Language Teaching Awareness: A Guideto Exploring Beliefs and Practices is aboutgaining awareness of teaching beliefs andpractices through the process of exploration.The book opens with a dedication to JohnFanselow, who pioneered the concept ofexploratory teaching: “To John Fanselow,our mentor and friend, who has liberated somany of us from the usual ways of looking”(p. v). Readers of this book will learn how to

see differently. A quotation from Fanselow(1987) captures an informal definition ofexploration as well as the book’s purpose:

As we generate alternatives to the norm,we become aware of what is within us andwhat we are capable of. If we realize howmuch more is within us, it is much morelikely we will be able to aid our studentsin coming to the same conclusion. (p. 7)

The book is divided into three principalsections.

1. “Introduction to an Exploratory Approachto Teaching” presents the book’s philoso-phy and nine basic assumptions.

2. “Processes for Exploring Teaching” presents generic, reflective tools for exploration and development.

3. “Examples of Teachers’ Explorations” presents narratives from the authors’ experiences that illuminate awareness anddiscovery.

Each chapter opens with a motiva-tional quotation to focus its theme.Chapter organization departs fromthe traditional model of posing ques-tions at the end by placing them,instead, at the beginning to guidereader thinking and to serve as chap-ter headings. Several key questionslocated at critical junctures through-out the chapter, called “Task

Breaks,” prompt the reader to interact withand reflect on the material.

Gebhard and Oprandy’s exploratoryapproach is different from, but overlapswith, a developmental approach to peda-gogy. First, the two approaches use the samereflective tools—observation, actionresearch, journaling, and discussion(Chapters 3, 4, 5, and 8)—to produce aware-ness. Moreover, the long-term goal of creat-ing empowered, autonomous teachers is thesame. The principal difference betweendevelopment and exploratory approaches isin their short-term goals: development,according to Lange (1990) and others “is aprocess of continual intellectual, experimen-tal, and attitudinal growth of teachers” (p.250). Hence, development seeks change,improvement, or growth. Exploration, on theother hand, does not agree with the premiseof these development goals because theymay emphasize the shortcomings of previ-ous practices and potentially limit futurepossibilities. The principal short-term goal

Winter 2000 37

postreading activities are consistently clearthroughout the book. There are cloze exer-cises, vocabulary reviews, comprehensionchecks, and a number of display questions,which provide a firm setting for controlledpractice. Although most of the activities arewell designed, there is a lack of prompts tostimulate students to produce oral and writ-ten utterances of their own. Furthermore,some of the comprehension tests asking forthe main idea seem to be hard to completebecause descriptive texts (e.g., “The Kiwi,”“The Camel,” “Oranges”) have more thanone main idea; writing a short summarycould have been a better prompt for thosetexts.

One of the most valuable features of thebook is the target vocabulary. Although thetopics are diverse and even exotic (e.g., theIditarod, the European Raja of Sarawak, theMaori of New Zealand), only useful, high-frequency words are focused on as newvocabulary. New vocabulary items are bold-faced, underlined, and accompanied by

small pictures in the text. There is a picturesymbol for each unit at the top of everypage; each text is illustrated with largeblack and white pictures. Only one font isused throughout the book, which makesdecoding easier for beginning students;however, the use of a single font may alsobe viewed as a limitation because it does notchallenge learners to practice reading a vari-ety of typefaces they will encounter ineveryday texts.

A more serious shortcoming of the text isoversimplification of the syntax; excessiveuse of short sentences in parallel construc-tions leads to overuse of pronouns, some-times causing loss of cohesion and limitingcomprehension to the sentence level only.Short sentences bring in multiple pronouns,which leads to syntactic ambiguity, as illus-trated in the following examples.

The date palm is a wonderful tree. Peopleeat dates. They feed them to their animals.They use the leaves and wood to build

houses. They use wood to build boats. (p. 73)

Despite some imperfections, Facts andFigures is a valuable resource for teachingvocabulary and grammar to beginningESL/EFL students, if used consistently andin congruence with the accompanying CNNvideos. By breaking the reading processdown into sequential units, the course makesthe task of vocabulary acquisition more con-trollable, gradually allows access to moresophisticated texts, and develops integratedreading and vocabulary skills.

AuthorVictoria B. Lannen received her BA in

TESOL/TEFL from St. Petersburg StateUniversity, in Russia, and taught EFL inRussia before relocating to California. Sheis currently teaching ESL in San DiegoCommunity College District, ContinuingEducation, while finishing her MA in lin-guistics/TESOL at San Diego StateUniversity, in the United States.

Language Teaching Aw a re n e s s :A Guide to Exploring Beliefs

and PracticesJerry G. Gebhard and Robert Oprandy.

New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999Pp. xviii + 237.

Reviewed by Patricia L. Miller

38 TESOL Journal

of exploration is seeing differently, orawareness, through self-exploration.

Exploration asks teachers to nonjudg-mentally consider what they do by videotap-ing themselves teaching. After describingwhat they do, teachers analyze and interpretthat description in light of student learning,rather than through a predetermined crite-rion. Once teachers have reached a level ofawareness of what they do and its effects,they are then asked to engage in the processof exploration by making use of teachingalternatives, or by making very smallchanges in classroom processes or theirbehaviors. Because exploration is an ongo-ing process, teachers are invariably discover-ing and building personal meaning of whothey are and what they can do. Thus,Language Teaching Awareness exemplifiesconstructivist theory and is in line with cur-rent beliefs on teaching and learning.

Having worked with many sections of thebook as one of Gebhard’s doctoral students,I was reminded of Robin Williams’s charac-ter in the movie, Dead Poets Society, whostands on his desk, entreating his students tolook from a different stance; for I, too, wasencouraged to see from different perspec-tives. I learned to see nonjudgmentally,without having to hold myself up to stan-

dards of good and bad, and looked instead athow learning may have been enhanced. Ialso learned that simple steps, like increasingquestion wait-time, for example, can lead todiscovery, awareness, and learning.

I have not dealt with any weaknesses thatmay exist in the book. I believe that everyteacher will find more than several chaptersuseful, just as there will be some chaptersthat will not be appreciated by all. LanguageTeaching Awareness is relevant and appro-priate for novice and experienced teachers inESL and EFL contexts. It is essential readingfor observation or development courses andsupplemental reading for methodologycourses.

R e f e re n c e sFanselow, J. (1987). Breaking rules:

Generating and exploring alternatives inlanguage teaching. New York: Longman.

Lange, D. L. (1990). A blueprint for ateacher development program. In J. C.Richards & D. Nunan (Eds.), Second lan-guage teacher education (pp. 245–268).New York: Cambridge University Press.

AuthorPatricia L. Miller is completing her doc-

torate in rhetoric and linguistics at Indiana

University of Pennsylvania, in the UnitedStates. She has taught ESOL and directed anIEP abroad, and has taught in TESOL grad-uate and professional development pro-grams at the University of Maryland,Baltimore.

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