A brief overview of conceptions of language, language teaching methods, and language teachers from the perspective of Kumaravadivelu's "Post-Method Condition."

1. Didactics I
Prof. Gabriel Diaz Maggioli

3. • Concerned with linguistic
forms.
• Provide opportunities for
learners to practice
preselected, presenquenced
linguistic structures through
form-focused
• Preoccupation with form will
ultimately lead to the mastery
of the target language.
• Language development is
more intentional than
incidental.
• Language learning is treated
as a linear, additive process.

4. • Concerned with learner
needs, wants, and
situations.
• Provide opportunities for
learners to practice
preselected, pre-sequenced
linguistic structures and
communicative
functions/notions through
meaning-focused activities.
• Preoccupation with form and
function will ultimately lead to
target language mastery.
• Language development is
more intentional than
incidental.
• These methods aim at making
learners grammatically
accurate and
communicatively fluent and
remain, basically linear and
additive.

5. • Concerned with cognitive
processes of language
learning
• seek to provide opportunities for
learners to participate in open-
ended meaningful interaction
through problem-solving tasks
• A preoccupation with meaning-
making will ultimately lead to
target language mastery
• Learners can deploy the still-
developing interlanguage to
achieve linguistic as well as
pragmatic knowledge/ability.
• Language development is more
incidental than intentional.
• These methods view language
development as a cyclical,
spiral process.

6. • A post-method perspective
– The myth of “Method”
• There is a best method out there ready
and wanting to be discovered
• Method constitutes the organizing
principle for language teaching
• Method has a universal and ahistorical
value
• Theorists conceive knowledge and
teachers consume knowledge
• Ergo…
– “Methods are relatively unhelpful…The
concept of method may inhibit the
development of a valuable, internally-
derived sense of coherence on the part
of the classroom teacher.” (Allwright,
1991: 128)

7. • Teachers who claim to follow a particular
method do not conform to its theoretical
principles in classroom procedures at all
• Teachers who claim to follow different
methods often use the same classroom
procedures
• Teachers who claim to follow the same
method often use different procedures
• Teachers develop and follow in their
classrooms a carefully crafter sequence
of activities not necessarily associated
with any particular method.

8. • The parameter of Particularity
– Any postmethod pedagogy must be sensitive to a
particular group of teachers teaching a particular group
of learners pursuing a particular set of goals within a
particular institutional context embedded in a particular
sociocultural milieu.
• The parameter of Practicality
– Professional theories are generated by experts,
personal theories are those that are developed by
teachers by interpreting and applying professional
theories in practical situations while they do their job.
Hence, a theory of practice is conceived when there is a
union of action and thought.
• The parameter of Possibility
– Pedagogy is closely linked to power and dominance,
and is aimed at creating and sustaining social
inequalities. It is important to acknowledge and highlight
teachers’ and students’ individual identities. “..develop
theories, forms of knowledge and social practices which
work with the experiences that people bring to the
pedagogical setting” (Giroux, 1988:134)

9. • “One of the reasons
that it is difficult to give
general descriptions of
good teachers is that
different teachers are
often successful in
different
ways…Teaching is not
an easy job, but it is a
necessary one, and
can be very rewarding
when we see our
students’ progress
and know that we
have helped to make it
happen.”
Harmer, 2007:23

10. • Personality
– Effective teacher personality is a blend between who we really
are, and who we are as teachers (Harmer, 2007:24)
• Adaptability
– Good teachers are able to absorb the unexpected and to use it
to their and the students’ advantage
• Teacher’s Roles
– Controller
– Promoter of Agency
– Prompter
– Assessors
– Resource
Harmer 2007

11. • Rapport means, in
essence, the relationship
that the students have
with their teacher, and
vice versa. Rapport is
established, in part,
when students become
aware of our
professionalism, but it
also occurs as a result of
the way we listen to and
treat students in our
classroom.
– Recognise students
– Listen to them
– Respect them
– Be even-handed
Harmer, 2007

12. • Who we are and the way we
interact with our students
are vital components in
successful teaching, as are
the tasks which we are
obliged to undertake. But
these will not make us
effective teachers unless we
possess certain teacher
skills:
– Using language in class
(TTQ)
– Managing classes
– Matching tasks and groups
– Adding variety
– Know your destination
Harmer, 2007

13. • Language has three layers
which occur simultaneously
whenever it is used:
– Meaning or discourse
semantics;
– Words and
structures or
Lexicogrammar;
– Expression or
Phonology and
Graphology.

14. • Language arises in the life of
the individual through an
ongoing exchange of meanings
with significant others. (Hallliday,
1978)
• The Systemic Functional Model
of Language:
– Language is a resource for making
meaning.
– The resource of language consists
of a set of interrelated systems.
– Language users draw on this
resource each time they use
language.
– Language users can create texts to
make meaning.
– Texts are shaped by the social
context in which they are used.
– The social context is shaped by
people using language.

15. • Learners learn language
– By interacting with others in purposeful social activities students begin to
understand that the target language is a resources they can use to make
meaning.
• Learners learn through language
– As they learn the target language, students begin to interpret and
organize reality in terms of that language.
• Learners learn about language
– Learning about language means building a knowledge of the target
language and how it works. It also means developing a language to talk
about language.

16. At the point of encounter there are
neither utter ignoramuses, nor perfect
sages; just people attempting together
to learn more than they now know.
-Freire, 1973

17. • Allwright, D. (1991). The Death of the Method. (Working paper #10). The
Exploratory Practice Centre, The University of Lancaster, England.
• Freire, P. (1973). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum.
• Halliday, M.A.K. (1978). Language as social semiotic. London, UK: Edward
Arnold
• Harmer, J. (2007). How to teach English (2nd Ed) Harlow, UK: Pearson
Longman
• Kumaravadivelu, B. (2006). Understanding language teaching: From
method to postmethod. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum and Associates.