TEXT III

CHANCES AND CHALLENGES

B. KUMARAVADIVELU San José State University San José, California, United States

The three shifts—from communicative language teaching to taskbased language teaching, from methodbased pedagogy to postmethod pedagogy, and from systemic discovery to critical discourse—constitute the major transition in TESOL methods during the past 15 years. This transition is still unfolding, opening up opportunities as well as challenges. The shift from CLT to TBLT has resulted in, and has benefited from, a body of empirical research in L2 acquisition to such an extent that TBLT is considered more psycholinguistically oriented compared to CLT, which is more sociolinguistically oriented.

But still, vexing questions remain to be resolved. I highlight two major ones. The first pertains to the relationship between form and meaning and its attendant issue of how the learner’s attention resources are allocated. Calling the allocation of attention “the pivotal point” in L2 learning and teaching, Schmidt (2001) argues that it “largely determines the course of language development” The crux of the problem facing TBLT is how to make sure that learners focus their attention on grammatical forms while expressing their intended meaning.

That brings up yet another concern: the issue of context. One of the central claims of CLT as well as TBLT is that it can be contextualized to meet various learning and teaching needs, wants, and situations. It should be remembered that advocates of both CLT and TBLT have been using the term context mainly to refer to linguistic and pragmatic features of language and language use. They seldom include the broader social, cultural, political, and historical particularities. The inadequacy of CLT and TBLT in addressing such broader contextual issues has led some to call for a context approach to language teaching.

The shift from CLT to TBLT may be described as an internal shift within the boundaries of a method-based pedagogy. The shift from method-based pedagogy to postmethod pedagogy, however, is seen as much more fundamental because it seeks to provide an alternative to method rather than an alternative method. There are, however, dissenting voices. Liu (1995) has argued that postmethod is not an alternative to method but only an addition to method. Likewise, Larsen-Freeman (2005) has questioned the concept of postmethod saying that “Kumaravadivelu’s macro-microstrategies constitute a method” (p. 24).

Because of its unfailing focus on the teacher, postmethod pedagogy has been described as “a compelling idea that emphasises greater judgment from teachers in each context and a better match between the means and the ends” (Crabbe, 2003, p. 16). It encourages the teacher “to engage in a carefully crafted process of diagnosis, treatment, and assessment” (Brown, 2002, p. 13). It also provides one possible way to be responsive to the lived experiences of learners and teachers, and to the local exigencies of learning and teaching. It “opens up new opportunities for the expertise of language teachers in periphery contexts to be recognized and valued” and “makes it more feasible for teachers to acknowledge and work with the diversity of the learners in their classrooms, guided by local assessments of students’ strategies for learning rather than by global directives from remote authorities” (Block & Cameroon, 2002b, p.10).

Yet another skepticism pertains to the investigative methods followed by the practitioners of critical discourse analysis, and, by extension, critical pedagogy (Toolan, 1997; Widdowson, 1998). Toolan suggests that critical discourse analysts should be more critical in their argumentation by following robust research design and by providing stronger evidence. Dubbing (drubbing?) critical linguistics as “linguistics with a conscience and a cause,” Widdowson (1998, p. 136) questions its “less rigorous operation” (p. 137) that involves “a kind of ad hoc bricolage which takes from theory whatever comes usefully to hand” (p. 137). Undoubtedly, these deserved admonitions demand serious attention. The criticism about research in critical pedagogy could, in fact, be extended to research in TESOL in general and TESOL methods in particular, warranting the search for robust research design. One should at the same time remember, however, that language teaching, not unlike anthropology, is “not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning” (Geertz, 1973, p. 5). Searching for meaning, particularly at the initial stages of pedagogic exploration, runs the risk of becoming a speculative exercise. And today’s speculative exercise may lead to tomorrow’s specialized knowledge.

While the chances provided and the challenges posed by the three changing tracks in TESOL methods will keep us all busy for some time to come, there are other developments on the horizon that confront us. We have just started investigating the inevitable impact that the emerging processes of globalization and the renewed forces of imperialism will have on language teaching practices. But, that’s another story.