Helo, Reza,

   I am happy we can have this conversation. My view, over 50 years of experience in the field, is that the "eclectic method" is the best approach overall. Too many leaders and "experts" in the field swing from fad to fad, and insist that one approach is the best and solves all problems and fits all needs. In the process, successful methods are thrown in the dustbin as "old fashioned" and "not modern and up-to-date", without any evidence for discarding them in favor of "the newest thing". Traditional education for many years emphasized the importance of memorization, but Western educational "experts" denounced this and insisted that all learning must be by discovery and motivation. But Benjamin Franklin said that he had taught himself to write well by memorizing the essays of Addison and Steele, and practicing writing them out. The grammar-translation approach has produced many thousands of successful learners, including international leaders and Nobel Prize winners, but it has been denounced by "up-to-date" proponents of "communicative proficiency", and largely abandoned in the U.S. as a result in favor of a "throw-back" to the "natural learning" approach advocated in the early 20th century by those who believed that a second language should be learned as the first was learned.

   An important issue in all of this is WHY the language is being learned. For the vast majority of learners around the world, it will be to achieve literacy in a relatively formal academic variety of the language. I once invited a leading U.S. applied linguist who had lived in Tehran to speak (in Farsi) to a Peace Corps class learning Farsi, and he demurred embarrassedly, saying that he only knew conversational "street Farsi" and could not give a talk in the educated standard. My own experience with learning Spanish by the grammar-translation approach (with no classroom use of the language other than for exercises) enabled me to undertake graduate study in Mexico entirely in Spanish, though I had great trouble chatting with my fellow Mexican students about daily life (in fact, some of them asked me for help with writing their term essays). In our English department here at the University of Arizona (where I was department head), we had a PhD student from Korea who had been an English major through the Master's degree at a university where all classes had always been in Korean, and I found that the quality of his writing was superior to most of our American PhD students, though he had great difficulty speaking in English. 

    The proponents of communicative fluency have ignored research evidence that students make more progress developing reading ability first, and then using that as a basis for teaching speaking fluency. Receptive knowledge can always be taught more efficiently than productive knowledge. But the second language education field largely ignores the importance of reading instruction, and fixates almost entirely on speaking, even though most learners will never have a real need to use speaking ability (and indeed readily forget it). 

    So keep in mind what competencies your students are most likely to benefit from, use eclectic methods to maximize learning by students with different modalities of preferential learning (visual vs oral, etc.), and take advantage of their capacity for memorization to build a solid receptive base for developing their productive ability.

    Rudy Troike

    University of Arizona

   Tucson, Arizona, USA

Reza,

I would argue that language teachers still need to use "methods", i.e. theory-based ways of teaching that provide affordances to allow students to achieve outcome goals of the class or academic program.

But good instruction uses multiple methods, in order to keep things fresh for students, keep them stimulated and motivated.

WHICH methods are best for any single class or academic program depend on multiple variables, and may not be the same at every school.

I am of the take that educators have to go with the flow as to emulate 21st century pedagogical practices that address current trends and thus take into consideration innovative practices. At the end of the day, teaching practices in the classroom have to engage students in their learning and address their interest. Most importantly we have to shed the "one shoe fits all" teaching syndrome.

Helo, Reza,

   I am happy we can have this conversation. My view, over 50 years of experience in the field, is that the "eclectic method" is the best approach overall. Too many leaders and "experts" in the field swing from fad to fad, and insist that one approach is the best and solves all problems and fits all needs. In the process, successful methods are thrown in the dustbin as "old fashioned" and "not modern and up-to-date", without any evidence for discarding them in favor of "the newest thing". Traditional education for many years emphasized the importance of memorization, but Western educational "experts" denounced this and insisted that all learning must be by discovery and motivation. But Benjamin Franklin said that he had taught himself to write well by memorizing the essays of Addison and Steele, and practicing writing them out. The grammar-translation approach has produced many thousands of successful learners, including international leaders and Nobel Prize winners, but it has been denounced by "up-to-date" proponents of "communicative proficiency", and largely abandoned in the U.S. as a result in favor of a "throw-back" to the "natural learning" approach advocated in the early 20th century by those who believed that a second language should be learned as the first was learned.

   An important issue in all of this is WHY the language is being learned. For the vast majority of learners around the world, it will be to achieve literacy in a relatively formal academic variety of the language. I once invited a leading U.S. applied linguist who had lived in Tehran to speak (in Farsi) to a Peace Corps class learning Farsi, and he demurred embarrassedly, saying that he only knew conversational "street Farsi" and could not give a talk in the educated standard. My own experience with learning Spanish by the grammar-translation approach (with no classroom use of the language other than for exercises) enabled me to undertake graduate study in Mexico entirely in Spanish, though I had great trouble chatting with my fellow Mexican students about daily life (in fact, some of them asked me for help with writing their term essays). In our English department here at the University of Arizona (where I was department head), we had a PhD student from Korea who had been an English major through the Master's degree at a university where all classes had always been in Korean, and I found that the quality of his writing was superior to most of our American PhD students, though he had great difficulty speaking in English. 

    The proponents of communicative fluency have ignored research evidence that students make more progress developing reading ability first, and then using that as a basis for teaching speaking fluency. Receptive knowledge can always be taught more efficiently than productive knowledge. But the second language education field largely ignores the importance of reading instruction, and fixates almost entirely on speaking, even though most learners will never have a real need to use speaking ability (and indeed readily forget it). 

    So keep in mind what competencies your students are most likely to benefit from, use eclectic methods to maximize learning by students with different modalities of preferential learning (visual vs oral, etc.), and take advantage of their capacity for memorization to build a solid receptive base for developing their productive ability.

    Rudy Troike

    University of Arizona

   Tucson, Arizona, USA

Rudy's contribution is comprehensive and critical. Indeed, language should not be taught and learned as isolated skills but in holistic manner. This is only possible if there is meaningful integration of instructional strategies. The notion of post method era is whether educators should keep on promoting traditional methods which have not proved effective in enhancing learning or embrace the espoused language pedagogic approaches. My stand is that, educators need to be flexible and adapt what works for his/her learners.

I really think the usage of methods in language teaching is still relevant, even thou we need to acknowledge that the 21st centuary  classroom demands some one who is innovative.

Hello Reza,

modern cognitive linguistics looks promising in this respect. Though this theory still needs a lot of practical elaborations and applications, its fundamental principles may well ground a new methodology in second language learning. There are some experimental studies by Andrea Tyler showing some good results.

Good day,

I was struck by Aqa Biria's phrase, 'for gain or in vain'.

If the gentleman was alluding to 'gain', as in 'profit',

he has rightly questioned why (often wrongly-proclaimed)

innovations in foreign-language teaching -or indeed, venerable

approaches shamelessly dolled-up as such- are compulsory.

The true conflict here is only remotely connected to theories, styles, and

approaches. The underlying issue is unrelated to practice, the lessons of

hard-won experience, or indeed learning success.

The motives for imposing disingenuously-termed 'innovations' are commercial.

One day soon, employers will know to expect nothing of our graduates, after

which the pendulum will slowly swing away from the gimmicky fluff and back

to actual content. I predict for that happy unborn generation a briefly brilliant

period of stellar teaching and consummate learning in smallish classes, before

funding problems drive supposed teaching policies back to whatever methods

keep more credit-shoppers on the class lists.

Should these comments turn out to be orthogonal to Pr. Biria's question,

please accept my apologies.

Hello Resa,

I would agree with the opinions above which claim that methodology in teaching languages is still useful and necessary. Certainly, these days teachers can benefit from the availability of technology and use it for the benefit of their students and to make their sessions much more interesting / challenging / interactive and contemporary but this does not mean that they should do so aimlessly or just for the fun of it.

Depending on the skills /  competences you focus on in every single session, your aims and objectives may differ as well as your tasks and procedures, but still, they should be there. Otherwise, learning can still take place (especially in a country where the language in question is spoken by the majority of people as native and learners are exposed to it) but it would normally take much longer and most probably, there will be 'gaps' in certain areas of the language.

Regards,

Mariana