Lía D. Kamhi-Stein

English Language Teaching in South America

English language teaching in South America is usually absent in international publications, or at least publications located in “the centre”. Now and then we may read articles or book chapters which are part of international perspectives volumes on a given aspect of ELT authored. This explains why the volume edited by Kamhi-Stein, Díaz Maggioli and de Oliveira is the first of its kind in the literature to put together the voices of ELT educators from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. In this regard, the volume is based in South America, authored by South American educators and written with an international community in mind. The volume is divided into three parts which respond to issues around, in this order, policy, teacher preparation and development, and school-based research and innovative practices. In the introductory chapter, the editors provide a minimal historical account against which the chapters are written and conclude by acknowledging that [...] in spite of the fact that South America is a complex and multifaceted region that, historically, has oscillated between periods of deep social and economic turmoil and periods of great social and economic growth, the status of English has changed and has become part of the landscape of the region (p. 8).