February 18, 2024

Stop Press! Hornby Trust grant to the ELT Archive

Writing about web page https://www.hornby-trust.org.uk/decentring-elt

Hornby Trust logo

The A.S. Hornby Educational Trust has awarded a grant of £12,000 to the ELT Archive for 20023/24. This is supporting further cataloguing of the collection, with a focus on books published in the 1980s, selective purchasing of materials, processing of donations and digitisation of some items, liaison with researchers in Europe and South and East Asia, oral history work, and initiation of a Friends of the ELT Archive network.

Previous recent grants from the Hornby Trust have enabled the bulk of the collection to be catalogued (see latest catalogue here). Work connected with the ELT Archive has increasingly been aligning with the Hornby Trust's 'Decentring ELT' initiative, with recently embarked-upon projects involving support for research into English language education history in Bangladesh, China and India, initiatives to incorporate history into teacher education, and histories of marginalized groups and practices, including work by women in TEFL generally.


January 29, 2024

Nature and history of educational linguistics: Discussion of a recent article by Jason Anderson

Writing about web page https://doi.org/10.1515/eduling-2023-0009

By Xi Li

On the afternoon of January 24, 2024, the weekly meeting of the HoLLT Research Circle in the Warwick ELT Archive featured Dr. Jason Anderson presenting his recently published research article (available via the link below), titled ‘Reimagining educational linguistics: A post-competence perspective’.

Jason 1

Jason critically delved into the historical foundations of educational linguistics, contending that its inception within a Chomskyan ‘competence model’ has contributed to a noticeable gap between applied linguists and language teachers. His article advocates a transformative framework that acknowledges literacy and pluralist orientations, underscores the importance of flexibility, and puts forth a diverse research agenda, aiming to enhance the relevance of educational linguistics in global educational contexts.

jason 2

Following Jason’s compelling presentation, members engaged in a dynamic discussion, exploring topics such as the historical evolution of educational linguistics, the historical trajectory of competence in applied linguistics, and the ensuing impact on language teaching methodologies.

Jason Anderson’s article is available from Educational Linguistics, open access through the following doi link:

Anderson, J. (2023). ‘Reimagining educational linguistics: A post-competence perspective’. Educational Linguistics. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1515/eduling-2023-0009


January 12, 2024

English textbooks published in China

By Xi Li


In December 2023, Warwick ELT Archive received a generous gift of eight English textbooks published in China in the 1980s from a friend of the ELT Archive, Simon Smith, including six textbooks for junior high school pupils (初级中学课本 英语 English Textbook for junior high school) and two textbooks for senior high school pupils (全日制十年制学校高中英语课本 Senior High School Textbook-English), which were published by People’s Education Press and used nationwide. We are very appreciative of this contribution, which supports a current Warwick ELT Archive initiative to systematically collect, and catalogue English textbooks used in China from 1949 to the early 2000s.

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This endeavor focuses on establishing a comprehensive China English textbook collection, a supportive resource for delving into the history of English language education in China. Once complete, this corpus will provide splendid primary source material for PhD and MA students in the Department of Applied Linguistics with a keen interest in researching the history of English language education. As we continue our efforts, the textbooks we acquire will be added to the Warwick ELT Archive catalogue.

This collaborative undertaking is spearheaded by a dynamic group of young researchers deeply passionate about the historical development of English language education in China. Within this HELE-China group at Warwick, we are actively engaged in research, exploring topics such as comparisons between English and Chinese language teaching and research in China prior to the 20th century, as well as research into the development of textbooks. Using the textbooks we collect, we aspire to develop diverse research avenues and methodologies for further exploration.


December 30, 2023

The Institute for Research in Language Teaching (Tokyo) – Celebrating a 100–Year History

Writing about web page https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/al/research/collections/elt_archive/halloffame/hornby/archive

by Richard Smith

IRET Bulletin no. 1

2023 marks the centenary of the Institute for Research in Language Teaching (語学教育研究所), which was originally established as the Institute for Research in English Teaching (IRET) in May 1923, with Harold E. Palmer (1877–1949) as its founding Director.

bulletin p. 1

In the 1920s and 1930s, together with reform-minded Japanese academics and schoolteachers, Palmer – and, from 1936 onwards, A.S. Hornby (1898–1978), Palmer's successor both as head of research at IRET and editor of its Bulletin, engaged in an ambitious programme of materials production and practical inquiry directed at the improvement of English teaching in Japanese schools.

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At that time, no such serious attention was being paid to issues of teaching English as a foreign language anywhere else in the world, including in the UK or USA. Following World War II, the importance of this pre-war work in Japan largely went unacknowledged, whether in Michigan, birthplace of the named discipline of applied linguistics (1946 or so onwards), or in the UK, where Hornby was instrumental in establishing 'ELT' as a recognized field of interest.

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Nevertheless, pre-war IRET initiatives had been influential in establishing the value of research into the teaching of English for speakers of other languages– with a less theory-driven, less 'applicationist' orientation, though, than was to become dominant in post-war applied linguistics. Just two manifestations of post-war IRET influence internationally, both connected with Hornby's continuing work in the UK, were what later became the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English– originally conceived as an IRET project and first published in Japan in 1942, and the journal English Language Teaching(now, ELT Journal), set up by the British Council at Hornby's suggestion in 1946, explicitly on the model of the IRET Bulletin.

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'English' changed to 'Language' in the title of the Institute in 1942, and its post-war activities have been less internationally inclined, as other research centres and initiatives became established post-war both in Japan and elsewhere. In fact, close-to-practice, localized research to benefit English teachers in Japanese schools has remained the Institute's top priority, and this can be seen as its main strength as imported applied linguistic fashions have come and gone elsewhere (JACET [the Japan Association of College English Teachers], originally an off-shoot of IRLT, has by contrast engaged strongly with worldwide applied linguistics to the extent of hosting the 1999 AILA [International Association of Applied Linguistics] World Congress. To coincide with the conference, IRLT brought out an international edition of Palmer's Selected Writings(in 10 volumes) but fashions have moved on, and these did not garner much interest outside Japan. (My book The writings of Harold E. Palmer: An overview was issued as a companion volume to that remarkable set of volumes (pictured below), which we have in the Warwick ELT Archive).

Palmer selected writings

The most recent list (in Japanese) of IRLT's active research / discussion groups, which still bring together novice and experienced schoolteachers, research students and academics committed to the improvement of English teaching in Japanese schools, displays the following areas of practical focus:

  • Teaching methodology(with a particular focus on how teachers can use English in the classroom and use textbooks as a resource)
  • Lesson study, involving video-recording and collaborative discussion of actual lessons
  • Palmer research– participants read works by Harold Palmer and discuss their relevance to current teaching
  • Elementary school English teaching, involving discussion of issues in the transition to junior high school as well as how to teach English at elementary level
  • Discourse grammar(with a particular focus on applications in high school English teaching)
  • Junior and Senior High School English teaching, according to particular topics – for example, a recent focus has been placed on how to activate students’ self-expression in English
  • Researcher training(open to all members of the Institute)

screenshot_2023-12-30_at_163546.png

In a recent talk ('Why history (of ELT)? Whose history?') for the Warwick Applied Linguistics seminar series, I acknowledged the value for me personally of participating in IRLT activities in Tokyo in the 1990s – the way this showed me the potential benefits of promoting 'historical sense' in the wider ELT profession and the way it led indirectly to construction of the Warwick ELT Archive; and in another recent talk, this time for IRLT itself, I highlighted the value of a tradition of experience-based, close-to-practice research characteristic of work by Palmer, Hornby, IRET and IRLT, viewing this as a counterbalance to prevalent top-down, 'linguistics applied' type conceptions of the relationship between research and teaching. The IRLT contribution to the development of my own thinking as a teacher educator and ELT researcher is, I think, clear, as is my continuing belief that the Institute's contributions and achievements should be more widely known.

Hornby archive

Finally, then, as a kind of 100th birthday memento for IRLT, we've been making publicly accessible online some items in the Warwick ELT Archive collection which relate specifically to A.S. Hornby's work with IRET in Japan and his subsequent relations with Japan. Made widely accessible for the first time here are a variety of interesting items which have found their way to us, including photographs, a copy of the IRET Bulletin edited by Hornby, a 1942 catalogue with details of IRET publications (for those who read Japanese) and both a 1956 recorded talk in Tokyo and a 1969 NHK radio interview.

Fittingly, this – and other ongoing digitization work – has been made possible by a generous grant from the A.S. Hornby Educational Trust, itself set up more than 60 years ago with royalties from the dictionary Hornby compiled with two colleagues at other Japanese universities, E.V. Gatenby and H. Wakefield. The dictionary would not have been conceived or published without the inspiration and support of the Institute for Research in English Teaching, now 100 years old and still going strong.


December 23, 2023

2nd HELE [History of English Language Education] India Conference


conference poster

Here's a brief report on the 2nd_HELE [History of English Language Education] India conference(12th-13th December 2023), Hyderabad.

Following on from the 1st HELE India conference, in Delhi in December last year, the conference was held in the calm and green environment of the University of Hyderabad campus. Organized, as last year, jointly with the AINET Association of English Teachers, the conference was also supported by the A.S. Hornby Educational Trust and the university's Institute of Eminence. Professors Sunita Mishra of CELS, University of Hyderabad, and Amol Padwad of AINET and Ambedkar University Delhi were the conference co-convenors.

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Professor Sunita Mishra opening the conference (photo by Santosh Mahapatra)

As can be seen from the ffull conference_programme here, there were four plenary papers, by Professors Richard Smith (University of Warwick), Parimala Rao (Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi), M. Sridhar (retd., University of Hyderabad) and Shreesh Chaudhary (retd., IIT Madras). These addressed the overall conference theme of 'History of English Language Education: Theory and Practices' from different angles, involving perspectives from history of ELT (Smith), history of education (Rao), translation studies (Sridhar) and sociolinguistics (Chaudhary). There was also a panel discussion on 'Promoting HELE in academia', chaired by Prof. Sunita Mishra with panelists P. Sailaja, Parimala Rao, Richard Smith, Atanu Bhattacharya and Santosh Mahapatra.

More than 20 separate paper presentations in two parallel strands dealt with topics in 19th–20th-century English teaching and learning in India ranging from national policies and their impact or otherwise in the various (pre-Independence) Presidencies and (post-Independence) States of India to specific institutions, textbooks and local practices. The role of Indian languages other than English was not neglected, and a rich picture of the complexities of English learning and teaching in India emerged overall.

The future for research into English language education in India looks bright, with a HELE Studies Society being constituted at the conference and several PhD scholars having presented on papers with historical themes. An emerging challenge is how to attract PhD students at the outset of their research, to ensure a further expansion of good-quality historical research in the Indian context.

Amol Padwad announces creation of HELESS

Prof. Amol Padwad announces formation of the HELE Studies Society (photo by Richard Smith)

At the Warwick ELT Archive we are supporting ELE researchers in India where we can and have accessed materials in the British Library to assist with their research, as well as uploading various relevant materials held in our collection. We are now contributing to the development of a shared resource of digitized primary and secondary source material to facilitate further research. Building on a previous research project, Richard Smith has been exploring the post-war involvement of the British Council in Indian ELE, while he and Jason Anderson are also making a special study of N.S. Prabhu's Communicational Teaching Project in Bangalore. Ashish Joe Sathyadas Sheela Saroj, a University of Hyderabad PhD student currently with us on a one-year Commonwealth scholaship, has been pursuing his studies of 19th-century English education in South Travancore, while Shambhavi Singh and Aichee Bhattacharya, two new PhD students from India, have recently joined our HoLLT Research Circle. Going forward, we also hope to link up more closely with the archive / historical collection of textbooks which has been developed at the University of Hyderabad by Professors P. Sailaja and Sunita Mishra at the same time as liaising with a team involving Amol Padwad, Krishna Dixit, Atana Bhattacharya and Vennela R., whose research is being supported by the Hornby Trust.


December 05, 2023

Unraveling the Threads of ELT Grammar History: Insights from Dr. Graham Burton's Talk

By Xi Li

On the afternoon of November 22, 2023, the Warwick ELT Archive / HoLLT Research Circle virtually welcomed Dr. Graham Burton. Hailing from the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy, Dr. Burton, a researcher in English language teaching and Corpus Linguistics, shared the historical insights from his recent book, Grammar in ELT and ELT Materials: Evaluating Its History and Current Practice, a work enriched by his exploration of the collections in the Warwick ELT Archive

Grammar in ELT and ELT Materials: Evaluating its History and Current Practice

Dr. Burton commenced his talk by recounting his journey through the Warwick ELT Archive, where he delved into primary sources, unraveling the historical tapestry of grammar syllabuses in English Language Teaching (ELT), and trying to shed light on the evolutionary nuances of ELT Grammar. Throughout his presentation, Dr. Burton not only illuminated the historical landscape but also discussed the challenges he faced during his research, including widespread neglect of the value of historical research. Furthermore, he emphasized that misconceptions and stereotypes surrounding Grammar Syllabuses persist, underscoring the pivotal role of historical research in dispelling such myths.

online meeting

Following the presentation, a dynamic exchange unfolded between Dr. Burton and the meeting participants. Engaging discussions revolved around English course books and ELT pedagogical grammars taken from the shelves of the ELT Archive, providing a platform for shared insights and perspectives.


October 08, 2023

4th edition of Warwick ELT Archive catalogue published

Writing about web page https://warwick.ac.uk/elt_archive/catalogue/warwick_elt_archive_catalogue_4th_edition.pdf

Thanks to hard work by Calum McDonald-Webb and Zhang Yi under a grant from the A.S. Hornby Educational Trust, we have just published a 4th, expanded and updated, edition of the Warwick ELT Archive Catalogue, covering published items up to 1979. This, together with partial (2013) catalogues of items published after 1980 and archival items (photographs, typescripts, unpublished reports, etc.) is published on the following web page:

https://warwick.ac.uk/elt_archive/catalogue/


cover of catalogue


May 03, 2023

ELT Archive support for webinar series on Michael West (1888–1973)

Writing about web page https://www.belta-bd.org/michael-west-webinar

The Warwick ELT Archive and BELTA (Bangladesh English Language Teachers Association) have been collaborating to organize a series of 3 webinars (May–June 2023) to commemorate and evaluate the current relevance of work by Michael West (1888-1973): https://www.belta-bd.org/michael-west-webinar

In the meantime, we've been updating our list of Michael West's works, including direct links to online pdfs, with others available on request to researchers, here: https://livewarwickac-my.sharepoint.com/:w:/g/personal/elsdr_live_warwick_ac_uk/EfD5LVvwm2ZDv5uyeW-WyGcBYRmFihHcVXjvXmaP__fLfw?e=vYZDYd

Find out more about Michael West here: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/al/research/collections/elt_archive/halloffame/west/life

Register for the webinars here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScu8_6xnSipFwUhMeLLX0TJOQAgPQ_M6Vk8ax5_NAoljPM24A/viewform


picture of Michael West


March 09, 2023

Generating HERstory of ELT

Writing about web page https://warwick.ac.uk/elt_archive/halloffame/women/

A year or two ago, I wrote this personal blog post concerned with raising the profile of women in the history of ELT:

HERstory of ELT: 'There are hordes of us, but less loudly sung'

That generated quite a lot of interest as well as some additional nominations for this web-page on 'Women in the History of ELT' which I created in parallel, as part of the Warwick ELT Archive Hall of Fame: warwick.ac.uk/elt_archive/halloffame/women/(this built on previous interactions with Nicola Prentis, Shelagh Rixon, Scott Thornbury and Clare Lavery, too).

Given the interest the blog-post generated, I thought it might be good to put in a proposal on the topic for a workshop at the upcoming IATEFL conference in Harrogate. This was accepted for the first day of the conference, and I hope anyone who is in Harrogate and interested in collaborating further will come along:

TITLE: Generating HERstory of ELT
NAME(S) OF PRESENTER(S):Richard Smith
DAY:Tuesday 18 April 2023
TIME:17:20-18:05
LENGTH:45 mins
ROOM:Ripley Suite - Crowne Plaza
AUDIENCE CAPACITY:160

Here's what is promised: "This workshop addresses the lack of representation of women in conventional histories of English Language Teaching (ELT) by involving participants in actively investigating this area and collectively beginning to create an alternative account. Workshop tasks will involve investigating a number of notable women from the past, generating further questions for research, and planning for an ongoing collective project."

I'm hoping the session might be informative and enjoyably co-constructed, as well as a springboard for further, collaborative research!


June 09, 2017

Appreciation of 'A History of IATEFL' / An interesting item

Among several kind appreciations Shelagh Rixon and I have received for our recently published A History of IATEFL, the following stands out - from Professor Arthur van Essen, whom ill-health prevented from becoming IATEFL's first 'non-native speaker' Chairman (i.e. President), back in 1987.

When I got home last night I found your book on the History of IATEFL.

I started reading it at once. Naturally I first read up on my own role in IATEFL during the 1980s. I think you have given a fair account of what happened at the time and how I felt it.

Your book reads like a novel! This is not the least compliment that one can pay a historian! Allow me to congratulate you and your co-author on this splendid achievement.

He's absolutely right that "reading like a novel" is a wonderful compliment, but we're also happy that he considers it 'fair', since Arthur van Essen's own role in the IATEFL story is an interesting and at times oppositional one.

I was triply pleased that Professor van Essen went on to offer the following donation to the Warwick ELT Archive:

As small token of my gratitude and appreciation I will send you in return an old, worn and taped-up copy of an authentic issue of a German journal on language and literature, which appeared in Germany during the war and which for that reason is unlikely to have ever reached the UK. The issue contains two contributions, one by my old friend Herman Bongers, who was Harold Palmer’s collaborator during the 1930s while Herman was working as a teacher of English in the Dutch East Indies. The other contribution is by Harold Palmer himself.

The issue is full of pencil marks by me in the margins of Herman’s article and also contains a pencil note in Dutch ‘terug naar Harold’ (=back to Harold) by Herman on the title-page.

We have now received this. It is quite a remarkable item, having been published right in the middle of wartime in Germany, with contributions from these two leading Dutch and British scholars (see my The Writings of Harold E. Palmerfor more on Palmer and his collaboration with Bongers late in life). On Bongers, van Essen writes:

Herman (who repatriated on the Independence of Indonesia) and I served together on the board of the Vereniging van Leraren in Levende Talen in the late 1970s. Herman was then in his early eighties. When he was about to move into a care home, he gave me some of his publications on language pedagogy and vocabulary selection, which I in turn donated to the library of the Institute of Applied Linguistics of the University of Groningen.

And he ends his message:

I believe this issue of the German journal is in good hands with you.

We will certainly take care of it, and will try to find out more about The English Literary and Educational Review for Continental Readers, at some point!


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