FROM METHOD-BASED

PEDAGOGY
TO POSTMETHOD
PEDAGOGY
Equally persuasive was Prabhu, who argued that there is no best method … Argument
and that what really matters is the need for teachers to learn
“to operate with some personal conceptualization of how their teaching
leads to desired learning”
Method based: prescriptive, techers follow steps, they have kind of “recipes” to present the
language
It was even declared, that method is dead
the authors’ have a desire to transcend the constraining concept of method

method should no longer be considered a valuable or a viable construct, and that what is
needed is not an alternative method but an alternative to method
Postmethod Perspectives
Principles

Stern’s framework consists of strategies

and techniques. He uses strategy to refer to broad “intentional
action” and technique to refer to specific “practical action” (p. 277).
Considerations
1. Target language (L2) and target culture (C2) as the frame of reference for teaching.
the L2 is acquired and known through the use of the L1.

2. Focus on the formal properties of language, that is, grammar, vocabulary, and
notions on the one hand, and message-oriented, interaction-based

3.The key issue of whether learning an L2 is a conscious intellectual exercise or an

unconscious intuitive one.
 Other Considerations
Allwright derives seven broad principles of language
teaching: (a) put quality of life first, (b) work primarily to understand
language classroom life, (c) involve everybody, (d) work to bring people
together, (e) work also for mutual development, (f) integrate the work
for understanding into classroom practice, and (g) make the work a
continuous enterprise.

Teachers and students in the same level

Interaction - meaningful – projects- sense not always I take a shower…
 Contributions
Kumaravadivelu’s (1992, 1994, 2001, 2003) macrostrategic framework
is based on the hypothesis that language learning and teaching needs,
wants, and situations are unpredictably numerous, and therefore, A product of the postmethod
condition,
Particularity seeks to facilitate the advancement of a context-sensitive,
location-specific pedagogy that is based on a true understanding of local
linguistic, social, cultural, and political particularities.

Practicality seeks to rupture the relationship between theorizers and practitioners

by enabling and encouraging teachers to theorize from their practice and to practice what they theorize.
Teachers theorize their experiences

Possibility seeks to tap the

sociopolitical consciousness that students bring with them to the classroom
so that it can also function as a catalyst for identity formation and
social transformation (see Kumaravadivelu, 2001).
 Transition between method based and
posmethod-based
The need to transcend the limitations of the concept
of method.

They merely offer certain operating principles

pointing the way. Any actual postmethod pedagogy has to be constructed
by teachers themselves by taking into consideration linguistic, social,
cultural, and political particularities.

Avoid isolation of reality-consider the linguistics aspects