The Method Shift

“The End of CLT: A Context Approach to Language Leaching” by Stephen Bax touched on some of the issues that were addressed during the last class. It talked about the paradigm shift from CLT. Bax proposed that the new shift will be towards a Context Approach. He claims that it does not represent something completely new, which is good that he realizes it. In past chapters, I have read that when approaches arise, they are not new but reinventions of old ones. He also cites Nunan when he says, “the ‘methods’ movement—the search for the one best method, would seem to be well and truly dead.” This relates to the Post Method Era that we have covered. Educators are done searching for one right method, but are instead creating their own way to teach. Bax also says that an eclectic approach may be the best way to deal with a varied classroom. He believes that users of CLT assume it is the best way to teach and other methods are backwards. Bax argues that CLT puts context second and methodology first, which is why he advocates the Context Approach.

            Contrary to Bax’s article about the end of CLT, Guangwei Hu writes about the beginning (and perhaps end) of CLT in China in “Potential Cultural Resistance to Pedagogical Imports: The Case of Communicative Language Teaching in China”. The Chinese usually use a combination of the grammar-translation method and audiolingualism. Hu says, “CLT has failed to make the expected impact on ELT in the PRC partly because some of its most important tenets and practices clash with expectations of teaching and learning that are deep rooted in the Chinese culture of learning (94).” The article lists a variety of reasons as to why CLT has not taken root in the classrooms of China. While reading the article, I noticed that China would benefit from some American ideals and Americans can benefit from China’s ideals. For example, it might be useful for China to not place the students so much lower than the teachers on the hierarchy ladder. The teacher should learn from the students as well as students from the teacher. On the other hand, it would be beneficial for Americans to have more respect for teachers. Many times, they are just seen as people who hand out tests. The Chinese culture has a tremendous amount of respect for their teachers. It is important that teachers take an eclectic approach and make well-informed pedagogical choices that are grounded in an understanding of sociocultural influences.

            “Task-based instruction” by Peter Skehan helped me realize that even within one language theory, there are numerous approaches. This allows the theory to cover all the learning bases but still stay under the “task-based” umbrella. Researchers of task-based instruction have made large strides recently because of the shift from CLT to task-based instruction. Ways of measuring performance have increased, which helps teachers assess their students. More variety is better because different students have different results on different types of assessments. One student might perform poorly on one kind of assessment but might excel on another. All together, the three articles were about the shift in language theories, from CLT to task-based and in China, to CLT from methods such as grammar-translation method and audiolingualism.