Elt In The Post Method Era - Methodology In Language Teaching - Cap 1

ELT IN THE POST-METHOD ERA: TOWARD BETTER DIAGNOSIS TREATMENT AND ASSESSMENT (H. Douglas Brown)

From the mid 1880s to the mid 1980s the language teaching profession was involved in a search for a single ideal method generalizable across varied audiences that would successfully teach students a foreign language in the classroom. History describes a succession of methods each of which is more orless discarded once a new method takes its place.
But what is method?
In Edward Anthony’s definition (1963) method was the 2nd of 3 hierarchical elements: Approach, Method and Technique. Approach was a set of assumptions dealing with the nature of language, learning and teaching, Method was defined as an overall plan for systematic presentation of language based on a selected approach andTechniques were specific classroom activities consistent with a method and in harmony with an approach as well.
In Richards and Roger’s definition (1986) was an umbrella term to capture redefined approaches, designs and procedures.
Prabhu (1990) thought of method as both classroom activities and the theory that informs them.
Despite these definitions and a handful of others, for most researchers andpracticing teachers, a method is a set of theoretically unified classroom techniques thought to be generalizable across a wide variety of contexts and audiences

• Methods: A Century-Old Obsession

Ironically, the whole concept of separate methods is no longer a central issue in language teaching practice as we vainly searched for the ultimate method that would serve as the final answer
Abrief historical account of a century of methods
The Series Method (1880) presented by François Gouin in his publication The art of teaching and learning foreign languages,
The Direct Method presented by Charles Berlitz (at the turn of the century)
The Audio-lingual Method (late 1940s)
The Cognitive-Code Learning Method (early 1960s)
The Designer Methods presented by David Nunan (1989) whichincluded: CLT, the Silent Way, Suggestopedia, TPR and others.
But why are methods no longer important in the language teaching journey through time? We might list four possible reasons of demise.
1- Methods are too prescriptive and overgeneralized in their potential application to practical situations
2- Methods are quite distinctive at the early, beginning stages of a language course andrather indistinguishable from each other at later stages.
3- Methods are loaded with “interested knowledge” – the quasi-political or mercenary agendas of their proponents

• A Principled Approach

Through the 70s and early 80s there was a good deal of excitement about the designer’s methods. Even though they weren’t widely adopted standards of practice, they were nevertheless symbolic of aprofession struggling to invent a new method when the concept of method was eroding. There wasn’t a need for a new method; there was a need to unify the approach to language teaching and design effective tasks and techniques informed by that approach.
By the end of the 80s such approach was becoming evident in teaching practices worldwide, solidly grounded in what teachers knew about second languagelearning and teaching. We were formulating and integrated approach to language pedagogy. One’s approach to language teaching is the theoretical rationale that underlies everything that happens in the classroom.
It is the cumulative body of knowledge and principles that enables teachers, as technician in the classroom, to diagnose the needs of students, to treat students with successful pedagogicaltechniques and to assess the outcome of those treatments.
An approach to language pedagogy is not a set of static principles. It is in fact a dynamic composite of energies within a teacher that changes with continued experience in learning and teaching.
One teacher’s approach may differ on various issues from that of a colleague or experts in the field. There are two reasons for the variation...