Critical Look at Post-method Pedagogy

Abstract

According to Brown (2002), in the century during mid-1880s to the mid-1980s, the language teaching profession was mostly engaged in a search for an ideal method, applicable to a wide range of audiences and contexts. When such attempts failed, the concept of eclecticism was proposed, as a sign of discontent on the part of teachers, who found methods falling short of matching all language teaching contexts and situations. Eclecticism can be considered as a reaction to the prescriptive nature of methods, which predetermines the actual context of language before being even employed in a real teaching situation. According to Rivers (1968, cited in Akbari, 2008) eclecticism compensates for shortcomings of methods, on the condition that it is informed eclecticism. Eclecticism also suffers from some weak point like not being based on precise criteria in determining when to choose which method and thus according to Stern (1992, cited in Kumaravadivelu, 2006, p. 196), “the choice is left to the practitioner’s intuitive judgment, and is, therefore, too broad and too vague to be satisfactory as a theory in its own right.” According to Akbari (2008) what has ushered the advent of postmethod era can be considered as eclecticism, which he regards as a primitive form of postmethod or beyond method.