A PRINCIPLED APPROACH
And so, as we lay to rest the methods that have become so familiar to us in recent decades,
what assurance do we have today of the viability of our language teaching profession?
Through the 1970s and into the early 1980s, there was a good deal of hoopla about the
“designer” methods. Even though they were not widely adopted standards of practice, they
were nevertheless symbolic of a profession at least partially caught up in a mad scramble
to invent a new method when the very concept of method was eroding under our feet. We
did not need a new method.We needed, instead, to get on with the business of unifying our
approach1 to language teaching and of designing effective tasks and techniques informed
by that approach.
By the end of the 1980s, such an approach was clearly becoming evident in teaching
practices worldwide.We had learned some profound lessons from our past wanderings.We
had learned to make enlightened choices of teaching practices that were solidly grounded
in the best of what we knew about second language learning and teaching.We had amassed
enough research on learning and teaching in a multiplicity of contexts that we were indeed
formulating an integrated approach to language pedagogy. Of course, we had not attained a
theoretical mountaintop by any means; much remained – and still remains – to be questioned
and investigated.
It should be clear from the foregoing that, as “enlightened” teachers, we can think in
terms of a number of possible methodological – or, shall we say, pedagogical – options
at our disposal for tailoring classes to particular contexts. Our approach – or theory of
language and language learning – therefore takes on great importance. One’s approach to
language teaching is the theoretical rationale that underlies everything that happens in the
classroom. It is the cumulative body of knowledge and principles that enables teachers, as
“technicians” in the classroom, to diagnose the needs of students, to treat students with
successful pedagogical techniques, and to assess the outcome of those treatments.
An approach to language pedagogy is not just a set of static principles “set in stone.” It
is, in fact, a dynamic composite of energies within a teacher that changes (or should change,
if one is a growing teacher) with continued experience in learning and teaching. There is
far too much that we do not know collectively about this process, and there are far too many
new research findings pouring in, to assume that a teacher can confidently assert that he or
she knows everything that needs to be known about language and language learning.
One teacher’s approach may, of course, differ on various issues from that of a colleague,
or even of “experts” in the field, who differ among themselves. There are two reasons for
variation at the approach level: (1) an approach is by definition dynamic and therefore
subject to some “tinkering” as a result of one’s observation and experience; and (2) research
in second language acquisition and pedagogy almost always yields findings that are subject
to interpretation rather than giving conclusive evidence.
The interaction between one’s approach and classroom practice is the key to dynamic
teaching. The best teachers are able to take calculated risks in the classroom: as new student
needs are perceived, innovative pedagogical techniques are attempted, and the follow-up
assessment yields an observed judgment on their effectiveness. Initial inspiration for such
innovation comes from the approach level, but the feedback that teachers gather from actual
implementation then reshapes and modifies their overall understanding of what learning
and teaching are – which, in turn, may give rise to a new insight and more innovative
possibilities, and the cycle continues.