Claude Marcel (1793–1876) : a neglected applied linguist?

This article contributes to the as yet underexplored field of applied linguistic historiography by surveying the life and achievements of Claude Marcel (1793–1876), author of a two-volume study of language education published in London in 1853 under the title Language as a Means of Mental Culture and International Communication. The question of whether Marcel was an applied linguist 'avant la lettre' is addressed, as are possible reasons for the contemporary and subsequent neglect of his work. It is suggested that the identification of precursors depends on one's view of the nature of applied linguistics, and that there are alternatives to a linguistics-focused conception. Indeed, a consideration of Marcel's writings — and the contemporary and subsequent neglect of them — highlights the way language teaching theory has tended, for the last 120 years or more, to be dominated by linguistic much more than educational considerations

The History of Teaching English as a Foreign Language, from a British and European Perspective

This article offers an overview of historical developments in EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teaching methodology over the last 250 years. Being based on periods rather than methods, it is intended as an alternative kind of account to the ‘method mythologies’ which have tended to dominate professional thinking for the last thirty years. Thus, we structure our account according to four periods characterized by main concerns and overall approaches, revealing greater continuity and overlap among teaching theories and practices than in accounts which accept discrete, bounded ‘methods’ as the primary unit of organization. Confronting a conception of the past typically presented as universal but in fact reflecting a USA-centric perspective, our alternative, UK-focused and, to some extent, European version of history asserts the value of explicit geographical contextualization and indicates a new direction for the history of EFL teaching — ‘beyond method’, and in multiple locations