The Post Method Era in English Language Teaching

The post method era is a concept developed by Kumaravadivelu, a Professor Emeritus at the San José State University in California, U.S.A. It has been developed to tackle a new understanding of the diverse socio-cultural milieus in which language education is embedded.

Language Teaching Methods

Through time, many language teaching methods have been developed. One after the other, all methods were advertised as the final solution to English language education. Some of these are:

• Communicative Language Teaching
• Community Language Learning
• Suggestopedia
• Task-Based Language Learning
• The Natural Approach
• The Silent Way
• Total Physical Response
• And many more

The problem is that none of them could actually provide teachers with the ultimate way of teaching their students.

Why?

Because students are different. Because cultures are different. Because societies are different. Because historical factors are different.

This diversity is not present only when two distinct contexts are considered. Within a specific context, there is also a lot of diversity. A group of students will certainly present differences in terms of age, gender, social class, sexuality, and ethnicity, among others.

The acknowledgment that different students, cultures, societies, and histories require different educational approaches has led English language educators to rethink their practices.

It has forced them to reflect upon what method would be the best one for them to use with their students.

It has eventually led them to acknowledge that such an answer does not exist.

Each context requires different teaching (and learning) techniques that are relevant for each of them.

From the era of language teaching methods, language educators go then into the post method era.

 

The Post Method Era in English Language Teaching

The denial of the idea that a specific method is better than the others and that one can apply it successfully to English language education no matter what leads us to the post method era.

The post method era not only denies the idea that there is a perfect method that can always be successfully applied but also changes the spotlight from the method to the teacher.

From this perspective, teachers must have the autonomy to analyze their contexts and decide what is better for their students based on their realities.

In his attempt to design a post method pedagogy, Kumaravadivelu presents three parameters and ten macro strategies that should guide any pedagogical practice. These are explained below.

The Post Method Era: Parameters

1. Particularity
   
   The parameter of particularity states that any pedagogical practices in language education must take into account the fact that there is a particular teacher teaching a particular group of students who have particular goals in a particular context.
2. Practicality
   
   The parameter of practicality states that theory about language education should not be separated from language education practices. Researchers should not be seen in a hierarchically superior position in relation to a teacher. Instead, theory and practice should go together. In this sense, not only should researchers work together with the teacher to help them solve their practical problems but also teachers themselves should create theories from their everyday practices. These theories should then be applied to practice and this practice can confirm the theory or perfect it.
3. Possibility
   
   The parameter of possibility, inspired by Brazilian critical pedagogist Paulo Freire, states that official pedagogic practices are designed to maintain the status quo. Thus, power structures are never meant to be challenged. In this sense, teachers and students should be aware of their social positions regarding social class, gender, sexuality, ethnicities, etc., and think about what is possible for them to do in order to challenge and eventually alter this status quo, promoting positive changes in their society.

The Post Method Era: Macro Strategies

1. Maximize learning opportunities
   
   Teachers and students should be responsible for their process of language education. By working together, they should design activities that would promote more engaging opportunities for developing their knowledge.
2. Facilitate negotiated interaction
   
   Students should be encouraged to participate in meaningful interactions. Group work is a great way of doing that. In this situation, students interact with each other and can develop strategies to take turns when they need them (to speak and have others listen to what they are saying) and also to respect when others have their turns (when they are speaking). Students can also clarify, modify and ask for additional input when needed to make the conversation successful and avoid breakdowns.
3. Minimize perceptual mismatches
   
   Messages are not always understood as they were intended to be in real life, especially among language learners. Action should be taken by teachers to encourage students to make sure they understand the messages they are receiving.
4. Activate intuitive heuristics
   
   Heuristic in language teaching and learning refers to the process in which learners have an active role in the process of discovering. This opposes deductive approaches in which learners are given general rules to be applied to linguistic situations they engage in. Instead, activating intuitive heuristics refers to enabling students to follow an inductive approach to which they are exposed, are drawn their attention to, and notice linguistic aspects by themselves, intuitively. This process implies an active behavior from learners in relation to their own learning process.
5. Foster language awareness
   
   Fostering language awareness as a macro strategy in the post method era means has two different but connected meanings. The first refers to general language awareness. This means helping students notice how different linguistic structures are used to convey different meanings. The second refers to taking this first level to macrostructure analysis. This means reflecting on how language is used to exercise power. Teachers and students can, therefore, analyze how language is used in shaping discourses that favor specific social groups and marginalize others.
6. Contextualize linguistic input
   
   Artificial examples of language structures have been used in the history of language teaching for a long time. Decontextualized sentences and texts have been applied to different students in different contexts. As one can imagine, this process has not proved to be really helpful. Instead, in the pedagogy proposed in the post method era teachers should always contextualize linguistic input. Why? Because providing learners with linguistic material that is contextualized not only makes their contact with the material provided more meaningful but also helps them to make sense of it since they have historical, cultural, and social references about the topic presented through the type of input adopted.
7. Integrate language skills
   
   Even though in everyday life people do not separate their language skills (speaking, listening, reading, and writing) in real-life situations, language education has done so for a long time. Materials often have different sections for each skill and classes tend to follow this unrealistic distinction. The post method pedagogy draws teachers’ attention to the fact that real-life uses of languages in general are not like that. Therefore, activities should be designed to integrate these skills instead of separating them. This will better prepare students for the world as it is.
8. Promote learner autonomy
   
   In the post method pedagogy teachers and students are meant to develop autonomy. In this context, autonomy can be understood in two different, but connected ways. The first is related to the idea of students learning how to learn. The second is related to the idea of freedom. To achieve the first type of autonomy teachers can discuss with their students their learning process and reflect upon learning strategies that are available to them. To achieve the second type of autonomy teachers and students should work together in scrutinizing the relationship between language and power structures so that students can eventually use language to exercise their own power.
9. Ensuring social relevance
   
   The parameters of particularity and possibility draw people’s attention to the social context in which language education is embedded. Following this chain of thought, teachers cannot forget to connect their practices with the social world in which their students live. In this sense, material that is sensitive to the context in which language education is taking place is extremely important. This can be achieved in two different ways. The first is with the creation of the material used in the process. The second, if the first is not viable, is adopting materials that are created by big publishers and aim at being adopted worldwide with a critical view. Do the situations presented in the adopted textbook reflect students’ social realities? Do these situations are inclusive? Do they consider different cultures, social classes, ethnicities, sexual orientations, genders, etc.? If not, how can we bring other voices to the discussion? Questioning is key.
10. Raise cultural consciousness
    
    A lot of language textbooks claim to be not only a language course but also a cultural one. The problem, however, is that this “culture” they bring into the classroom is often stereotypes. In the post method pedagogy, raising cultural awareness is not about that. It is about making students aware of other ways of understanding the world. It is about making students realize that there is no best culture as well as there is no worst culture. It is also about making students realize that when they consider other perspectives that are not familiar to them they can also become more critical in relation to their own culture. This is crucial in the globalized world we live in nowadays, in which we are constantly in contact with different cultures all the time.

Learn More

If you want to learn more about the post method pedagogy, here’s an excellent book (Understanding Language Teaching: From Method to Postmethod, by Kumaravadivelu) for you to read. You can buy it right now on Amazon by clicking on it.