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Marckwardt argues that since English literature has more than one source, it seems that there
can be a variety of purposes and aims. Actually the curriculum will reflect the predominant
influence, whether it be American or English, or Australian for that matter. Nonetheless, there
are several factors influencing the teaching of literature in the foreign language curriculum. The
availability of translations will play an important role in the determination and development
of the literary curriculum and in the modification of classroom procedures. Marckwardt stresses
the fact that “cultural awareness, sensitivity, rapprochement are not automatic by-products of
foreign-language instruction.... If they are to be achieved at all, they must be planned for and
built into the course of study.” Other considerations are problems of vocabulary and the use of
simplified and abridged texts. According to Marckwardt, there seems to be no justification for
the use of simplified and abridged texts that will weaken or damage the original. However,
since such texts are available, only the discretion of the instructor can prevent their misuse.
There are two useful principles which can be observed in the selection of material: the literature
that is read should be in the modern idiom, and one should choose literature written in as many
of the English speaking countries as possible.

English Department Dominic J. Bisignano

Indiana University at Indianapolis
925 West Michigan Street
Indianapolis, Indiana 46202
USA

RIVERS, Wilga M. and Mary S. Temperley, zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJI

A Practical Guide to the Teaching of English as a
Second or Foreign Language, New York: Oxford University Press, 1978, 399 pp.

The present volume (which we will refer to below as PGE), like its companion volumes before
it (Practical Guides to French, German and Spanish, by Rivers and others), does not pretend to
“provide fiial answers”. Rather, the intent of the authors is “to provoke lively discussion”,
since we are most certainly in an age “when flexibility is a prime attribute of the young
teacher.” (p. viii) As in the other Guides (which all follow a single outline and whose examples
are keyed so that teachers of several languages can study together), not only do Professor
Rivers and her colleagues provide ample material for discussion, they also furnish an abundance
of models which can be directly implemented in the ESL/EFL classroom.
Like its sister volumes, the text of PGE is divided into two large sections: Communicating
(184 pp.) and The Written Word (156 pp.), the former section comprising five chapters, the
latter, four. Chapter 1, entitled Structural interaction, discusses different methods of supplying
the student with an inventory of fundamental structural and lexical items. This is the first half
of Rivers’ illuminating “skillgetting” vs. “skill-using” opposition. The second half of the
paradigm is discussed in Chapter 2, Autonomous interaction. Rivers and Temperley devote 47
pages to Chapter 3, Listening, reflecting the seriousness with which Rivers has approached the
teaching of the listening skill. Chapter 4, Oral practice for the learning of grammar, presents
the structural manipulation part of the “skillgetting” process. Chapter 5, Teaching the sound
sy stem, rounds out the authors’ treatment of oral language instruction.
The second half of PGE contains two chapters each on reading and writing. Chapter 6, Reading
I: purposes and procedures, sets down some basic definitions and discusses three of the six
stages of reading development (which draw heavily on Rivers’ earlier work and on that of
 REVIEWS 171

George A.C. Scherer). Chapter 7, Reading II: from dependence to independence, treats ap-
proaches to and procedures for the teaching of advanced reading, vocabulary development
and testing reading comprehension. In Chapter 8, Writing and written exercises I: the nuts and
bolts, the authors discuss presentation of an orthographic system and the designing of written
grammatical exercises. They do a great service to future language students by pointing out the
important difference between the design of oral and written exercises (provided future language
teachers heed the lesson, that is!). In the last chapter of the book, Writing and written exercises
II: flexibility and expression, Rivers and Temperley discuss many issues which usually do not
get addressed in methods textbooks, e.g. expressive writing, translation, and exploring the
dictionary and the reference grammar. The dictionary was anathema to the elementary (and
sometimes to the intermediate) language classroom during the early days of audio-lingualism,
and one must still caution over-zealous language students about its use. But Rivers and
Temperley furnish many excellent suggestions which are likely to enliven the intermediate ESL
classroom through intelligent dictionary use.
At the end of the text, one finds a variety of useful “attachments”:
1. Suggested Assignments and Projects (a total of 25, in addition to the asterisked assign-
ments found in the text itself).

2. Appendix A: a key to the phonemic symbols used in the book.

3. Appendix B: a table of transcribing alphabets (7 American, 5 British).

4. Foomotes to all chapters: twenty pages of extremely valuable references to practical and
theoretical discussions in the foreign language pedagogical literature.

5. General Bibliography of about 175 entries (unannotated) concerning language teaching.

6. Supplemental bibliography of 85 items: introductory readings in the psychology of lan-

guage learning and linguistics.
PGE presents material in such a way as to challenge the future teacher to think critically about
what goes on in a language class and inside his students’ heads as they learn. Rather than simply
describing a series of recourses and procedures with appropriate model classroom activities to
imitate, the authors include some exercises that they don’t consider to be optimal. They
criticize these exercises, propose alternatives, and encourage the reader to criticize similarly
other exercises. For this reason, PGE is not only wellsuited to the training of pre-service
teachers, but contains enough substantive material to stimulate and hold the attention of
experienced ESL teachers as well. For example, the authors furnish a valuable checklist of
criteria by which to evaluate dialog presentation material (p. 33). Some other examples of
particularly valuable discussions follow.
Since the days of descriptive linguistics, we have recognized the fundamental differences
between spoken and written language. But in spite of the fact that “the pen of my aunt” has
largely disappeared, language teachers are still prone to believe that oral communication is
composed of well formed, complete utterances. Rivers and Temperley (pp. 58-60) make it
abundantly clear, through example and analysis, that “native speech” is full of hesitations,
false starts, repetitions, and the like. They conclude that foreign/second language teachers
should be prepared to accept the same sort of behavior from their students. The authors rightly
remind us that language learners need positive reinforcement in their attempts to use their
newlyacquired skills for communication. Over-zealous correction by an instructor can very
quickly extinguish the enthusiasm of a beginning language student.
Not only should teachers approach correction of a learner’s errors in a reasoned way, they
should also attempt to develop in learners an ability to look critically at their own language
usage. Rivers and Temperley suggest the use of a pronunciation checklist (pp. 179-184) to help
172 REVIEWS

students help themselves as they improve their control over the English phonological system.
The authors feel that phonological accuracy is achieved gradually, and that extensive drills on
pronunciation, using English words which are of minimal potential communicative use, are of
questionable value (p. 168).
Translation exercises were frowned upon in teaching methods books for a decade or so, since
audio-lingual theory held that coordinate rather than compound bilingualism was the appro-
priate goal for language instruction, and that translation exercises fostered the latter. Rivers and
Temperley include a discussion of oral translation drills of a type that this reviewer has found
to be useful in his own classes (pp. 146-7). Typically, these drills are fast-paced, go from native
language to target language, use short sentences and familiar vocabulary, and focus on one
grammatical feature. Although potentially very helpful for an instructor cf English as a foreign
language (where students are more likely to have a common native tongue), this discussion
would probably be unuseable for the teacher of English as a zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTS
second language, whose students
are likely to speak a variety of native languages, most of which the instructor does not know.
This example is indicative of a characteristic of the book which may be considered a flaw by
some. Although the authors are cognizant of the diversity of instructional situations were
ESL/EFL is being taught around the world (pp. ix, xii), the organizational outline for the book
is essentially that of foreign (rather than second) language teaching. This reviewer does not feel
that the relatively small number of EFL-specific exercises seriously detracts from the volume’s
usefulness.
A second area of weakness is that of English for Special Purposes (ESP). A large amount of
course development has been done recently in ESP, and, while it is probably not appropriate in
such a work as PGE to discourse at length on a topic such as ESP, references should be supplied.
Rivers and Temperley briefly describe key issues in ESP, but do not provide references for the
interested reader.
Another major topic that is not addressed systematically in the book is language testing. While
the index has many entries under “testing”, the various discussions do not together produce a
cohesive impression of what an adequate ESL/EFL testing program ought to be. Given the
existence of several good testing handbooks on the market today, however, this is not an
irremediable flaw.
Technically, PGE is virtually flawless. It is attractively laid out, well printed, and extremely well
proofread. This reviewer found only three proofing errors, all of them not worth mentioning
here.
In sum, then, PGE gets this reviewer’s high recommendation as a text to be used with ESL/EFL
pre- or inservice teachers. Professors Rivers and Temperley have done the profession a real
service by adding this text to the excellent series of Practical Guides that Rivers has authored.

ERIC Clearinghouse on Languages and Linguistics Peter A. Eddy

Center for Applied Linguistics
1611 N. Kent Street
Arlington, Virginia 22209
USA