Page 43 - Beyond Methods

Understanding postmethod pedagogy 31
The difficulties faced by teachers in developing an enlightened eclectic method are apparent. Stern (1992, p. 11) pointed out some of them: “The weakness of the eclectic position is that it offers no criteria according to which we can determine which is the best the- ory, nor does it provide any principles by which to include or ex- clude features which form part of existing theories or practices. The choice is left to the individual’s intuitive judgment and is, therefore, too broad and too vague to be satisfactory as a theory in its own right.” The net result is that practicing teachers have neither the comfort of a context-sensitive professional theory that they can rely on nor the confidence of a fully developed personal theory that they can build on. Consequently, they find themselves straddling two methodological worlds: one that is imposed on them, and another that is improvised by them.
Teachers’ efforts to cope with the limitations of method are matched by teacher educators’ attempts to develop images, options, scenarios, tasks, or activities based on a fast-developing knowledge of the processes of second language acquisition and on a growing understanding of the dynamics of classroom learning and teaching. Scholars such as Earl Stevick, Alice Omaggio, and Robert Di Pietro, to name just a few, provided the initial impetus to cope with the lim- itations of method in a sustained and systematic way, but they all tried to do it within the conceptual confines of methods. Drawing from “a wider range of methods—some old, some new, some widely used, some relatively unknown” (1982, p. 2), Earl Stevick attempted to aid teachers in identifying and evaluating many of the alterna- tives that are available for their day-to-day work in the classroom.
Alice Omaggio (1986) advocated a proficiency-oriented instruc- tion that focuses on “a hierarchy of priorities set by the instructor or the program planners rather than a ‘prepackaged’ set of proce- dures to which everyone is expected to slavishly subscribe” (p. 44). Robert Di Pietro (1987) proposed strategic interaction with scenar- ios that motivate students “to converse purposefully with each other by casting them in roles in episodes based on or taken from real life” (p. 2).
Several others extended the lead given by the three scholars mentioned above and attempted to nudge the profession away from the concept of method. David Nunan (1989) sought to assign “the search for the one right method to the dustbin” by helping teachers “develop, select, or adapt tasks which are appropriate in terms of