World Englishes, Vol. 28, No. 2, pp. 270–279, 2009.

0883-2919

REVIEWS

‘Think on my words’: Exploring Shakespeare’s Language. David Crystal. Cambridge:

Cambridge UP, 2008, xii + 254 pp.
Reviewed by THOMAS J. DERRICK∗

This linguistic guide for beginners and experienced Shakespearean playgoers and readers
of edited texts represents a third pulse in the evolution of this instructional genre. The
first generation consisted of books from the New English Dictionary era: E. A. Abbott’s
A Shakespearian Grammar (1870) and C. T. Onions’ A Shakespeare Glossary (1911),
which provided historical examples cross-referenced to citations in standard editions of
the plays. A second group of language scholars published descriptive and interpretive
appraisals such as Helge Kökeritz’s Shakespeare’s Pronunciation (1953), A. C. Partridge’s
Orthography in Shakespeare and Elizabethan Drama (1964), Hilda Hulme’s Explorations
in Shakespeare’s Language (1962), S. S. Hussey’s The Literary Language of Shakespeare
(1982), N. F. Blake’s Shakespeare’s Language: An Introduction (1983), Jane Donawerth’s
Shakespeare and the Sixteenth-Century Study of Language (1984), and Frank Kermode’s
Shakespeare’s Language (2000). Some emphasize the literary and rhetorical context of
individual plays (Donawerth, Kermode); others treat aural and textual matters (Kökeritz,
Partridge) or general syntactic phenomena (Hulme, Hussey, Blake). An emerging third
type relies on dynamic databases of Shakespearean usage in Early Modern spelling and
historical re-enactments in Renaissance theatres, such Shakespeare’s Globe, Bankside,
or acting workshops. In organization, focus, and intent, Crystal’s book comes closest to
Blake’s in that ‘Think on my words’ briefly describes the development of Early Modern
English, its vocabulary, parts of speech, word order – all as distinguished from current
usages. Thematically, as a selective foray into unfamiliar territory for beginners, Explor-
ing Shakespeare’s Language is indebted to his university professor’s book, though Dr
Hulme was mainly concerned with individual words in proverbial expressions and he with
Shakespeare’s pattern of artistic choices in line metrics and sentences.
David Crystal’s partnership with his actor son and their commercial database com-
pany (http://shakespeareswords.com) distinguish this book from its predecessors. Although
Crystal Reference Systems licenses its information, the present work stands alone without
overt reliance on the database or the father and son’s printed replacement for Onions’
glossary, Shakespeare’s Words (2002). Crystal’s linguistic and dramatic scholarship bene-
fits from this continued research into the categorizations like prose/verse, male/female
parts, shared lines, scene divisions as percentages of the whole play. The static lists of
Marvin Spevack’s computer-generated Harvard Concordance to Shakespeare (1973) are
thus superseded by dynamic word-matching and sorting, and a new generation of Shake-
spearean literary analysis is possible.
Crystal organizes his guide by debunking four popular misconceptions concerning the
terra incognita of 16th-century English and then marching resolutely through concentric
∗ Department of English, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, IN 47809, USA. E-mail: tderrick@isugw.indstate.edu


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MA 02148, USA.
 Reviews 271

areas of linguistic specialty until he touches on the core of Shakespeare’s verbal ingenu-
ity. Professional linguists and literature professors will learn little from this exposition,
though each may increase awareness of the other’s concerns. Biographers or philosophers
of language do not need this book either. Crystal does not probe Shakespeare’s develop-
ment or disputed authorship, nor does he examine the relationship of thought to language
and metaphor to denotation. Appealing, rather, to the imagery of architecture and house-
cleaning, Crystal proposes to examine instances of the dramatist’s choices within Early
Modern norms and varieties, like a furniture arranger, and encourages his naı̈ve read-
ers to sweep away the ‘cobwebs’ of misunderstanding about the alleged preservation of
Elizabethan speech in modern enclaves, Shakespeare’s extraordinary coinages, difficulty
in comprehension of the ‘foreign language’ in the Shakespeare canon, and the supposed
stylistic uniqueness of Shakespeare’s mind. He glances in successive chapters at topics
appropriate to basic learners, as follows.

Chapter 2: printing-house forms of the plays and poems; clues from

manuscripts (pp. 22–41);
Chapter 3: the ‘graphology’ of letter-press conventions for the alphabet,
capitalization, space abbreviations, spelling (pp. 42–63);
Chapter 4: punctuation marks (exclamation, parenthesis, apostrophe,
italic font, inverted commas, hyphen; pp. 64–99);
Chapter 5: the ‘phonology’ of versification, especially blank verse (pp.
100–124);
Chapter 6: pronunciation of vowels and consonants in Shakespeare’s time,
compared to modern British standards (pp. 125–45);
Chapter 7: range of difficulty in current understanding of Early Modern
vocabulary; considerations of collocations (predictable word
sequences; pp. 146–77);
Chapter 8: syntactic arrangement and morphological, structured variation
(pp. 178–229);
Chapter 9: Shakespearean dialogue in relation to oppositions of verse/
prose, social class of the character, subject matter of the ex-
changes, metrics, regional variants, professional markers such
as medicine and law (pp. 230–33);
Appendix: an alphabetical list of deceptively familiar words in Shake-
speare’s works, the ‘false friends’ to baffled or uncritical stu-
dents (pp. 234–44);
Notes and References: Chapter quotations and further references; uncategorized bib-
liography (pp. 245–8).

In his professional acceptance of linguistic terms and concepts – indeed, his advocacy
that every study relies on a specialized lexicon – Crystal leads amateurs through the com-
plex history of Shakespeare’s expression, with occasional allusions to modern technology
and popular culture, for example, word processing programs or train spotting.
Noticing/describing/speculating: Crystal’s method is designed to increase independent
study. He encourages the game of identifying unusual and typical features in the plays, ex-
plaining them in the shared terms of language historians and linguists, and making educated
guesses about the reasons one option was chosen over another, when the dramatic situation

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and character development are considered. This method discourages arguments from au-
thority, appeals to personal preference — the sirens enticing a novice without patience and
knowledge. On the other hand of the pedagogical dilemma, Crystal frequently quotes folio
and quarto printings of lines rather than modern spelling editions. Vndergraduate tudents
maie bee confu ’d about how to construe the plain sense of some passages! The book’s best
use is to support the literature or acting teacher’s awareness of historical linguistics. Even
Crystal’s advocacy of a teaching programme that integrates Shakespeare’s vital dramatic
texts with scholarly reconstructions and interpretations requires mediation. “Examining
the way an author manipulates . . . linguistic rules,” he asserts, “gives us insights into the
nature of the rules themselves” (p. 231). Considering Crystal’s stature as an authoritative,
enterprising historian of Early Modern English, he generously and optimistically means
the “us” of Shakespeare’s admirers at all levels of sophistication and commitment.

(Received 22 July 2008.)

Harold E. Palmer: From Learner-Teacher to Legend. Makhan L. Tickoo. New Delhi:

Orient Longman, 2008, xii + 420.
Reviewed by ROBERT J. BAUMGARDNER∗

Harold E. Palmer: From Learner-Teacher to Legend (hereafter HEP) is a biography of the

life and contributions to the fields of language and language pedagogy of Harold E. Palmer.
HEP consists of an Introduction (pp. 1–14), two major parts (pp. 15–362), Concluding
Remarks (pp. 363–376), a General Bibliography (pp. 377–392), an extensive Bibliography
of Palmer’s books, textbooks, pamphlets and articles (pp. 392–410), and an Author Index
(pp. 411–13) and General Index (pp. 414–420). Tickoo has included in his bibliography
both well-documented and little-researched data about this giant in language teaching and
pedagogy; the mix makes a fascinating story that will appeal both to the lay reader and to
those working in the fields of linguistics and language teaching and learning.
Part I of HEP comprises seven chronologically organized chapters, from Palmer’s early
years as a language learner and teacher in Britain to his recognition as an elder states-
man of language teaching. In Chapter 1, “In Quest of a Professional Voice: 1902–1916”
(pp. 17–45), Tickoo recounts how Palmer as a child had been thrust into the world of letters,
as his father was a newspaper publisher. Palmer took language classes during his school
years, but did not like the way languages were taught. After he left school at the age of 15,
he worked for his father’s newspaper in Kent and spent half a year in Paris learning French.
He took a job in Belgium in 1902 as a teacher in a school where the Berlitz Method/Direct
Method was used; within one year, however, he had opened his own language school in
Verviers. It was in his School of Languages that Palmer formally began his life-long career
as a language teacher-learner.
It was during this period, too, that Palmer began his illustrious career as author, laying the
methodological groundwork of his work through the study of a wide range of languages,
∗ Department of Literature and Languages, Texas A&M University, Commerce, TX 75429, USA. E-mail: robert_
baumgardner@tamu-commerce.edu


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including modern European, oriental, and artificial languages, such as Ido and Esperanto.
In 1907 Palmer published The Palmer Method: Elementary French, a book that owes
much to the Direct Method as well as to Palmer’s own early emphasis on the teaching of
vocabulary in context.
Palmer escaped German-occupied Belgium in 1914 and returned to England, where
he continued teaching and formulating his method and where, in 1915, he was asked by
University College London to lecture as an instructor on foreign language teaching. It was
also during this period that Palmer came into contact with the work of Thomas Prendergast,
and incorporated parts of Prendergast’s Mastery Method of sentence construction (see
Tickoo 1986) into his own oral methodology based on the Direct/Berlitz Methods.
Chapter 2, “London: 1916–1921: An Outperforming Outsider” (pp. 46–98), finds Palmer
at his creative pinnacle. Through his association with phonetician Daniel Jones, Palmer
honed his interest in the sound system of English and published well-received linguistic
work not only on English phonetics, phonology, and intonation, but also on his continuing
interest in language-teaching methodology. It was during this period, for example, that he
wrote The Scientific Study and Teaching of Languages (1917), The Principles of Language-
Study (1921) and The Oral Method of Teaching Languages (1921). In this last work, Palmer
emphasized his belief in no use of written language in initial stages of language learning,
a point on which he differed with the Direct/Berlitz Method.
In his introduction to Chapter 3, “Palmer in Japan: 1922–1936: An Overview”
(pp. 99–107), Tickoo sums up Palmer’s pre-Japan career: “Palmer came to Japan after
twenty years of tireless work as learner-teacher, teacher, head of a school that he started,
innovative classroom practitioner, producer of language-teaching materials, and, above all,
author of several books of exceptional power on languages—their acquisition, teaching and
use . . .” (p. 99). In this short chapter, Tickoo lays out his reasoning for dividing Palmer’s
years in Japan into three phases, the subjects of Chapter 4, “Expounding a New Theory,
Phase I: 1922–1926” (pp. 108–38), Chapter 5, “Responding to Ground Realities, Phase II:
1926–1928” (pp. 139–73), and Chapter 6, “Riding Several Horses, Phase III: 1928–1936”
(pp. 174–98). Japan offered the self-educated scholar fertile ground to test and where
necessary revise his ideas on language teaching and methodology formulated in a western
context.
During Phase I of his 14-year Japanese stay, Palmer concentrated his efforts on how
to best teach English in an oriental context. He first used the Saussurean distinction
of langue/parole to formulate his new theory. In Phase II, he changed his theoretical
and methodological focus from the classroom with the native or near-native speaker as
instructor to one with the local teacher as instructor. In Phase III, he consolidated his work
in Japan through writing and the establishment of a journal, The Bulletin of the Institute
for Research in English Teaching, which became the profession’s first English language
teaching journal as well as a vehicle through which Palmer’s ideas were disseminated to
the Western world. According to Tickoo, the crowning glory for Palmer at the end of his
Japanese stay in 1936 (as it would be for any foreign ELT advisor) was that Japanese
teachers of English had slowly begun to implement his methodology. He left behind in
Japan not only an indelible legacy in English Language Teaching, but also followers, such
as A. S. Hornby, to continue his work.
Chapter 7, “The Felbridge Years: 1936–1949: ELT’s Elder Statesman” (pp. 199–223),
finds Palmer shortly before his 60th birthday back in the United Kingdom. For the next
13 years, until his death in 1949, he continued his work on various aspects of linguistic

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analysis and English language teaching methodology, served as a consultant for a major
London publisher, and represented the British Council abroad in matters of ELT.
In Part II of HEP, Tickoo focuses in separate chapters on four areas of linguistics and
language teaching/learning that particularly interested Palmer: phonetics, grammar, vocab-
ulary, and curriculum and methodology. In Chapter 8, “Phonetic Fanaticism” (pp. 227–58),
Tickoo discusses in much detail Palmer’s fascination with both phonetics and intonation
as areas of study in themselves as well as underpinnings of language teaching/learning.
For Palmer, “phonetics was the ‘bedrock of language itself’; the ‘fellow branches are
in fact, mere offshoots of it’” (p. 229). In his numerous publications on phonetics, he
advocated the learning of phonetic transcription prior to the learning of the orthogra-
phy of a language; he believed this gave the language learner a firm base in accepted
pronunciation.
In Chapter 9, “Grammarian and Pedagogue” (pp. 259–88), Tickoo discusses Palmer’s
roles as both a theoretical and applied grammarian. Unhappy with viewing language as
isolated levels of phonology, morphology, lexis, syntax, etc., Palmer “sought to connect
lexicology, phonetics and phonology with the study of English morphology and syntax”
(p. 259). Reflecting both earlier (e.g. Descartes) as well as later grammarians, Palmer saw
grammar “as a series of definite instructions as to how to build up English sentences in the
manner of those who use English as their mother-tongue” (cited by Tickoo, p. 259). Like
Henry Sweet and Thomas Prendergast before him, Palmer concentrated on English usage:
“he saw no reason to fit the English language on to the Procrustean bed of Latin” (p. 260).
In Chapter 10, “Vocabulary: Miologs to Patterns” (pp. 289–334), Tickoo discusses
in chronological stages Palmer’s lifelong fascination with words. In his early years in
Belgium (1902–1915), he concentrated on words for classroom use; in his University
College London period (1916–1921), he stressed “some principles of word economy
(selection and control) in the development of language-teaching materials” (pp. 245–96).
In Japan (1922–1936), he worked on word lists specifically for Japanese ELT as well as
more general lists. And in Britain (1936–1949), “Palmer’s work on English words ranged
over the entire spectrum. In important ways it combined the work of the etymologist, the
semanticist, the lexicographer, and the grammarian. It included the ‘less than the word’
(miolog), the ‘single word’ (the monolog), the ‘more than the word’ (pliolog), the word
group (the collocation) and the word frame (the sentence pattern)” (p. 302).
In the final chapter, “The Business of Teaching” (pp. 335–62), Tickoo discusses in detail
Palmer’s book with H. Vere Redman, This Language-Learning Business (1932), and to a
lesser extent his On Learning to Read Foreign Languages (1932). In regard to the former,
Tickoo lays out basic elements of the Palmer method, “a method which brought together
and put to work not only his own beliefs on word selection and control and his own form of
phonetic transcription but some of the best in the [Direct Method] and the [Berlitz Method]
with parts of what stood out in the Reform Movement and in his study of his predecessors
like François Gouin but especially Thomas Prendergast” (p. 335). In the latter, Tickoo
briefly discusses Palmer’s objections to Algernon Coleman’s (1929) and Michael West’s
(1926, 1937) “reading approach” for the study of foreign languages.
In his “Concluding Remarks” (pp. 363–76) Tickoo not only points out a number of
“firsts” in Palmer’s theoretical and applied linguistic work – such as the first comprehensive
study of English intonation (1922) and grammar of spoken English (1924), as well as the
first English for Specific Purposes book, English for Soldiers (1934 – this last work is not
included in Tickoo’s extensive bibliography) – but also cites Palmer’s unique ability “to

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put the best of theory to the litmus test of success in ordinary classrooms”, especially for
“English teachers working in acquisition-poor environments of the Orient” (p. 374). This,
indeed, must be counted near the top of the list of Palmer’s many achievements.
This brief review cannot begin to show the great care for detail and depth of analysis
in this volume. Tickoo has thoroughly researched his subject. HEP is a very valuable
addition to the history of ELT methodology and linguistic (and sociolinguistic) analysis, and
would make an excellent textbook or source book for an advanced course in methodology,
linguistics, or the history of language teaching and learning. Every library should hold a
copy.

REFERENCES
Tickoo, Makhan L. (1986) Prendergast and the “Mastery Method”: an assessment. ELT Journal 40, 52–8.
West, Michael P. (1926) Learning to Read a Foreign Language: An Experimental Study. London: Longmans, Green.
West, Michael P. (1937) The “Reading Approach” and “The New Method System”. Modern Language Journal 22,
220–22.

(Received 2 September 2008.)

Nigerian Pidgin in Lagos: Language Contact, Variation and Change in an African Urban
Setting. Dagmar Deuber. London: Battlebridge, 2005, xiii + 273 pp. and CD
Reviewed by EDMUND BAMIRO∗

In this volume, Dagmar Deuber employs Labovian quantitative sociolinguistics to investi-

gate variation in Nigerian Pidgin (NigP) in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital. The book
comprises eight chapters. Chapter 1 (pp. 1–11), the introduction, explores terminological
issues, the origin and development of NigP, and data and methodology. A central aim of the
book is “to determine the nature and extent of English influences on present-day NigP, es-
pecially as spoken by educated speakers, on the lexical, grammatical and discourse levels”
(p. 6). Contrary to the view that NigP is a “context” variety associated with the illiterate
and semi-literate population (Agheyisi 1988: 229–30; Bamiro 1991a: 7–8), Deuber’s book
focuses mainly on what she calls NigP “spoken by educated speakers” (p. 6). She defines
educated NigP as “the language use of the type of speakers who, judging by their social
characteristics, are unlikely to be regular users of the basilect in a P/C [pidgin/creole]
continuum situation” (p. 42). The data itself consists of face-to-face speech and radio
broadcasts.
Chapter 2 (pp. 13–43) is a thorough review of literature as it attempts to show how key
sociolinguistic concepts such as (post-)pidgin/creole continuum, decreolization, diglossia,
triglossia, code-switching, borrowing, and interference relate to the form and structure of
NigP. However, readers already familiar with these concepts may find much of the material
in this chapter uninstructive. Chapter 3 (pp. 45–57) describes the functions and status of
NigP in the context of the multilingual sociolinguistic set-up in Nigeria in general and Lagos

∗ Department of English Studies and Mass Communication, Adekunle Ajasin University, P.M.B. 001, Akungba-Akoko,
Ondo State Nigeria. E-mail: eddiebamiro@yahoo.com


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in particular. Among the claims made in this chapter is: “The great asset of NigP is that
it is the most neutral language in Nigeria: it has neither the elitist connotations of English
nor the ethnic connotations of the indigenous languages” (p. 51). Chapter 4 (pp. 59–70)
not only explores the linguistic aspects of the language contact situation in Nigeria but also
provides an overview of relevant aspects of language variation and change which takes into
account NigP and English as well as the indigenous languages. However, Chapters 3 and 4
are conceptually similar, and could have been conflated without compromising the overall
analytical framework of the book. Deuber also claims: “Little work has so far been done on
code-switching between NigP and English” (p. 63). Obviously, she is not aware of earlier
scholarship in this area (e.g. Bamiro 1991a, b). She further argues that “NigP is not part of
the spectrum of variation in Nigerian English” (p. 65). However, sociolectal analysis has
revealed that NigP “belongs to the basilectal range of Nigerian English” (Bamiro 1991b:
275).
Chapter 5 (pp. 71–159) is the core of the book, as it analyzes an educated NigP corpus,
which consists of “a total size of about 80,000 words and is made up of 40 texts of approx-
imately 2,000 words” (p. 71). Basing her analysis on the formal, structural, and discourse
features of educated NigP, Deuber discovers that the main aspects of English influence
in educated NigP are code-switching, lexical borrowing, and some limited grammatical
borrowing (p. 155). Nevertheless, much of the formal and structural information has been
extensively delineated in previous studies on NigP.
Chapter 6 (pp. 161–81) engages with the same kind of analysis as in Chapter 5 but
presents “analyses of three recordings of NigP as spoken by speakers who . . . speak the
language at least fairly well, but who do not have formal education up to the same level as
the speakers in the corpus [analyzed in Chapter 5]” (p. 161). Chapter 6 confirms Deuber’s
notion that “NigP and English remain separate languages. English influence in NigP can
generally be attributed to borrowing, the code-switching behaviour of bilinguals or incom-
plete second language acquisition, all phenomena which also occur in language contact
situations not involving a P/C language” (p. 181). Chapter 7 (pp. 183–200) examines the
problems and prospects of language planning for NigP. In spite of the reservations of
several Nigerian scholars that it would be difficult for NigP to attain the status of a national
language (e.g. Jowitt 1991:14), Deuber argues: “NigP is as desirable a candidate for the
status of a national language, and a considerably more realistic one, than the trilingual
option which forms the basis of present language policies” (pp. 188–9). The trilingual
option relates to the roles of Nigeria’s three major languages – Hausa, Yoruba, and Igbo –
as the country’s national languages. However, in most domains in Nigeria, NigP is still
treated as uneducated speech, and this is the crucial factor militating against its acceptance
either as an official national language or as a medium of instruction in primary schools.
Chapter 8 (pp. 201–9), the conclusion, draws together the main findings from the
empirical parts of the study and relates them to the theoretical issues raised in Chapter 2;
it also briefly discusses the prospects for the future development of the language contact
situation in Nigeria. Deuber rightly concludes, inter alia, that “given its widespread nature,
its vital function as a lingua franca – particularly in the growing urban communities – and
its increasing popularity among the educated as an informal language, it is hardly in doubt
that for as long as one can foresee, NigP will continue to play an important role in Nigeria’s
sociolinguistic configuration” (p. 209).
Deuber’s uncritical acceptance of the Labovian quantitative paradigm as a research tool
has resulted in several chapters cluttered with obtrusive statistics, figures, and longitudinal

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analysis. Since NigP is a performance variety, which in most cases resides in the public
domain, some readers might find her quantitative analysis tortuous and cumbersome. No
amount of quantitative analysis can capture the performative nature of NigP.
Like most previous studies, Deuber’s analysis focuses disproportionately on the formal
and structural properties of NigP, to the detriment of its social and functional power as an
interpreter of the Nigerian social structure. In a socially stratified country like Nigeria,
where the social structure is virtually polarized along the rich–poor axis, and where NigP
functions as the voice of the oppressed masses, NigP becomes an ideological zone for
“working out social meanings and enacting social differences between the dominant and
dominated classes” (Bamiro 2006: 316). NigP scholars cannot continue to ignore the
ideological dimensions of the nature, meaning, and function of this language variety.
On the whole, this volume is a product of painstaking research and is, therefore, a wel-
come addition to the growing scholarship on NigP. The book contains maps, photographs,
an impressive bibliography, appendices, and a CD-ROM, the latter embodying the full
appendix C, the complete corpus, detailed background information on all the texts and
speakers, and selected sample texts from the corpus with sound. The work will be of
interest to readers of World Englishes because of its illustration of a variety which not
only challenges the authority of Anglo-American Englishes over the resources of commu-
nication but is also used as a medium of intranational and interethnic communication in
Nigeria.

REFERENCES
Agheyisi, Rebecca (1988) The standardization of Nigerian Pidgin English. English World-Wide 9, 227–41.
Bamiro, Edmund (1991a) Nigerian Englishes in Nigerian English literature. World Englishes 10, 7–17.
Bamiro, Edmund (1991b) The social and functional power of Nigerian English. World Englishes 10, 275–86.
Bamiro, Edmund (2006) Nativization strategies: Nigerianisms at the intersection of ideology and gender in Achebe’s
fiction. World Englishe 25, 315–28.
Jowitt, David (1991) Nigerian English Usage: An Introduction. Lagos: Longman.

(Received 12 July 2007.)

English Language Teaching in China: New Approaches, Perspectives and Standards.

Edited by Jun Liu. New York: Continuum, 2007, xvi + 340 pp.
Reviewed by LESLIE BARRATT∗

This examination of both English teaching in general and in China is divided into three
parts, which span the field from a global perspective on how English is taught in Part I, to an
examination of theoretical and practical questions regarding communicative competence
in Part II, and finally, to studies on teaching communicative competence in the context of
China. Jun Liu provides the rationale for such a book in the Introduction, noting the rapid
rise of English in China and the implications for methodology of teaching English and
achieving communicative competence in a world of Englishes.

∗ Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, IN 47809, USA. E-mail:
lesliebarratt@indstate.edu


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Liu’s chapter on methods teachers use (pp. 13–41) is an excellent introduction to the
study of methodology as well as a report on his survey of 800 language teachers in 61
countries. His findings of the preference for communicative and eclectic approaches are
not surprising, and he points out that Non-native English-speaking Teachers’ (NNESTs’)
use of some Grammar-Translation method for reading and writing gives some direction
for future research on the conceptualization of methods.
The other five chapters in Part I address issues concerning how communicative com-
petence in English is being taught and how it is being redefined around the globe. The
emphasis on communicative competence is especially evident in three contributions. Cit-
ing Widdowson’s 1983 model, Larsen-Freeman (pp. 42–54) argues that teachers need to
help learners go beyond competence to capacity (i.e. the ability be creative with language)
and to view grammar as a “dynamic skill” (p. 47) involving not just form, but also mean-
ing and use. The contributions by Kramsch (pp. 55–74) and Murray (pp. 75–90) serve
to locate communicative competence within the conceptual and historical framework of
the globalizing world. After a review of several current perspectives on communicative
competence, Kramsch argues for a social semiotic perspective in which speakers must
also develop communicative trust in order to explore other speakers’ potential meanings
and to co-construct intercultural dialogue. Murray brings electronic communication into
the discussion by examining how second language learners use technology to develop
communicative competence, and how teachers can help them learn to be communicatively
competent in the new discourses.
The final two chapters in Part I describe specific proposals for teaching communicative
competence. Lynn Dı́az-Rico (pp. 91–106) provides a provocative argument that, as English
becomes more important as a lingua franca, ESL/EFL classes should include methods,
particularly the use of drama, which are informed by interlanguage theory, and should avoid
goals of native-like performance. Liu (pp. 107–23) describes a model of collaboration
among NNEST and NEST teachers that can facilitate the teaching of communicative
competence in EFL environments by fostering teachers’ professional growth and their
investment in the curriculum.
Part II contains four chapters that examine how communicative competence can be
learned and assessed. Steve Stoynoff’s contribution (pp. 127–49) introduces readers to
theoretical and practical frameworks for assessing communicative competence and shows
how these frameworks can be applied to meet local needs. Thomas Scovel (pp. 150–69)
shares insights from psycholinguistics to show that the process of achieving competence
is affected by many variables, both social and psychological, which interact in complex
ways. Jun Liu’s contribution to Part II (pp. 170–91) is an excellent report on his research
on whether starting English instruction at earlier ages leads to long-term advantages. His
finding that middle-schoolers who began English instruction in elementary school do
not maintain an advantage for more than a year or two should caution those who would
advocate early foreign language instruction. The final chapter in Part II is written by
Ulla Connor, on assessing communicative competence in writing (pp. 192–208). Connor
shows that evaluation by speakers of different Englishes produces different assessments,
especially when the cultural and ideological norms are different, and she calls for revised
models of writing assessment that are sensitive to the norms of World Englishes.
The longest of the three sections, Part III turns the reader’s attention to studies conducted
with Chinese learners to highlight how the Chinese cultural context affects the achievement
of communicative competence. First, Don Snow writes about the difficulty of sustaining

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C 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
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self-directed language learning (pp. 211–30) and suggests several strategies that Chinese
learners can use to facilitate learning on their own. Jun Zhao’s chapter on gestures (pp.
231–49) shows that Chinese speakers living in the United States used significantly more
gestures when speaking English than when speaking Chinese, and that identity issues
affected the gestures they adopted. Zhao advocates the explicit instruction of gestures with
the goal of comprehension if not production.
The chapters by Jian Peng (pp. 250–69) and Jette G. Hansen Edwards (pp. 270–84) more
directly address Chinese students’ English speaking. Peng’s study revealed eight factors
that prevent Chinese students from being willing to communicate in their EFL classes, and
suggests that teachers should raise students’ awareness of Chinese cultural constraints and
of learning strategies, design tasks that require meaningful interaction, and incorporate
formative assessments (i.e. with ongoing feedback) into their courses. Edwards’ chapter
is focused entirely on pronunciation. Taking off from many of the concepts addressed in
the special issue of World Englishes devoted to English in China in 2002, Edwards argues
that pronunciation software can be useful if it incorporates multiple models of Englishes,
offers activities linked to best practices of language learning, and provides immediate
feedback.
The last two contributions concern writing instruction in China. A study by Yue-ting
Xu and Jun Liu (pp. 285–310) found that teachers and peers pay attention to different
aspects of writing and thus give feedback in different areas. Further, when the writers did
not know whether the feedback came from their teacher or a peer, they paid attention to
feedback from both, but they paid less attention to feedback that challenged their ideas.
Like Hong Kong itself, the chapter by George Braine and Carmel McNaught (pp. 311–28)
on teaching writing in Hong Kong seems slightly out of place, largely because it really is
about how a particular writing- across-the-curriculum program was developed to meet the
specific language situation in Hong Kong and is not easily extended to other EFL contexts
or even the rest of China, while most of the rest of the book deals with China but could be
applied to other countries and, in many cases, even to ESL situations.
In fact, the title of this work provokes critique, since it misleads potential readers into
thinking the entire volume is about China when the focus on China begins only on page
211. Not only are the first 200 pages useful to anyone teaching English in any EFL context,
but there are many chapters that are relevant to ESL contexts as well. Indeed, even Part III,
which concerns itself with Chinese classrooms, has implications for cultures outside of
the Confucian-influenced ones. Almost every chapter is usable for a teacher preparation
program anywhere in the world. This is true for the theoretical chapters as well as for those
on application.

(Received 23 June 2008.)


C 2009 The Author(s). Journal compilation 
C 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.