188

NOTES ET REFERENCES

Lexis. Dictionnoire de lo Longue Froncoise (1975). Paris: Larousse.

Le Petit Ro6ert (1977). Paris.
Dictionnuire du Fmncois contemporoin. now. M. (1980). Paris: Larousse.
GIRODET, J. (1981) Dictionnoire de Bon Froncois. Paris: Bordas.
Le Robert mkthodique (1982). Paris.
Cf. HANSE, J. et 01. (1971) Chase oux Belgicismes. Bruxelles: Fondation Charles Plisnier. HANSE, J.
et 01. (1974) Nouvelle Chase oux Belgicismes. Bruxelles: Fondation Charles Plisnier.
Cf. HANSE, J. (1980) dam Orthographe et Grommoire. Politique Nouvelle. Paris: Conseil International
de la Langue Fran&e, p. 28.
Cf. DOPPAGNE, A. (1979) Belgicismes de Bon Aloi. Bruxeks: Fondation Charles Plisnier, p. 9: “L%quilibre,
au sein du francais. s’ttablira par une juste participation des francais regionaux a la langue commune”.’

Nuttall, Christine, Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign Language. London: Heinemann

Educational Books, 1982, xi + 233 pp, (Practical Language Teaching No. 9).

This book is concerned with an area of vital interest to the practising teacher-the twilight
zone where theory flows into decision-making, and then into classroom practice. Nuttall
copes with the implementation of the communicative approach in the teaching of reading
in a foreign language. Her effort is successful from the very start, for she has identified
the “awkward corner” from the teacher’s point of view.

In the teaching of reading in a FL there is no such thing as a canonical sequence of

teaching steps, bur rather a number of interlocking problems to be dealt with. Decisions
on teaching points and procedures depend firstly on the teacher’s understanding of the
reading process; next, on the assessment of the students’ command of the target language
and on the investigation of their learning environment to assess motivation, needs, aims,
skills and habits which can or cannot be transferred from L, reading; thirdly, on the
selection of adequate reading materials.

It is only when these variables are under control that an efficient reading programme can
be devised, and it is precisely these aspects that the first three chapters set out to explore.
Chapter 1 deals with reading as a communicative process, with emphasis on the central
importance of meaning and on the active involvement of the reader. Chapter 2 is concerned
with reading aims, with emphasis on the differentiation between the aims of a reading
lesson and those of a language development lesson, thereby identifying the nature of the
teacher’s role in the reading programme. Chapter 3 debates that most delicate question-
selecting a text-and relates text potential to the learners on the one hand, and to the
purposes of the reading lesson on the other hand.

These opening chapters are fairly short. Their function is to provide a firm grasp of a well-
outlined framework-Ausubel’s “anchoring ideas”- and this is done with great care not
to clutter the reader’s mind with premature detail. At the same time, the author’s thought-
provoking approach invites the reader to actively cooperate from the very first page. Users
of this book will work as they read: plenty of opportunity is given to learn by doing, and
to this end a wide selection of texts (some of them from published course materials) is
included for practice, not only for exemplification (Appendices A and B).
 REVIEWS 189

Chapters 4 to 10 deal with the development of those components of textual competence-

both cognitive and operational components-which will allow for competent and auto-
nomous reading, once they are integrated and consciously applied by the students.
Practising teachers, methodologists and applied linguists will find an analytical treatment
of skills and subskills, where the findings from various disciplines (psycholinguistics,
semantics, pragmatics, text-linguistics, discourse analysis) are presented in a tightly
organized and highly readable format. Each item-be it cohesion, or metacommunicative
work on rhetorical organization, or pragmatic meaning-has a specific place in a specific
sequence (from word-attack to text-attack skills, from the micro- to the macro-skills)
and is dealt with on a two-tier basis: first, the competences and subcompetences involved,
their relevance, and the problems the student-reader is likely to encounter; secondly, how
to train the students in the specific skill or subskill.

These chapters are successful in a number of ways. First, order is given to a number of
processes which are concurrent in actual reading but require discrete training before
integration. In doing this, the author is precise, exhaustive, and steadily concerned to
get her message across. The text is carefully organized into sections and subsections;
sentences are admirably short and clear, and sometimes have the effectiveness of aphorisms.
The terminology is accurate and accessible; whenever technical terms are used, they are
carefully explained. The leading criterion everywhere is to identify with teachers and their
needs, and this applies to lexicon as well: “We did not call this chapter ‘lexical item
attack skills’, though this is really what it is about, because the term ‘word-attack skills’
is already familiar to many teachers” (66). However, this concern for being accessible
never leads to content simplification. On the contrary, definitions or formulations from
the literature which have proved banal or inadequate are challenged and excellently
improved. Two examples are the treatment of non-verbal information (52) and the
treatment of the paragraph (109).

Secondly, the wealth and appropriateness of classroom activities which illustrate and
richly exemplify the procedure for each teaching point makes the book useful for con-
sultation, not only for reading. Presentation for each set of activities includes: explanation
(what, how, why, for what purpose), exemplification, evaluation against level of learners,
and, most important, timing. Although “timing is crucial” (84), its dependent-variable
status is rightly emphasized, as feasibility of specific training depends on text-potential
toward the item and student-awareness of it. These methodological concerns, and their
technical consequences, are put forth with the realism, flexibility (e.g., the approach to
the use of cloze (143)), expertise (e.g. the treatment of the OHP) and ability to predict
student and teacher reactions, that come from long first-hand experience in a variety of
cultures-the carefully non-ethnocentric attitude being a distinguished quality per se.

Thirdly, the psychopedagogic concern with role, function and attitude is a pervasive theme
of paramount importance, which contributes to language teaching in general. Chapter 6,
with its emphasis on how to make the skills/activities entirely credible and respectable to
190 REVIEWS

the class so that a “cavalier attitude to vocabulary” (75) may develop, goes to the very
essence of FL teaching, particularly with adults. The same applies to chapter 9, on
questioning, with its emphasis on the teacher as a catalyst. Indeed, the aim of the book is
to provide the methodological, technical and psychopedagogic tools which give the
teacher self-confidence, and thus allow for transfer of a positive attitude to the class. Very
significantly, the concluding phase, which deals with the intensive and the extensive
reading programme, culminates in chapter 12 with a discussion of the teacher as reader.
The book is concerned with the teaching of reading to intermediate FL students in general,
therefore language for special purposes is outside its aim. However, the discussion of
authentic materials and the stage at which they can be introduced would perhaps benefit
from the inclusion of some insights coming from special purpose reading programmes
where authentic materials have been used ab initio. Assessment of new vocabulary with
relation to adult students, and the question of conceptual/linguistic readability, would
perhaps be more complete if mention of these findings were made. At the same time, one
wonders why such a highly formative and informative book for teachers of foreign
languages-not only teachers of English as a foreign language-should have a bibliography
which, with the exception of two university presses outside Europe and of some international
journals published in English, is totally “Anglo”?
Giuseppina Cortese
Universita di Torino
Dipartimento di Scienze de1 linguaggio
e letterature moderne e comparate
Via S. Ottavio 20
I-10124 Torino
Italia

Morgan, John and Rinvolucri, Mario, Once Upon u Time. Using Stories in the Language
Classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983, 120 pp., f10.50 (hardcover),
f3.95 (paperback).

I have some doubt that one may quote Sir Richard Steele’s dictum “I have often thought
that a story-teller is born as well as a poet” in favour of or against using this book in
foreign language teaching. If the story-teller should have the same command of the
language as a poet, then teaching story-telling to foreigners might be futile indeed. If,
however, Sir Richard wants to remind us of man’s archetypical and innate faculty to
express himself and his views of the world in stories, then story-telling is an essential part
of developing communicative competence in any target language.

Most trends in language teaching over the last few decades have had a more or less
analytical approach and thus dimmed the teachers’ eyes as to the complexity and intricacy
of speech. As a result, modern textbook courses have banned stories and story-telling
from their pages for being ineffective and obsolete tools of language acquisition. However,
man cannot live without stories, neither can language teachers. It is worth mentioning that
the present re-discovery of story-telling has not been brought about by linguists, but by
classroom teachers who feel that their pupils need more than structural or notional
approaches to the target language. It is-among others-story-telling which makes a
humanistic approach to language teaching possible.