Through the words of more than 100 practising language teachers, The Experience of Language Teaching provides a detailed picture of teaching and learning in communicative classrooms. Using a teacher-generated framework it covers a range of aspects of classroom life: how teachers create environments suitable for language practice, how they get students 'on-side', how they manage tricky students, how they enhance the learning experience, how they develop and maintain a spirit of community. The book demonstrates how paying attention to both the learning and social needs of their class groups enables language teachers to behave in flexible ways that promote learning. This book will be of interest to teachers, teacher educators, researchers and to anyone interested in finding out what it is like to be a language teacher at the present time.