Language Curriculum Design and Socialisation by P. Mickan (review)

This book by a scholar at the University of Adelaide (Adelaide, South Australia) consists essentially of a long argument, with examples, for changing the way language teaching curricula are organized. “Language” is understood here in a very broad sense to mean not only first or second language (L2) teaching, but also the language of specific content areas such as secondary-level science. The second language teaching contexts included under the umbrella of language are diverse, from migrant contexts in Australia (from children to adults), to the teaching of Australian Aboriginal languages in revitalization contexts, to teaching English as an L2 abroad to children or adults in, for example, Korea or Hong Kong.

The main thrust of Mickan’s argument is that language teaching curricula are not now, but could usefully be, reorganized around texts. Several assumptions underlying this argument need to be unpacked for the CMLR readership because Mickan’s ideas are grounded in the slightly unfamiliar Australian context for linguistics and language teaching.

First, the theoretical structure underpinning this approach to language curriculum design is that of systemic–functional linguistics (SFL) as laid out in the classic works of Halliday and Hasan (e.g., Halliday & Hasan, 1985) and their followers. A complex and coherent approach to the analysis of all language phenomena has been built up within this theoretical framework, largely by Australian scholars, that is not as familiar to us in North America as perhaps it should be. Readers unfamiliar with the basic concepts of SFL (such as field, tenor, and mode) can learn about them here, but they will also benefit from taking the opportunity to learn about them elsewhere before diving in.

Second, Mickan’s review of the history and conceptual bases of (mostly second) language teaching over the past hundred years or so takes very much for granted that previous approaches to language teaching have not been based on texts; Mickan’s argument is that the text-based curriculum he advocates for so strongly is something quite new. Not all readers will agree that communicative language teaching, task-based curricula, content-based curricula (as in bilingual or immersion programs), and genre-based curricula (to list the four most recently developed approaches reviewed by Mickan) are as solely focused on discrete grammar points, lexical items, and sentence-level structures as Mickan suggests.

Third, although many of Mickan’s examples of improved curriculum design will probably be intriguing and useful to a wide reader-ship, the reliance on the Australian context and on a knowledge of Australian curricula may make the book less interesting for readers outside Australia who are not willing to try to remember the dozens of acronyms for local educational bodies and policies with which the book is sprinkled.

The book consists of nine chapters, all of them short and illustrative, with helpful diagrams, charts, and other visual aids. The first few chapters take rather a long time to lay out the basic principles on which the book is based and are somewhat repetitive, but chapter 7 on curriculum applications, with its long and detailed series of examples of real programs in which the ideas in the book can be seen in practice, is excellent. Each chapter ends with a summary, a Notes and Extra Readings section, and a set of tasks that make this a potentially useful textbook for second language teacher education courses (especially in curriculum design); however, in the North American context, the appropriate role for this book would probably be as a supplemental rather than a main textbook.

This reviewer found that the writing style detracted from the overall considerable educational potential of the book. The author’s use of easily accessible examples from his own experience to illustrate what he means by the social semiotics of text (in an SFL framework), such as his students’ and colleagues’ e-mails, flyers from his neighborhood, and other short, informal pieces of writing (recipes, grocery lists), sits rather uneasily with his rather long-winded approach to straightforward exposition...