the chapter uses case studies of second and foreign language teaching to illustrate
how the social and sociolinguistic context can influence language pedagogy.
Whereas this chapter will discuss the learning and teaching context of various
languages, a good deal of attention will be given to the learning of English. This
is because today English is the most widely studied second and foreign language
(Crystal, 1997), causing the study of the social and sociolinguistic context of the
learning of this language to be of interest to many learners and practitioners.