Mike's last blog (No.6) week 7 post method

As if it wasn't enough being confronted over the past seven weeks with alternative approaches challenging the conventional, traditional approaches we've been working with, we are now confronted with the post-method era. Bring it on! So what if I'm experiencing a degree of bewilderment. After all, that's what learning about new ideas can do to you.

But, seriously; I love the freedom and criticality of this post-method space. It suits my radical nature to a T. When I was assembling the power point presentation to you guys for last Thursday's session about Agency and Contingency (Baynham, 2006) I kept thinking to myself "hey, I do this often in my ESOL classroom!" More than a few times I have found myself going with the flow and responding in a contingent manner to stuff that my adult students bring into the classroom from the outside world. And I have felt a certain spark in those moments, when the students seem to come alive and become enthusiastically engaged agents, drawing on all their resources to communicate with me and each other at the edge of their interlanguage +1Krashen, 1981). When they are dealing with real world stuff (authentic, comprehensible input) that they can relate to with feeling/emotion, even when it is just beyond their current level of ability, some really intereting communication takes place. I use these opportunities, then, to also explore the language. I might pick up on something someone has said and turn it into an opportunity to explore relevant lexical phrases that better express what they've been trying to say using their existing interlanguage. Or I'll jump onto the web on the spur of the moment to search for some item (e.g. a news report) of relevance. Or I'll go to the cobuild online concordancer to look at a phrase in authentic language which I can present to the students, or get them to work together in groups to do it themselves.

I've been integrating many of the ideas from the lexical approach, genre and even a dash of SFL lately too, and the students are responding postively. So, I'm drawing from an eclectic toolbox of resources to good effect. What I take from this is that we now have an open space in which to intelligently experiment and I am finding the level of interest and energy in the classroom rising to the occasion. In this regard I note Kumaravadivelu's (1994)suggestion that we allow ourselves to be guided by principled pragmatism that could help classroom practitioners become strategic teachers and even strategic action researchers.

Do my students take what they're learning out into the world to deal with the real issues there? I think so. In my class, students have to produce a powerpoint presentation on each fortnight's topic we've been exploring in class and are required to explore independently outside the class using any and all (authentic) resources available to them. I coined it the "project based approach to language learning". Note that I say learning and not teaching since I have totally accepted that the students don't necessarily learn what I teach them. I'm their coach, not their teacher and it's all about them doing their own, independent learning, coming back to the classroom and telling us all about it. I'm happy to say that the powerpoint presentations they've been presenting in class thus far have been absolutely amazing, both in terms of content/ideas and the language they're using.

And we're really having a lot of fun too! Thumbs up, then to the post-method approach.

It's been a blast!

Ciao, Mike

Baynham, M. (2006). Agency and contingency in the language learning of refugees and asylum seekers. Linguistics and Education 17, 24–39.

Krashen, S., 1981. Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning. Pergamon, Oxford.

Kumaravadivelu, B. (1994). The Post-method Condition: (E)merging Strategies for Second/Foreign Language Teaching. TESOL Quarterly, 28(1).Kumaravadivelu,