الفهرس 
INTRODUCTIONOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
A quick survey of research studies on foreign language
teaching I learning in Egypt reveals that the Egyptian foreign
language classroom is still unexplored territory. Even the
error analysis wave of studies was almost exclusively concerned
with the classification of errors in learners’ written work and
so has been dj~ciated from the more recent developments in interlanguage
research; and its contribution to the current theory
of second language .dcquisition has been very restricted indeed.
The only study, to my knowledge, devoted exclusively to the investigation
of verbal interaction in the Egyptian foreign language
classroom was conducted at AUC on the verbal interaction of the
Public Service language classes using Flanders’ original system.
( El-Kommos,l979 ) Two other studies have incorporated an observational
component ( El-Sherbini,l977 & Ghanem, 1983 ) • However,
it can be safely claimed, given the relative paucity of classroom- centred research ( CCR ), that the Egyptian foreign
language classroom still remains a locked blackbox. Supervisors’
reports are usually impressionistic in nature, lacking the objectification
of ~raft’s knowledge called for by Fanselow 1977 ) and
McNamara (1978,1981). The assertion, repeatedly made in ( CCR )
literature, that there is a hiatus between theory and practice
on the one hand and between claimed beliefs about what constitutes foreign language teaching I learning and related tacit schema
or knowledge structure on the other seems to have fallen on deaf
ears. The dissillusionment of foreign I second language teaching
research workers with global comparative method studies in the
early seventies, reported to have been lagging behind the mainstream
of educational research ( Long, 1980 & Allwright, 1983 )
had no impact on research work on language teaching in the Egyptian
context. This does not mean that ( CCR ) is or will ever be
a new panacea for all problems with regard to foreign language
teaching. B.ut it is currently be.lieved to be a basic tool of
curriculum change and perhaps ~ major tool of bringing about
professional growth and real change in teaching practice. Current
theories of skill acquisition postulate an underlying schema or
knowledge structure which consists of a set of tacit beliefs that
govern teacher’s behaviour in the classroom and make him/her unable
to detect the differences between what is theoretically prescribed,
what is sometimes claimed and what is actually done inside the classroom.