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Following author s instructions might be a comfortable way to prepare an English class. For any teaching point, topic and approach there is an abundance of didactic materials with detailed instructions provided by language teaching specialists so as to facilitate the EFL teacher s job. Author s instructions suggest procedures which will often become a model to stablish behaviour, actions and attitudes towards language, guiding teaching as well as learning. The comfort and security offered by following author s instructions should however be questioned as to the aim of teaching a foreing language. The present study analyses author s instructions in order to observe the impact of models on teaching and learning through a discoursive and psychoanalytical perspective. The analyses invite teachers, and specially EFL teachers, to consider instructions from a different view: one which favours learner s expression of their own subjectivity and mitigates the uncomfortable feeling caused by the proximity to the unexpected.

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Dolores Braga has been an EFL teacher for over 30 years. At present, she is a doctorate student of Languages at the University of SÆo Paulo. She has published articles in the fields of Discourse Analysis and Psychoanalysis and produced teacher s manuals for a Brazilian coursebook series for the teaching of English in public schools.

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