teaching. Wette examines the ways in which materials are integrated into overall teaching practice, highlighting the importance of time, resources and independence for teachers to develop their own materials appropriate to the students they face in their classrooms.

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