NovELTy May 2002 [antikvár]

Awareness, a fundamental concept in learning and development, is the themethat links the articles in this issue of novELTy. Awareness of a structure isnecessary in order to learn to use it appropriately, awareness of a variety oflexical items is needed in order to clearly understand and produce the intendedmessage. Awareness of cultures and cultural differences can guide us in ourlinguistic behaviour, and the awareness of a need for change in pedagogicalpractice is the first step on the road to professional development.The Feature Article written by Don Peckham discusses the muchdisputed issue of form-focused teaching in EFL. While the grammar-translationmethod is still extensively being used in Hungarian classrooms, few teachershave any information as to the effect or effectiveness of explicit grammarand vocabulary teaching. In his research, Peckham investigated the impactof instruction on students' awareness of new grammatical and lexical formsand his findings show that the teaching of grammar and vocabulary itemscreates a higher level of conscious awareness in students than simply exposingthem to the language does.Another much disputed issue, ethnocentric bias, is the topic ofMagnuczné Godó Agnes'thought-provoking article. An experienced researcherand teacher of academic writing courses and discourse analysis, she subjectscurrent comparative linguistic research practice and related pedagogicalapproaches to severe criticism. She puts forward a model, PragmaticMulticulturalism, which promotes a non-judgmental tone in research and theacceptance of multicultural standards in international communication.Culture in foreign language teaching is the topic of Ryan James'contribution as well. He gives a brief overview of the most salient issuesinvolved and supports the points he makes with examples taken from practice.He puts particular emphasis on foreign culture experience and stresses theneed for teachers to be culturally fluent in several cultures in order to be ableto discuss differences.In the My Classroom section, you will find some fun activities linkingvocabulary and culture presented by Elekes Katalin. Her article is a fine exampleof how a book on 20th century words, originally bought as an interestingbedtime read, is irresistibly and inevitably turned into classroom material inthe hands and mind of a creative teacher.In the Book Reviews section several publications are linked to thetopics of the main articles. The publications introduced focus on teaching