The Postmethod Era Chapter 3
Brown (2007) by Katalina Perez
The Postmethod approach aimed at addressing
teachers' and learners' particular needs
"Action research" and "Classroom-based research" provide an opportunity for
teachers to relate research and practice in the classroom and apply it in the real
world to avoid a disconnect between too much theory and scarce practice.
There's a new tendency to develop your own approach, which is
well-informed, based on research and experience and tailored to your
students' needs.
An approach can be defined as a dynamic and changing way of
providing learning opportunities to our students
Communicative Language Teaching
It's also called "communicative approach"
It can be defined as an approach that uses communication as the
objective and the means of learning
The teacher is considered a facilitator rather than an instructor, whose main
objective is to create learning opportunities for students
Main characteristics: focuses on all aspects of communicative competence, both form and function are important,
fluency and accuracy are both important, focuses on real-world contexts, students are encouraged to focus on
their own learning, teacher as facilitator, and students are active participants in their own learning
Task-Based Language Teaching
It's also called "Task-based instruction"
This approach focuses on the use of authentic
language and the use of tasks that reflect real
life interactions
Best types of tasks identified for this approach: open-ended,
structured, teacher-fronted, small group, and pair work
Main characteristics: tasks take students from form to real-world
contexts, communicative and meaningful tasks, engaging tasks that
promote problem-solving activity
Learner-Centered Instruction
The term applies to curricula and specific techniques
This approaches engaging in hard work, reflecting on
their learning process, and learning independently or
collaboratively.
Techniques focus on learners' needs, styles, and goals and gives
students some control over the types of activities
Cooperative Learning
This approach aims at organizing activities into
academic and social learning experiences.
The objective goes beyond group work, it seeks to
promote positive interdependence, so that students
cooperate with each other to learn together.
The characteristics of this approach are the
same as in the learner-centered approach.
Other approaches
Interactive Learning seeks to emulate the interactive
nature of communication and promotes interaction
in the classroom.
Whole Language Education is the approach that seeks to
view language as a whole, not in pieces, learning is
viewed as student-centered, interactive, social,
cooperative and focused on meaning.
Content-Based Instruction (CLT) is the integration of content learning with
language teaching objectives. Language is the vehicle for learning other
subjects, like history, science, etc. to make learning more meaningful.
Other CLT Approaches
Lexical Approach is the idea that an important
part of learning a language consists of being able
to understand and produce lexical phrases as
chunks.
Multiple Intelligences brings Gardner's theory into language
learner. Gardner (1983) has identified the following intelligences:
Verbal/Linguistic, Logical/Mathematical, Visual/Spatial,
Bodily/Kinesthetic, Musical, Intrapersonal, Interpersonal and
Naturalist. The main idea behind it is for teachers to address all
these learning styles in the classroom to promote learning
opportunities for all.