New month, new TEFL soundbites
… or actually more old ones, as these are also by Joan Taber like the last lot and so from a couple of years ago:
“”Like bestsellers, pop stars, and ice-cream flavors, second-language theories and methodologies enjoy a few afternoons or years in the spotlight and then stumble into the dusk of old age”
“According to T. Rogers, the very concept of method involves “the notion of a systematic set of teaching practices based on a particular theory of language and language learning…” (paragraph 1). However, it is possible to develop a set of teaching practices and then go in search of a theory. It’s called having an agenda.”
And then after a more serious summary of both kinds of method, a third great soundbite to make it worth it for those of us who don’t need to write an essay for the Cambridge DELTA
“In truth, many teachers—especially those whose school administrators or university chairs insist that CLT is the heaven-sent panacea for second-language teaching—find the method excessively superficial, uninspiring, and hopelessly without structure. Many close the classroom door and support their teaching units with mini-grammar lessons. Because theorists and administrators—some of whom have never taught or achieved fluency in a second language—support the Communicative Method, in terms of theory years, it has enjoyed a relatively long life. But, it is hardly the superhighway to linguistic competence or proficiency.”
March 5th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
Damn bloody right, Alex. My particular teaching style has been in search of (or rather, lacking) an underlying theory for a decade or two I would say.
For example, in my last class with a certain group the other day I was playing cards with six of them in the corner, three were asleep, four were playing with their laptops, and a couple were watching a film on the internet.
How would you classify that, eh? Squeeze all those diverse activities onto a single paradigm, and you’ve got another ‘method’ to market (or racket, if you prefer).
March 10th, 2009 at 10:50 pm
Ditto here. Despite the immense pressure to go on to a PhD and do research in my grad program, one thing I learned from the experience was that second language acquisition/applied linguistics is a cacophony of voices extolling their own pet theory and demonizing everyone else’s. The only thing these researchers seemed to agree on was to demean those who “just teach” (the very people they are supposed to be helping) and the older the theory, the more to villianize it.
Time in the classroom has given me a basis to sort through a lot of the mess thrown at me at grad school and since then
April 4th, 2011 at 9:51 am
I am interested in the subject of ESL and EFL, but I am not a teacher. I would like to know if anyone is aware of the ESL/EFL methodology used in Saudi Arabia and how this complicates further learning when students come to the U.S. based on the predominant methodologies that are taught here.
Thank you