ABSTRACT
The social, cultural and, indeed, political dimensions of English language teaching and learning have been increasingly recognized in recent years. Stern observes that we can investigate the ‘sociology’ of ELT whereby language teaching is ‘an enterprise . . . a set of activities in society’ (1983: 269), while Pennycook (2000: 89) notes that:
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Previous chapters have investigated in some detail the social complexity found within ELT classrooms. The discussions have also acknow - ledged, but not yet examined in detail, how all L2 teaching and learning takes place within specific institutional environments and social, economic and ideological contexts. Thus, it is to the relationship between everyday classroom practices and the wider socio-cultural environment that we turn in our final three chapters, for, as Auerbach (1995: 9) maintains:
the day-to-day decisions that practitioners make inside the classroom both shape and are shaped by the social order outside the classroom.
