Abstract

Debates about the place of mission work in English Language Teaching continue to rage, and yet full-length studies of what really happens at the intersection of ELT and evangelical Christianity are rare. In this book, Johnston conducts a detailed ethnography of an evangelical language school in Poland, looking at its Bible-based curriculum, and analyzing interaction in classes for adults. He also explores the idea of ‘relationship’ in the context of the school and its mission activity, and more broadly the cultural encounter between North American evangelicalism and Polish Catholicism. The book comprises an in-depth examination of a key issue facing TEFL in the 21st century, and will be of interest to all practitioners and scholars in the field, whatever their position on this topic.

Bill Johnston is Henry Remak Professor of Comparative Literature at Indiana University, USA. He is the author of Values in English Language Teaching (2003, Lawrence Erlbaum).

Johnston's work is a carefully crafted ethnography of contact that examines the presuppositions and methodology of foreign English teachers at an evangelical school in Poland. However, it is much more! The author raises fair-minded questions about the role of religion in education and, like Stevick, grapples with "what goes on inside and between people" when teachers and students meet.

Johnston combines his intimate knowledge of Polish culture, his distinguished career in English language teaching and his proven expertise as a researcher to provide a data-based ethnographic study that makes a unique contribution to an area more usually known for its ideologically-motivated disputes. An essential read for anyone interested in this meeting point of sometimes elided, sometimes conflicting, good intentions.