Talk:David Nunan

Tone
David Nunan is a great contributor to EFL and to the field of Linguistics -- he deserves more than this raggedy, badly written page. For example -- What does the following line mean anyway? "David Nunan began his career in Teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand, where he learned the local language." Does it mean he learned Thai at that time of his life whilst living in Thailand? Or, does it mean he learned it specifically at Chulalongkorn University? And this is a bio of a man who understands Critical Discourse Analysis, Deep and Surface Structure etc?

It's plain badly written, with an overwhelming tone of bragging and of hagiographic adulation which doesn't look balanced, and doesn't do him, as a leading Linguistics scholar, any justice at all.

Why no mention of the kinds of EFL fields he is interested in, and has contributed enormously to, such as in depth elaboration on Syllabus development, TBL, CR, Post Communicative/Post DELTA methodology, Post Generative Grammar approach etc? That would prove far more interesting than the current page, which is just a profoundly dull page giving us a list of things he has won/achieved, which "make him important" -- all those awards/accolades may mean something to a publisher/employer -- but to those of us interested in his very insightful and practical theory -- they are plain boring. Whilst Krashen and others lead the "fame game" as far as EFL is concerned, for many of us, Nunan and others ( such as the Willis' ) are far more interesting -- Nunan deserves a full page of well researched material, proving his theoretical contribution which has gone some significant way to altering the face of EFL teaching.

Rewrite anyone?


 * I've tweaked it, but more for formatting and to dial back on the promotion. It still needs that expert rewrite. Studerby (talk) 05:37, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Best selling textbook series in the world?
The article states that "Go For It" is the best selling textbook series in the world. However, the reference supporting this assertion (http://www.anaheim.edu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=114&Itemid=175) is a dead link. Also, there is no mention of the "Go For It" series in Wikipedia's list of best selling books or book series (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books). Searching Google also provides no reliable source for this assertion. His personal homepage (http://davidnunan.com/index.php/about-us/item/8-about-david-nunan) claims 2.5 billion copies have been sold. However, I have been unable to find another reliable source which confirms this figure. Praine (talk) 14:41, 16 July 2016 (UTC)


 * The original source can be found at archive.org. It claims 300 million copies sold. The number has been edited from 300 million to 1 billion, then 2.5 billion, then 3.5 billion. This amount seems to be unrealistic (one book per two living people) and because there is no real proof for these claims (apart from the authors website) I removed it altogether. &mdash; Agentbla (talk) 15:31, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Nunan's Hong Kong book
The Nunan book had one review (I can give it its own article if I find a second) at https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-988-77927-7-2 which stated: "Nunan is aware that not all of his selections will strike readers as relevant or insightful; he notes in the text that an editor friend who read a draft did not understand what the book had to do with the city."

However I think it's a reference to this: https://international.thenewslens.com/article/94157 "A freelance editor friend of mine, who has looked over the manuscript for me, pauses at this story. “What’s it got to do with Hong Kong?” she asks. “Everything,” I reply."

It seems like the PW review writer misunderstood the context of the comment - it was regarding a particular chapter, not the whole book, and Nunan felt it *was* in fact relevant. WhisperToMe (talk) 02:10, 6 October 2019 (UTC)