Readings for Week 4

Once again, I would like to point out the beginning quote. I love the comparison between teachers and their ability to sway only after having a stable and steady base to ground themselves to. As much as I am indifferent to the idea of “tenure” I think this metaphor is a perfect example of teachers who have been working with a school for an extended period of time and the luxuries they come to find after putting in their time closely following guidelines.

I liked the way Kumar presented his classification of methods as language-centered methods, learner-centered methods and learning-centered methods. He continues to explain that language centered methods are concerned with linguistic forms, or grammatical structures that seek to provide practice examples that may help lead to a mastery of the language.  Kumar argues that language is developed through a conscious effort, so does that mean he is opposed to the critical period hypothesis? Furthermore, his idea of learner centered methods aim to “make language learners grammatically accurate and communicatively fluent” and it differs from the first method because it is more concerned with the learner and their understanding of the linguistic forms.  Lastly, he presents learning centered methods that focus primarily on the learning process and language development is considered more incidental than intentional.

I thought his ideas of post method pedagogy, entailing particularity, practicality and possibility were presented in an interesting fashion and the visual of the three dependant on one another in the circle was a nice touch. Without teaching towards specific students, with much practice and embracing your individual character as a teacher, I agree with Kumar that the learning process would not be the same.

I had never really dissected the meanings of either communicative language learning or task based language teaching but it was interesting to see how Brown compared the two. I like the idea of TBLT because it requires lifelike interactions, there is an assessment of the activity and there is a problem to solve.  By using real situations it is easier for a learner to acquire new terms, expressions and behaviors common to a certain culture.