Page 35 - Beyond Methods

CHAPTER 2
Understanding Postmethod Pedagogy
As fashions in language teaching come and go, the teacher in the classroom needs reassurance that there is some bedrock beneath the shifting sands. Once solidly founded on the bedrock, like the sea anemone, the teacher can sway to the rhythms of any tides or currents, without the trauma of being swept away purposelessly.
—WILGA RIVERS, 1992, p. 373
William Mackey, a distinguished professor of language teaching at the University of London and the author of an authoritative book on method, Language Teaching Analysis, lamented that the word method “means so little and so much” (1965, p. 139). The reason for this, he said, “is not hard to find. It lies in the state and organiza- tion of our knowledge of language and language learning. It lies in wilful ignorance of what has been done and said and thought in the past. It lies in the vested interests which methods become. And it lies in the meaning of method” (p. 139). What Mackey said nearly four decades ago is true of today as well.
Most of us in the language teaching profession hear and use the term method so much and so often that we hardly pause to think about its meaning. In this chapter, I discuss the meaning of method. The discussion is in five parts. In the first part, I attempt to tease out the conceptual as well as terminological confusion surrounding the concept of method. In the second, I describe the limited and limiting nature of method and the widespread dissatisfaction it has created among teachers and teacher educators. In the third, I discuss how a state of heightened awareness about the futility of searching for the best method has resulted in a postmethod condition. Then, I highlight the basic parameters of a postmethod pedagogy that seeks to transcend the limitations of method. Finally, I present the