Week1: Overview of Teaching Methods and from Methods to Post-method

This week’s readings included Brown Chapter 1 & 2 and an article by Prabu, which tied in nicely to further explore the concept of teaching methods in the classroom. 

            Brown’s Chapter One gave us an inside look of an ESL classroom in a private language school in Korea. This “observation” gave us the opportunity to consider the many decisions language teachers make every day and the basis behind them. Teachers are continuously making choices in their classroom either consciously or subconsciously. I thought this was a very interesting way to begin the book because it encourages us as pre-service teachers to find the connections that must be made between the research and pedagogical approaches we have studied and our classroom; how to implement these methods into practice. As a senior, I am beginning to consider this more and more each day. How are the theories and research I have studied in my years at Illinois State going influence my classroom? Should we ever stop being students? How can we as teachers stay up-to-date on these approaches long after graduation? 

Chapter  Two of Brown explored the methodical history of language teaching because by explaining the historical cycles and trends in this area we can effectively develop a principled approach to language teaching in the future. This chapter begins by defining three terms I have never attempted to distinguish from one another before.

Brown states, an approach is “… a set of assumptions dealing with the nature of language, learning and teaching. Method was described as an overall systematic presentation of language based upon a selected approach… [and] techniques were the specific activities manifested in the classroom that were consistent with a  method and therefore were in harmony with an approach as well.”

These definitions provided by Edward Antony four decades ago are still commonly used among language teachers. However, attempts to reformulate these terms have been made. The key to this chapter is to look at how methodology in language teaching has evolved from very traditional, structured methods to more modern, perceptive methods disputed today.

The Classical Method is a more customary language-teaching “tradition” which focused on grammatical rules, memorization of vocabulary terms and many declensions, conjugations, translations of texts and written exercises for students (Brown, 18). This was commonly used when learning Latin and Greek and became the main way of teaching foreign languages when other languages emerged in educational institutions. With this classical method there was less focus on how to speak the language but more on memorization. This method eventually became the Grammar Translation Method, survived the 20^th century and as Brown states, is practiced in “too many educational contexts” today (19). As a second-language learner, have you experienced this method first-hand? What are we teaching students by using this method and what is helpful or unhelpful about it? Brown states later “It does virtually nothing to enhance student’s communicative ability in the language” (19). Do you agree?

Over time, methods in language teaching have become popular and unpopular. More modern foreign language teaching started around the late 1800s and Brown credits Goin with designing  the Series Method to teach learners directly, without translation and conceptually without the grammatical rules and explanations (Brown, 20). The direct method, is a naturalistic alternative which looks at the natural way children learn languages while the audio-lingual method focuses on oral activity and conversation practice. The cognitive code learning methodology believes we are conscious of language rules and their applications in second language learning and more. These methods look at language-learning as more than a process of memorization. Designer methods also dispute the more classical approach. The 1970’s brought these methods and the start of more modern language-teaching history. These methods included community language learning, suggestopedia, the silent way, total physical response and the natural approach. All of these methods were used to better understand how people learn languages and the influence life outside the classroom has on learning. These methods brought even more research to this area despite how many people accept the method. 

The Article There Is No Best Method- Why? By Prabu further explores the nature of methods in language-teaching. This article states that in language teaching there may be no one best method for every classroom, but how this statement is not an end to the debate- but the beginning. The author states that many times professionals conclude that “there is no best method” to simply end a debate on methods. Stating that the best teaching method “depends” implies that there is a method that is best for different teaching contexts. We should be encouraging a further pedagogical debate.

The article also discusses the claim that there is truth to every method of language teaching. Is there no bad method? The author disagrees with this comment because once again, this statement implies that each method only had some partial truth to it. Prabu says that this statement should not have us see this as an epistemological observation, but to ask us to blend methods. But this blending needs to be done wisely considering particular parts of the methods to form a new method.

One way of looking at teaching methods is the quality of learning, but once again this concept brings along its own debate. How do we assess the best methods?

“…attempts to objectively evaluate such methods seems to quantify learning outcomes.” Is there a way for us to test the quality of these methods instead? “The more objective the evaluation is the less likely it is to assess the learning of the desired quality…” (Prabu 11)