Review: The Art and Science of Language Teaching – Lara Bryfonski and Alison Mackey

Many years ago, Teresa Pica (1994) wrote a brilliant article titled: Questions from the Language Classroom: Research Perspectives. This article aimed to answer common questions that teachers have about teaching through the research lens, and did this brilliantly in my mind. So, when I heard that Lara Bryfonski and Alison Mackey’s recently published book, The Art and Science of Language Teaching aimed to do something similar, although on a much larger scale, I new that I had to get myself a copy.

For those of you who are familiar with Sponge Chats, you’ll remember that I interviewed Lara some time ago, and we talked about many things TBLT-related, and she also mentioned her new book. And much like the chat we had, I feel that this book is highly insightful, and I aim to provide more details on why I think all language teachers should get themselves a copy in this review 🙂

Three-sentence summary

Bryfonski and Mackey’s The Art and Science of Language Teaching is a book that aims to answers common questions teachers have – and does this through looking at what the research says, doesn’t say, and by providing practical ideas, activities and strategies for teachers to try out. The book is written in a non-academic style, but draws heavily on research findings – this means that the reader is brought into the world of SLA and educational research in an accessible manner (something that most teachers note is not the case with most research!). The authors have crafted an extremely useful tool for teachers of all languages, covering extremely important classroom topics including corrective feedback, teaching pragmatics and teaching vocabulary.

Three takeaways

Given that this book aims to answer questions about a wide range of topics, there are of course more than three takeaways. In fact, I’d hazard a guess and say that each chapter has at least twenty really useful and interesting points. BUT, as you all know, I’ll do my best to keep it to three! The ones I have chosen are the takeaways for myself – I think individual readers will get different things out of this book depending on their familiarity with research, stage they are in their career, and reasons for engaging with the book in the first place.

“The effectiveness of feedback has been shown to vary based on what type of language is being corrected as well as learner characteristics, such as language proficiency, working memory, language awareness, and more. For example, metalinguistic feedback has been shown to be particularly effective for complex grammatical errors, whereas for pronunciation errors, implicit feedback has been shown to be particularly effective.”

Bryfonski & Mackey, 2024, p.38

• Refined oral corrective feedback / Focus-on-Form: If you’ve read my blog for some time, you’ll know that I talk a lot about the importance of providing focus-on-form, or in the moment corrective feedback (which might also include ‘upgrading’!) during oral tasks. One thing that I learnt from this book was what the research says about how we might change our corrective feedback based on the type of error and learner characteristics. The authors write about a lot of research that has highlighted how certain techniques may be more effective than others depending on the characteristics – I’ll include these below (Taken from Bryfonski & Mackey, 2024, p.46). I want to be clear, however, that the research is still very much inconclusive on what is the ‘best’ or most effective form of corrective feedback – and that authors make this very clear in the section titled The Science: What’s Missing?
  • Lower-proficiency learners may benefit from more explicit correction (e.g.,
  • Higher-proficiency learners may benefit from more implicit correction
  • Implicit correction is useful for pronuncaiaton and less complex errors
  • Explicit correction is useful for more complex grammatical errors

“The more anxiety learners face, the worse their speaking performance will be. However, it is listening skills that are actually the most negatively impacted by anxiety. Researchers hypothesise that this is because of the natural time constraints of listening-oriented tasks.

Bryfonski & Mackey, 2024, p.110

• Anxiety impacts learners’ listening skills most: I always thought that it was speaking that was most negatively impacted, especially in exams; however, the authors note that while speaking anxiety is the most common form of learner anxiety, listening skills are the most impacted. Taking into account time constraints and, especially in an exam context, the lack of visual cues, this makes sense.

“Research has also examined the effects of different instructional strategies on the success of learning new writing systems across proficiency levels. For lower-proficiency learners, learning characters of a logographic language [e.g., Chinese] via writing activities was found to be more effective than reading activities. […] Even though today most writing occurs via keyboards or touch screens, research suggests that the act of writing characters not only supports the development of the physical skills but also aids in memory, retention, and understanding of new scripts, especially for learners who L1 is not logographic.”

Bryfonski & Mackey, 2024, p.143

• When learning new writing systems, we need writing practice and explicit instruction: Now, this might sound like common sense, but I found it quite interesting that research has confirmed the need for explicit practice and instruction in scripts (e.g., watching video animations of how to write characters). Furthermore, the fact that explicit focus on the script may be superior to reading in developing literacy skills at lower-levels was fascinating.

What I liked

“To summarize then, we based this book on our interests and knowledge as second language acquisition researchers and as teachers and teacher-trainers, in order to bring together insights from both pedagogy (the art) and research (the science) into a book that provides helpful information about both of these areas.”

Bryfonski & Mackey, 2024, preface.

• The Art and Science distinction works extremely well: In an effort to bring the research-practice gap, the authors have made it so the chapters look at both the art and science in clear sections that ‘overlap’. This in my mind highlights why the art and science complement each other, and should definitely not be ‘competing’ or at odds with each other.
• Starts with a reader self-assessment: As with all good ‘development’ books and programmes, an exploration of the reader’s values, attitudes and beliefs are explored through quite a detailed self-assessment questionnaire. When I opened the book and found this, I thought “This is brilliant!” – not only because it made me think about many things before I read the book, but also because many of the ‘questions’ could also be used in my training of other teachers.
• Provides a nice overview of what research doesn’t tell us: Many books I read go very much into detail about what research says, or the opinions of the author – but very rarely do they state clearly what the research doesn’t say. The sections The Science: What’s missing? are brilliant components, and highlight the need for teachers to: one, be critical of what the research says currently, and two, keep an eye out on the horizon for changes in what the research says.
• Plenty of practical classroom ideas: The way I’ve been talking about the book probably gives off the impression that the book is more ‘theory’ than ‘practical ideas’. The reality is that the book is about 50/50, and in each chapter there are LOADS of classroom ideas for teachers, all with ideas on how to implement them, variations, etc. This obviously makes this book really attractive, in my mind, to teachers.

• Cat graphics: It is very clear that the authors are cat lovers – there are many cat graphics spread out through the book that visually scaffold what the authors are talking about (you can see one of my favourites above)! Many of them will make you chuckle a little, and as I’m a cat lover myself, I thought these were great additions – and make the ‘seriousness’ of research disappear to a certain extent 🙂
• Highlights metalanguage in a teacher-friendly manner: The worlds of language teaching, applied linguistics, SLA, etc. are rife with metalanguage – probably unnecessarily so in some cases. I thought the authors did really well in presenting important pieces of metalanguage in a teacher-friendly manner – providing very clear examples and easy-to-understand definitions. Many of you may think that there is no need to raise awareness of metalanguage, but I disagree. I think when teachers have access to this metalanguage, there are multiple benefits: one, they can express themselves in more sophisticated manners, meaning that they can engage in deeper discussions about teaching; and two, having an awareness of this language aids teachers in engaging with the ‘professional’ aspects of language teaching more easily.

“Second language learning and teaching involves many different variables, unique contexts, and situations. This means that it is difficult to say for certain which teaching method will always be the best for language learning outcomes in every context. Even though we have every reason to think that TBLT, which is supported by theory and research in the field, will be successful, it is still a relatively new approach and more research is needed. […] At this point, we only know that TBLT aligns better with findings about language learning in general and learner psychology when compared to other methods. Some teachers may find it useful to adopt some aspects of TBLT while keeping some aspects of their existing teaching methods.”

Bryfonski & Mackey, 2024, p.256

• The authors advocate a task-based approach: Whilst the authors devote significant space to saying what the science is missing and stating that TBLT may not be the best method for every context, they provide even more space to say why TBLT could be a good method for many contexts. They highlight the benefits from a language learning perspective, and also provide some information on how TBLT might be carried out. Having said this, the chapter devoted to ‘tasks’ will not make the reader an expert in TBLT; however, it will certainly provide a good base to work from.
• Covers a lot of ground: Pica’s (1994) article answered 10 questions teachers had, and at least from the information I have, I believe her approach was quite ‘new’ in terms of bridging the research-practice gap. The authors have taken that idea and covered so much more ground, and in much more detail. There is definitely something for everyone here, and one thing that people should definitely be aware of – it’s not only aimed at English teachers. This book has been written for language teachers in general, and whilst the readership of Sponge ELT is definitely mainly English teachers, I’m hoping we can spread the word that the book will be great for all of our language teaching brothers and sisters around the world.

“Too often, SLA researchers disseminate their findings in long, dense papers that don’t make it clear how their results can be applied to classroom practice. Several initiatives have been created to address this issue, including the creation of platforms like OASIS (Open Accessible Summaries in Language Studies) where short summaries of empirical investigations are written in accessible language, and digital communities of practice bring researchers and teachers together to discuss mutual interests.”

Bryfonski & Mackey, 2024, p.325

• Raises awareness of OASIS: OASIS is a really, really cool site that all of us should definitely be interacting with. Basically, short summaries of research articles are uploaded, and they contain the major findings, etc. in fairly simple language. Really, really useful. Considering the book is aimed at bridging the research-practice gap, I thought that this was a great point to include – and they authors did so in the “How can I make the most of professional development” chapter, which was a good move as this highlights that part of professional development is indeed engaging with language studies in some way.

What I didn’t like

So, overall this book was great, but there were three things that bothered me a little.

• Quite a few typos: This is an extremely minor point, and one that I attribute to this being a first edition. I know what it is to write something and have loads of typos – there are probably a few in this review! Having said that, it is quite an expensive book, and as such the editing should be top notch!
• In text citations are missing or inconsistent: So, the authors don’t include in-text citations for most of the text, which I assume was done to make it as teacher-friendly as possible. One part of me agrees with this, but another disagrees with the decision, especially as I am someone who likes to read where the information came from. Having said this, there is a very detailed references list, and so with some digging, you can find the article you are looking for. But, there is one point that I found a little strange while reading – some chapters have lots of in-text citations, whilst other don’t have any. When you go to the back of the book and look at the references for each chapter, the citation list is really long and it’s clear that all of these citations have not been included in the actual chapters. There seems to be some inconsistency here, and I’m not sure why.
• Access to training materials is restricted to university lecturers: The book comes with accompanying training materials, so that trainers can use them with teachers (and I was hoping to comment on these in the things I liked!). I thought this was brilliant, and I was hoping to access them; however, apparently you need to be lecturer at a university in order to be able access these. This is a little mind boggling, as many trainers are of course not university lecturers – I hope that this can be changed.

Applying to practice

So, what will I be taking from this book and applying to my own practice? Well, I’m actually using the book itself – in training! I’ve found that this book has loads of lovely extracts that can be used in jigsaw readings, or simply to stimulate thinking at the start of workshops. The reality is that this book is a gold mine for trainers!

I recently used some extracts on a CLIL course when we were looking at different oral corrective techniques, and the importance of providing corrective feedback. As the texts were written in easy-to-understand language, the ‘content’ teachers on this course, who had little to no training in pedagogy or language teaching, were able to understand everything and engage in the session fully.

Who should read this book?

• Language teachers: Language teachers are the clear choice here. Now, having said this, you may be wondering if you should read the book from front to back. I would say if you’ve got the time, go for it. However, perhaps a more beneficial manner to approach the book would be to choose chapters that link to your current professional development and/or classroom issues, doubts, etc. The book can be read in this manner, and I think you’ll find that it acts as a brilliant reference when looking for short answers and potential ‘ideas’.
• Trainers: As I mentioned, this book is a gold mine for trainers. Apart from ensuring that you are up-to-date with research (and I know that for many trainers, reading research articles is a bore also), this book will also provide you with a wealth of resources to use with teachers. Ideally, you’ll have access to the training resources provided by the authors, but let’s see if this access issue gets sorted out.

Final notes

Bryfonski and Mackey’s The Art and Science of Language Teaching is the newest edition to my bookshelf, but it is one that I foresee being used time and time again. It provides teachers with clear implications from research, and practical classroom ideas – and this, hopefully, means that it will be a useful tool in bridging the research-practice gap that dominates language education. So, enough from me – what about you? I’d love to hear your thoughts as well. What were your takeaways? Is this a book that other language teaching professionals should get their hands on?

Book details

Book title: The Art and Science of Language Teaching

Authors: Lara Bryfonski and Alison Mackey

Pages: 357

ISBN: 9781108932011

References

Bryfonski, L. & Mackey, A. (2024). The Art and Science of Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Pica, T. (1994). Questions from the language classroom: Research Perspectives. TESOL Quarterly, 28, p.49-79