Review: English Language Teaching Now and How It Could Be – Geoff Jordan and Mike Long

Within ELT, there are two names that stand out as outliers in the fight against coursebooks – Geoff Jordan and Mike Long. Jordan is a well-known ELT personality whose blog aims to inform and critique simultaneously, and push and prod where our industry doesn’t like to be pushed or prodded. More than once I’ve found myself nodding in agreement whilst reading his no-holds-barred posts about everything from teacher education to translanguaging. If you haven’t seen Geoff’s blog, I highly recommend you add it to your favourites.

Long, on other hand, is one of our industry’s heaviest hitters within the world of Second Language Acquisition, having written on the topic since way before I was born. For those of you who read all my reviews, you will remember that I reviewed Long’s amazing book Second Language Acquisition and Task-Based Language Teaching some time ago – it is definitely well worth your time. Unfortunately, Long passed away in February 2021, but thankfully his work lives on through his articles, videos, and, of course, books. Which brings me to this review of Jordan and Long’s English Language Teaching Now and How It Could Be.

I’ve was lucky enough to get a copy a short time after it came out, and since then I’ve been digging into it, using in both the academy and my MA – but when I finally got some time, I sat down and went about reading it as I usually would for reviews. Needless to say, my copy is full of highlights and annotations, and I look forward to sharing with you all my takeaways, thoughts on the book as a whole, and how I plan to apply what I’ve learnt to my practice.

Three-sentence summary

Jordan and Long’s English Language Teaching Now and How It Could Be is a book that aims to inform, convince and, in same cases, tear down certain aspects of the ELT ‘industry’ – or the four-headed hydra, as Jordan and Long call it. The book starts with a detailed overview of some of the most important SLA findings and implications from the last 40 years of research, all of which are complemented with some interesting and at time humorous remarks from the writers and multiple footnotes that quite often take up more of the page than the actual main body. The book has the magical property of feeling like numerous ‘things’ at the same time – a reference book, a mediator, a grumpy old man full of wisdom, and a manifesto (just to name a few) – and all of these make English Language Teaching Now and How It Could Be a must-read for teachers, teacher educators, materials writers, pedagogues, and anyone involved in ELT as it will challenge your views and potentially deeply held beliefs (and maybe that’s exactly what ELT needs!).

Three takeaways

I’m terrible at this part, and as usual I’m going to be cheating because this book has significantly more than three takeaways!

“If instruction really were king, and teachers and coursebook writers were in control, the order in which linguistic items were learned would reflect the order in which they were presented in the coursebook, and learning processes and sequences would vary with different kinds of instruction.”

Jordan & Long, 2022, p.30

• SLA-informed ELT is the way forward: If you’re been reading my blog for a while, you’ll know that this is a theme I love and advocate a lot, and for good reason. Jordan and Long go into detail throughout Chapters 1 – 6 about the what of SLA and how it relates to teaching. What the evidence points to is that explicit instruction of language items in a prescribed fashion is not in-line with how interlanguages and developmental sequences work, and as such coursebook-driven ELT fails in the sense that it’s not evidence-informed, and perpetuates this idea that language can be learnt like any other skill (i.e., skill acquisition theory). Now, the world of SLA is HUGE and there are loads of things that one could research and delve into, but below I’ve included three points from the book that I feel are important (and I’m assuming the authors do as well!). One point that I want to add before we delve into those is that Jordan and Long (2022, p.185) make what I feel is an excellent observation about second language teacher education: “Regarding SLTE, the elephant in the room is the set of robust research findings in the field of second language [learning]. Unfortunately, the majority of those who are currently responsible for SLTE […] show a marked reluctance to acknowledge the importance of these findings and their implications for ELT in the SLTE courses they are responsible for”. Whilst I don’t think ramming SLA theory down teachers’ throats is the way forward (and this is not what the authors suggest), I do feel (as do the authors) that those in the business of teaching languages should be aware of how languages are learnt/acquired!
  • Each learner’s interlanguage is unique: Chapter 1 goes straight into a big area within SLA – interlanguages. For the unacquainted, an interlanguage is “the psycholingustic L2 equivalent of an idiolect” (Jordan & Long, 2022, p.9) in that it is an individual’s particular version, if you will, of the target language. This interlanguage changes over time, ideally as the learner moves somewhat closer to the target language – BUT we need to be aware that interlanguage is influenced by the learner’s L1 (both positive and negative transfer), and may show variance in terms of ‘accuracy’ at different times; that is, the learner may seemingly advance in their accuracy but then go back, or show “U-shaped behaviour” to an inaccurate ‘version’: “It occurs in several areas of L2 grammar, and is one of many examples of how development can sometimes be marked by an increase in the number and/or type of errors learners make…” (Jordan and Long, 2022, p.12).
  • Developmental sequences are real: Language learning through coursebooks is presented as a linear process. We’ve already seen that interlanguages don’t function like that. But is there some known ‘routes’ that learners take? The answer is yes, and here we turn to developmental sequences. In effect, learners learning (for example) English, will progress through certain syntactic ‘stages’, and these stages can’t be skipped. That is, let’s say that there are 10 stages in development (this is not correct, but I’m using this an example) – in order to get to stage 3, the learner has to pass through stages 1 and 2 – they cannot start to ‘learn’ the grammar at stage 3 and expect to acquire it: “Attempts to make learners skip a development stage fail (as they must if ‘developmental sequence is to retain its meaning and predictive validity)” (Jordan & Long, 2022, p.31). The implications for this are that we should not be prescribing language for learners to ‘learn’; rather, we should be working with the learner’s internal syllabus and providing feedback at the point of need, especially regarding parts of grammar that are less salient.
  • We can speed up the process of acquisition, but we cannot change the route: As we’ve seen, there are developmental sequences, and we can’t skip stages in these sequences. This means that “instruction pitched at a level for which students are not psycholinguistically ready will not help, and will not make them skip a stage in a developmental sequence” (Jordan & Long, 2022, p.51). The important BUT here, though, is that what we can do is provide effectively timed Focus-on-Form; in essence, feedback, both positive and negative, to the learner at the point of need, which is more likely to aid in noticing and therefore speed up the process of moving through certain stages.

“Thus, coursebook writers take the target language as the object of instruction, and they divide it up into bits of one kind or another – words, collocations, grammar rules, sentence patterns, notions and functions, for example – which are presented and practiced in a sequence. The criteria for sequencing can be things like valency, criticality, frequency, or saliency, but the most common criterion is ‘level of difficulty’, which, as always, is intuitively defined by the writers themselves.”

Jordan & Long, 2022, p.123

• A lot in ELT is still done in a sub-perfect manner: I should preface this part by saying that the authors don’t say that they have all the answers. What they do offer, however, is quite a sound critique of certain area of ELT (e.g., CLIL) and offer some ways in which these areas could be done better. Let’s explore a number of these areas now:
  • Pedagogy: Given that the writers are both proponents of TBLT, it is unsurprisingly that they say that much about current pedagogy and its reliance on coursebooks and/or prescriptive language teaching, even in contexts that claim to be ‘communicative’, leaves a lot to be desired. Their answer? A more learner-centred and evidence-informed approach of course – TBLT (or Dogme!). Whilst I won’t get into all the TBLT goodness that the book covers, I will draw attention to this quote that provides an insight into the authors’ rationale behind their opinion: “In TBLT, task is the unit of analysis, the course content consists of pedagogic tasks, and the syllabus is organized by sequencing the pedagogic tasks from simple to complex. TBLT programs start with a needs analysis aimed at identifying target tasks, and, in contrast to coursebook-driven programs, the derived pedagogic tasks entail students doing things in the L2, rather than teachers talking about the L2. TBLT treats the language holistically, respects SLA research findings, and emphasises implicit learning” (Jordan & Long, 2022, p.160).
  • CLIL: Not having had a lot of experience with CLIL myself, I found the chapter on CLIL fascinating. Jordan and Long note that there are many types of CLIL (actually CLIL is a type of immersion approach), and there are numerous motivations for why these courses are implemented, with some of these being somewhat nefarious (e.g., some in effect, aim to ‘enforce’ monolingualism and subtractive bilingualism). The authors then write that about numerous studies that have been conducted on the effectiveness of CLIL in developing learners’ English and subject abilities. One of those studies (Dallinger et al., 2016) showed “listening skills improved significantly more in the CLIL group, but that there were no statistically significant differences between the achievement of CLIL and non-CLIL groups in general English abilities or in knowledge of history” (Jordan & Long, 2022, p.180). We learn that many CLIL programmes are based on the French immersion programmes that occured in the 1980s, but the authors highlight that there are major differences between the original French programmes and those being run today – namely in terms of context and exposure to target language. So, how can CLIL be improved? This is what Jordan and Long (2022, p.182) write: “The aim here is not to argue for or against CLIL or EMI, now involving hundreds of thousands of students in many countries, but to point out that research is needed on the degree to which either is achieving their major objectives, [foreign language] development and content learning”.
  • Second Language Teacher Education (SLTE): Now this was an probably the most interesting part of the book for me, given that I am involved in SLTE. The authors are very much against the sociocultural perspective to teacher education (something that I support) – in effect, the approach that values and starts from teachers’ values, attitudes and beliefs. Rather, they feel that SLTE should follow a positivist/realist perspective to ‘knowledge’, meaning that there is indeed known facts about the world, and these facts should be communicated to teachers and they should then use this theory to inform their teaching (something I also believe in, although feel that theory needs to work alongside contextual factors). They go into a lot more detail in their chapter on teacher education, and whilst I don’t agree with everything they write, I feel that Jordan and Long have written perhaps one of the most important chapters on teacher education – one that should be read, if for nothing else to push teacher educators to think and rethink their positions. Before moving on, I’ll leave what I believe is one of the most valuable/interesting parts of the book: “Dealing first with pre-service language teacher education, we do not think that university degree should be a prerequisite, but neither do we think that a 120-hour course like CELTA or the Trinity College Certificate, is adequate preparation. We recommend that the minimum length of pre-service course should be 500 hours, and we think that the best option is a one-year, post-secondary vocational education and training course.[…] The course should consist of two parts. Not exactly “theory and practice”, more like essential background knowledge and practice. The two parts should run concurrently” (Jordan & Long, 2022, p.210).

“Although it would seem quite reasonable for teachers to assume that the primary beneficiaries of their work are their students and themselves, they would, in fact, be wrogn to do so. The political and economic interests that benefit most from the work of teachers and their students, the biggest beneficiaries, that is, are nation states, national and local economies, educational institutions, teacher educators, ELT coursebook authors and publishers, and testing organizations.”

Jordan & Long, 2022, p.235

• Teaching is a political act, and ELT today operates in a neoliberal manner: Readers might be forgiven for thinking parts of the book read like a political manifesto – I don’t believe for one second that this was a mistake (and their section titled Political and socioeconomic issues and signs of struggle does give a lot away). Having read Long’s work before, and being an avid reader of Jordan’s blog and Twitter discussions (oh there are some great ones!), I think it’s clear that both authors feel strongly about how political the act of teaching is, especially teaching languages (they touch on some extremely interesting points when talking about immersion approaches). Throughout the book, but especially in Section 4, Jordan and Long explain how the main beneficiaries of language teaching are, in fact, not the learners or teachers, but the ‘system’, the four-headed hydra. As we live in a capitalist, neoliberal world, education, including language education, has been commodified, and as such more of the top-down (e.g., organisations, governments, etc.) focus is on the profits generated as a result of teaching. That might not sound that bad, but, as the authors write, when profits are the main goal, you often have terrible teaching and assessment practices disseminated, and we give power to things that perhaps should not have power. The book explores this theme is many different ways, but I’ll close this section with a quote from Jordan and Long (2022, p.241) that connects quite well with Kumaravadivelu’s masterpiece, From Method to Post-method: “Power is not just reflected in language dominance. Prestige varieties of a language, often associated with a speaker’s ethnicity, social class or regional origin, can function in the same way. Economic and political elites usually speak a so-called “standard” variety, e.g., “standard English”. Speaking what elites designate a “non-standard” variety, on the other hand, can render people vulnerable to discrimination in education, employment, the (aptly named) criminal justice system, and elsewhere”.

What I liked

• Summaries and discussion questions: I thought one of the strongest points from a reading-to-learn perspective was the fact that the book included excellent summaries of the chapters, as well as discussion questions. This leads me to believe that the authors intended this book to be utilised with courses!

“But the common sequences in which new structures emerge, regardless of the type of instruction learners receive or, indeed, whether they receive instruction at all, show that ultimately, teachers are facilitators, not controllers, of their student’s language learning – partners, not masters, guides, not god.”

Jordan & Long, 2022, p.68

• Tongue-in-cheek humour: Anyone who has listened to or read the work of either Jordan or Long won’t be surprised by the type of humour found in this book. They poke fun at pretty much everyone – but they do it in a way that highlights some of the real problems with our ‘industry’.

• Provides plenty of clear rationales: One of the biggest sections in the book is actually the references. This is not surprising given the background of the authors. However, to complement this, they provide clear rationales for their perspectives throughout the book. Wherever they say that something needs to change, they generally say why, connecting this to research, and then provide an alternative.

“Does [enhanced incidental learning] also facilitate acquisition? The jury is still out, with only a few studies as yet on which to base a conclusion. However, although usually without EIL as its explicit motivation, some research has already provided indirect evidence of its effectiveness.”

Jordan & Long, 2022, p.94

• Openly states when research is inconclusive: As mentioned, loads of research is cited in this book, but Jordan and Long state quite clearly when there is no research, or there is very little research on a certain area. Personally, I think this is important.

“The need for efficient language teaching, coupled with recognition of the limitations age effects impose on purely incidental and purely implicit language learning for older children and adults, means more is need from the teacher. Grammar must still be taught – just not in the traditional way. Rather, students should be provided with plenty of opportunities to perceive statistical regularities in rich elaborated (not simplified) input, and the learning speeded up by such means as EIL, detection, and focus on form.”

Jordan & Long, 2022, p.101

• Clarifies that grammar still needs to be ‘taught’: Jordan and Long are advocates of TBLT, and when some people hear TBLT, they think “ah, that’s just speaking and no grammar instruction”. Well, apart from the fact that TBLT focuses on much more than just ‘speaking’, it also is more than simply getting learners to do the tasks and sitting back and relaxing. In fact, as Jordan and Long allude to, it requires much more from the teacher as they are expected to not only be paying attention to the learners’ input and trying to gauge where they are in their development, but they must also be providing effective focus on form, elaborated input, etc.

“Jordan & Gray remind readers that learning an L2 is gradual, incremental, dynamic, uneven, exhibiting plateaus, U-shaped or zigzag trajectories, and having no fixed end point, and argue that, this being the case, it seems reasonable to suggest that the motivation for Pearson’s GSE is not to respect research findings and maximize the efficacy of ELT practices, but rather to facilitate packaging and marketing in pursuit of maximum sales and profits.”

Jordan & Long, 2022, p.131

• Holds back no punches: Throughout the book, Jordan and Long attack pretty much all the big names in ELT, and whilst I may not agree with everything that they say, it is extremely thought provoking, and does make the reader think about the reason for all these big decisions.

“In the final chapter, we explain our own radical political position and then discuss the work of some colleagues who are, we think, making progress towards the kind of ELT practice we advocate in Sections 2 and 3.”

Jordan & Long, 2022, p.235

• The authors note that their position is quite radical: It would be strange if the authors were to write something like this and then say that their opinion is in line with everyone else in ELT. Obviously, though, this is not the case. Jordan and Long state very clearly that they believe that their position is radical.

“In conclusion, high-stakes English proficiency tests are used as gate keepers, guarding the doors of entry to higher education, the professions and even countries of refuge for those fleeing persecution. They can be seen as forming the final, and perhaps most pernicious, part of an interlocking publishing, teacher, teacher-training, and testing hydra that make up the current ELT industry, an industry bent on the commodification of education, with disastrous consequences of millions.”

Jordan & Long, 2022, p.230

• The authors deliver a well-thought-out attack on current assessment practices: In Spain, there is a secondary school exam called Selectividad, and one component is an English test. This test is supposed to be passed by all in the final year of high school, and when they pass it is supposed to mean that they have a B2 level of English (and I know that Jordan and Long disagree with these levels, but I’m going to use them as I think they ARE useful). The test, however, does not have a speaking or listening component, and includes only a multiple choice reading (which also includes some questions like “find a synonym of X”), a writing task, and a sentence transformation task. Given that, in general, people’s primary focus of language is verbal communication, this test leaves a lot to be desired. When I was reading the authors’ critique of assessment within ELT, I couldn’t help but think that for many things they were right on the money. The authors feel that assessment should be linked to criterion-referenced task performance; that is, “the focus is not on language as object, but on a student’s ability to do real tasks, or simulations thereof” (Jordan & Long, 2022, p.230). I do agree, to an extent – but I feel that there is are some questions that remain unanswered – what about those learners that want to learn a language simply because they enjoy learning the language? When learners don’t have any target tasks in mind, what assessment do we turn to?

What I didn’t like

• The price of the book: On the Cambridge Scholars’ website, you can find the book for a super cheap £37.99, and on Amazon, I found it for €43.13. Normally I buy all of the books I read, but I couldn’t really afford this so I had to get a copy from someone else. Now, I want to clarify that I think the book is worth that price, but I do think for the majority of language teachers, who often find themselves in “poor working conditions and [with] low pay” (Jordan & Long, 2022, p.127), I think getting access to this book is going to be difficult. I also think that many ELT people in the ‘hydra’ that Jordan and Long talk about would love to read this, but the price might put them off.

• Section 1 was very dense: When going over some of the most important SLA research from the last 50 years, you can bet that it’s going to get juicy, and Section 1 of the book gets real juicy. Now, I don’t consider myself an SLA expert, but I do feel that I have read a significant amount of SLA research and have become fairly confident at reading and understanding what can be difficult ‘stuff’. This being said, I did find Section 1 quite dense at times. Now, if a teacher with relatively little experience with reading SLA ‘stuff’ were to pick up the book, I have a feeling that they might be turned off – or skip the whole section altogether, which would be a shame. The saving grace, though, is that each chapter has a brilliant summary of the main points, and I think that if someone does get a little lost in Section 1, then they should skip to the summaries and take what they can from there.

“Given our reservations about the work of the two biggest SLTE organizations, TESOL and IATEFL, whose teacher education special interest groups largely support a coursebook-driven ELT approach and sing from the same socio-cultural hymnbook, we recommend that teachers join independent local groups or cooperatives.”

Jordan & Long, 2022, p.212

• Throws a lot of us into little boxes: So, whilst I agree with many criticisms that Jordan and Long present, I did at times feel like many of us were being put into little boxes (e.g., if you’re a teacher educator, you are profiting from the industry, don’t care about SLA, etc.). I do recognise the why behind Jordan and Long’s writing, but I don’t think they recognised the fact that many teacher educators (and other ELT professionals mentioned) do value the findings from research, do aim to raise awareness of why we should be moving away from course book driven ELT, and do work with and for teachers, both in an educational and advocacy role (e.g., fighting for better pay). I found it quite interesting the the TTEdSIG was mentioned, and the authors mentioned that we “support coursebook-driven ELT” and “sing from the the [socio-cultural] hymnbook” (Jordan & Long, 2022, p.212), and whilst I do in many aspects agree with socio-cultural theory, I do find myself questioning the lack of a focus on objective reality and I am, I like to think anyway, making efforts to move teachers away from coursebook-driven ELT – and I am the TTEdSIG admin coordinator! In Jordan and Long’s mind, I, and many other teacher educators that I know (who also read SLA research and make efforts to raise teachers’ awareness of SLA findings) are part of the ELT hydra and make no efforts to right the wrongs, and profit in the meantime. This being said, perhaps if Jordan and Long hadn’t written in this manner, this book wouldn’t be as thought-provoking as it is?

Who should read this book?

• Teachers with some experience with reading SLA articles (although there is a caveat): So, I don’t think that Section 1 of the book is super teacher-friendly. Like I said, I have a fair bit of experience reading SLA stuff, and I found some of it quite dense. With this in mind, I don’t think teachers who are looking to get a taste of SLA should use this as their first point of entry. Having said this, I think the summaries at the end of each chapter are excellent and do provide quite clear overview takeaways for each chapter, and so should an SLA-inexperienced teacher pick it up, they might be best reading those first.
• Teacher educators: A part of me thinks that this book was written with teacher educators as the main focus, and for good reason – we are generally the ones mediating teachers’ learning. If for nothing else, teacher educators should read this book to test their own beliefs, to engage in critical thinking about our industry, and to really explore some of the issues with ELT today.
• Materials writers and publishers: Those involved in the planning, creation, marketing of, and selling of course books or course book materials will get a lot out of this, I feel. Again, this book presents the other side of the coin, and any true professional should have an understanding of the arguments for and against their chosen perspective.

Applying to practice

Having read much of Long’s work before, and having been an reader of Jordan’s blog for some time, I do feel that they have already had a great influence not only on my teaching, but on my perspective of the ELT world as a whole. So, in terms of what is going to ‘change’ in my practice, I don’t think that there is that much. This being said, the information in this book has reinforced my desire to implement a task-supported syllabus in my academy (which we are doing in the next academic year). The reason I want to do this is three-fold. One, a Jordan and Long make very clear, the use of tasks and tasks-based methodology is much more in line with what we know about how languages are learned than more traditional synthetic approaches to language teaching. Two, by introducing a task-supported syllabus I can hopefully bring my teachers more comfortably into the world of TBLT in a supported manner. Three, by incorporating interesting and relevant tasks into the syllabus, I believe that learner engagement and interest will be piqued. Now, I know that Geoff will disagree that a task-supported syllabus (or lowercase tblt) is the way to go, but I hope that he sees my rationale for doing so 🙂

Final notes

Jordan and Long’s English Language Teaching Now and How It Could Be is a long read, and at times dense, but it presents opinions, perspectives, and research that all those involved in ELT should be aware of. The book will challenge your beliefs, make you question the ELT industry as a whole, and I see this as a good thing. As I had expected, Jordan and Long have written an excellent book that I expect will line the bookshelves of many a teacher in the years to come.

Book details

Book title: English Language Teaching Now and How It Could Be

Author: Geoff Jordan and Mike Long

Pages: 315

ISBN: 978-1-5275-8224-8

References

Dallinger, S., Jonkmann, K., Hollm, J. & Fiege, C. (2016). The effect of content and language integrated learning on students’ English and history competences – Killing two birds with one stone? Learning and Instruction, 41, p.23-31.

Jordan, G. & Long, M. (2022). English Language Teaching Now and How It Could Be. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.