This book contains plenty of theoretical information on (foreign) language teaching with many examples

from different languages. It was easily understandable and while I didn't enjoy reading it all the time, it
was a good educational experience. I read this book as part of a course on pragmatics in university
during my Master's degree.

In this introductory chapter, Rogers briefly looks at the scope, aims, and

methods of CDA, and addresses questions related to what is considered

critical, discursive, and analytic in CDA. Briefly too, she points to the

importance of form and function in CDA, much appreciated in Halliday's

systemic linguistics and neglected in the American linguistic tradition

dominated by Chomsky's formal paradigm. Another feature of CDA is the fact

that discourse dominates and is dominated by social, cultural, political,

and economic contexts. The contribution of CDA to learning is also

attended to as a way of better understanding its processes as shaped

by social, cultural, political, and economic contexts. Rogers ends the

chapter with major criticisms of CDA, namely, the imposition of the CDA

framework on data, the imbalance between linguistic method and social

theory, the social decontextualization of some analyses, absence of rigor

and systematicity in the CDA methodology, lack of concern with learning,

and lack of concern with non-linguistic aspects of discourse such as

emotion.

Learning-wise, the book is one of the rare contributions to date to

draw attention to the need of critical thought to investigate learning,

pedagogy, and public policy. This is all the more timely when legislation

was urging for No Child Left Behind in educational institutions, and when

fingers have also been pointing to interfering with education in the U.S.

from the body politic. For criticism of the American educational system,

readers are directed to Santa Ana.

Discourse Analysis for Language Teaching gives a practical introduction to the field of discourse analysis
and its relevance for language teaching. It begins by answering the question 'What is discourse analysis?'
and examines how discourse analysts approach spoken and written language. Different models of
analysis are outlined and evaluated in terms of their usefulness to language teachers. This is followed by
chapters on discourse-oriented approaches to grammar, vocabulary and phonology. The final section
looks at spoken and written language in the light of native-speaker and learner data and considers
examples of teaching approaches. Discourse Analysis for Language Teaching has a very practical
orientation, and the text is interspersed with reader activities with guidance on appropriate responses
at the end.