1. Methods are too prescriptive, assuming too much about a context before the context
has even been identified. They are therefore overgeneralized in their potential
application to practical situations.
2. Generally, methods are quite distinctive at the early, beginning stages of a language
course and rather indistinguishable from each other at later stages. In the first few
days of a Community Language Learning class, for example, the students witness a
unique set of experiences in their small circles of translated language whispered in
their ears. But, within a matter of weeks, such classrooms can look like any other
learner-centered curriculum.
3. It was once thought that methods could be empirically tested by scientific
quantification to determine which one is “best.” We have now discovered that
something as artful and intuitive as language pedagogy cannot ever be so clearly
verified by empirical validation.
4. Methods are laden with what Pennycook (1989) referred to as “interested
knowledge” – the quasi-political or mercenary agendas of their proponents. Recent
work in the power and politics of English language teaching (see, especially,
Pennycook, 1994; Tollefson, 1995; and Holliday, 1994) has demonstrated that
methods, often the creations of the powerful “center,” become vehicles of a
“linguistic imperialism” (Phillipson, 1992) targeting the disempowered
periphery.