Keynote talk, TESOL Society of Bangladesh 1st International Virtual Conference, 18 December 2020
"Research for Super-difficult Circumstances: Where to Start and How to Go On"
and PowerPoint slides (as pdf).
References and links (in order of mention) are below:
Prologue
- Mark A. Clarke . (1994). '. TESOL Quarterly 28(1).
- Michael West - Life, Career, Archive, Extracts (ÌÇÐÄTV ELT Archive)
1. Contextualized TESOL Research
- Amol Padwad. (2020). ELT Journal 74(4): 515–516.
-
H.G. Widdowson. (2000). ‘On the Limitations of Linguistics Applied’. Applied Linguistics, 21(1): 3–25.
-
Robert Phillipson (1992). Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Alastair Pennycook (1994). The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language. Harlow: Longman.
- Alastair Pennycook (1998). English and the Discourses of Colonialism. London: Routledge.
- Kumaravadivelu, B. (2006). 'Postmethod pedagogy'. Chapter 9 in Understanding Language Teaching: from Method to Postmethod. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
- Cochran-Smith, M. & Lytle, S.L. (1993). New York: Teachers College Press.
2. Difficult and Super-difficult circumstances
- Michael West (1960) Teaching English in Difficult Circumstances. Published by Longmans (1960). Extracts here.
- Jason Anderson, Amol Padwad & Richard Smith. (In press.) Entry for ‘Language Teaching in Difficult Circumstances’. In Coombe, C. & Mohebbi, H. (eds.) Research Questions in Language Education: A Reference Guide for Teachers. Springer.
- Richard Smith (2011). 'Teaching English in difficult circumstances: A new research agenda'. In Pattison, T. (ed.) IATEFL 2010 Harrogate Conference Selections. Canterbury: IATEFL. Pre-publication version here. Associated talk
- Smith, R. 2015. . NELTA ELT Forum (July 2015). [The entire issue is devoted to .
- . Join here:
- Prem Phyak (2015). '. ELT Choutari (July 2015). [The entire issue is devoted to ].
3. Some ways forward for (contextualized) TESOL research
a. Identifying, understanding and sharing successful practice (an ‘enhancement approach’)
- Richard Smith (2008). 'Taking the bull by its horns: Zakia Sarwar's pro-autonomy approach to large classes in Pakistan (Part I)'. Independence 44: 7-13. Pdf
-
Kuchah, K. and Smith, R. (2011). ‘Pedagogy of autonomy for difficult circumstances: From practice to principles’. Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching 5/2: 119-139.
-
Smith, R., Kuchah, K. and Lamb, M. (2018).. In Chik, A., Aoki, N. and Smith, R. (eds). Autonomy in Language Learning and Teaching: New Research Agendas. London: Palgrave Pivot.
-
Quotes from Michael West: /elt_archive/halloffame/west/extracts/
-
Smith, R., Padwad, A. and Bullock, D. (2017). London: British Council.
- Teaching Children in a Post-Earthquake Situation:
(adapted by Richard Smith (n.d.), with the author's permission)
b. TA-research and teacher-research for difficult circumstances
- Smith, R. and Kuchah, K. 2016. . ELT Journal 70/2: 212-221.
- Sarkar, B.C., Hedges, C. Griffiths, M., Mathew, R. & Biswas, S.K. (eds) (2017) Dhaka: English in Action.
- Richard Smith & Paula Rebolledo (2018) London: British Council.
- Paula Rebolledo, Richard Smith & Deborah Bullock (eds) (2016). London: British Council.
- J.S. Negi (ed.) (2019) . Melauli: Support Society Nepal.
-
Richard Smith (2020) New Delhi: British Council. .
-
Teachers can (starting in January 2021). Teachers interested in teacher-research can also join this Facebook group:
c. Enhancement mentoring for teacher-research
[I didn't have time to cover this recent initiative - but you are welcome to ]
Responses to questions

