Includes bibliographical references (pages 193-202) and index.

“In preparing and teaching second language courses, language professionals frequently make decisions in response to learner needs: in choosing textbooks, altering a sequence of exercises from a textbook, creating classroom materials, and so on. Yalden puts these kinds of decisions into perspective, outlining theoretical issues relevant to language teachers today.

Set against this theoretical background are practical suggestions on how teachers can devise classroom procedures and materials that best fir the linguistic and communicative needs of their learners. Emphasis is placed on gathering information form and about the learner. This leads to the establishment of frameworks, short language-learning modules which give support to all of the components needed in a language course.

Procedures for developing main or supplementary units to new or existing courses are described in detail. Three complete case studies of courses that the author and her colleagues developed are included in the book. They contain numerous examples of resulting course materials.” –Back cover

CONTENTS:

Preface

Part I. Usable theories
1. Setting up a course

Part II. Language teaching and linguistics: current issues
2. Proficiency in a second language
3. Language functions and pragmatics
4. Discourse analysis and course design

Part III From theory to practice
5. Teachers and teaching
6. Teachers and linguists
7. Teachers and course design

Part IV. Frameworks for second language course design
8. Syllabus and methodology
9. A proportional approach
10. Three case studies
11. Using frameworks

Appendix A Sample task-based framework

Appendix B Frameworks for Communications Needs Courses

References

Index