Do teachers think that methodsare dead?

David M. Bell

This paper examines Block’s (2001) claim that whereas the notion of method nolonger plays a significant role in the thinking of applied linguists, it still plays a vitalrole in the thinking of teachers. In order to assess Block’s claim, four sources of dataon teachers’ beliefs were examined—two direct sources of data: (1) interviews withquestions directly addressing teachers’ opinions on the concept of method and (2)discussion board postings on the topic of post-method, and two indirect sources:(3) language learning/teaching autobiographies and (4) teaching journals. Theevidence from the data suggests that teacher interest in methods is determined byhow far methods provide options in dealing with particular teaching contexts.Rather than playing a vital role in teacher thinking, teacher attitude towardsmethods is highly pragmatic. In the light of this evidence, implications for teachereducation are considered.

Introduction The last 15 years has seen ELT methodology disavow the search for the bestmethod (Prabhu 1990), move ‘beyond methods’ (Richards 1990) to the‘post-method condition’ (Kumaravadivelu 1994), and even proclaim thedeath of methods (Brown 2002). However, more recently the allegeddemise of methods and the concept of post-methodology have come intoquestion (Larsen-Freeman 2001; Bell 2003). Block (2001: 72), in hisanalysis of the popularity of the teaching methods of the foreign languageteacher Michel Thomas, has argued that: ‘while method has beendiscredited at an etic level (that is, in the thinking and nomenclature ofscholars) it certainly retains a great deal of vitality at the grass-roots, emiclevel (that is, it is still part of the nomenclature of lay people and teachers)’.This paper seeks to verify Block’s claim by examining teachers’ beliefs aboutmethods. I leave aside for the moment the vexing question of just what ismeant by method, allowing the varying definitions to emerge in the courseof the paper.

Data My data on teacher beliefs about methods were collected from foursources—two direct sources: interviews with questions directly addressingthe teachers’ opinions on the concept of method and discussion boardpostings on the topic of post-method, and two indirect sources: languagelearning/teaching autobiographies and teaching journals. Each data sourcecame from a different group of teachers.

ELT Journal Volume 61/2 April 2007; doi:10.1093/elt/ccm006 135ªª The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press; all rights reserved.

Most of the teachers were on an MA programme in applied linguistics atOhio University, although the language learning/teaching autobiographiesand teaching journals also included teachers on a pre-service certificateprogramme. On the face of it, this suggests a highly homogenous andparticularized group of teachers. However, the teachers here representa diversity of age, gender, experience, nationality, and first language, whichmay be more representative of the teaching population as a whole thana group of teachers situated in a particular work setting. Because therelationship of researcher/subject overlapped with that of teacher/studentthere is a danger that the data here have been biased. However, myexperience with this population of teachers is that they come to theprogramme as independent thinkers and are certainly encouraged tocontinue so. Further research into teacher beliefs certainly needs to besituated in diverse global teaching contexts beyond the rarified environmentof teacher education institutions, but it is hoped that the present datarepresent a chorus of teacher voices that hopefully reveals their thinkingabout methods and will give some clues as to the thinking of the professionas a whole.

ResultsInterviews

Thirty teachers on an MAprogramme in applied linguisticswere interviewedprior to taking a methodology course. The participants comprised 13 NEST

(native English speaker teachers) and 17 NNEST(non-native English speakerteachers). Twenty teachers had more than two years of English languageteaching experience. All teachers had had some teaching experiencewhether language teaching or otherwise. The interview prompts consistedof three open-ended questions that addressed teachers’ beliefs about notionsof method and approach and 12 statements, derived from the literature onmethodology cited above, with which participants indicated their agreementor disagreement. The prompts were given to the participants in advance sothat they could think through their answers and provide written responses,which formed the basis of the interviews. In what follows, I report on thosequestions and statements that provoked the most salient responses.

In response to the question: ‘How would you describe your teachingmethodology?’ 21 teachers either explicitly or implicitly described theirteaching as eclectic.

n I am very eclectic—ALM, GT, CLT, humanistic, a little bit of everythingdepending on the context.

n Perhaps eclectic is the best word that can best describe my teachingmethod.

n I don’t want to stick to one thing.

n I have an eclectic method. I like to take a piece from here and a piece fromthere and just combine them all.

n I teach according to the situation. I feel it’s important to vary the approachespecially when you spend 24 hours a week with the same class.

Six teachers identified their methodology as within the paradigm of CLT

(Communicative Language Teaching) while three teachers described theirmethods as imposed either by their institutions or by the textbooks theyused.

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In response to the question: ‘How do you define method?’ teachers mainlydescribed method as goal-oriented, systematic, and concerned withtechniques. Seven teachers described method solely in terms of techniquesas in the first three examples, eight teachers talked in terms of a systematicset of behaviours, as in the fourth and fifth examples, and seven teacherstalked about an underlying set of principles as in the last example:

n a way you teach with techniques,

n a set of techniques with a focus on something, e.g. grammar,

n a way of teaching which is supported by different techniques,

n a technique, a way of doing something, that has to be planned,

n a systematic way of presenting the material,

n a conjunct of techniques and ways of teaching based on systematicprinciples and procedures carrying something out according to a plan.

A further seven teachers gave definitions which paraphrased Richards andRodgers’ (2001: 20) definition: ‘A method is theoretically related to anapproach, is organizationally determined by a design, and is practicallyrealized in procedure’. One teacher referred to Anthony’s (1963) definition:‘techniques carry out a method which is consistent with an approach’ (p.63). Although one teacher talked of the restrictive nature of method, none ofthe teachers defined method in the narrow and pejorative sense that post-methodologists define it. For example, Kumaravadivelu (1994: 29) saysthat a method ‘consists of a single set of theoretical principles derived fromfeeder disciplines and a single set of classroom procedures directed atclassroom teachers’. This defines method as primarily theory driven andtherefore context insensitive. Teachers, however, were far more ready to seemethod as emerging from practice and sensitive to context, as these twolonger teacher definitions suggest:

n Method is a way of arriving to one’s teaching goal, method is a manner inwhich a system is implemented to complete a specific task—a methodapplies to a structured idea that a teacher follows—combining theory andpractice that best suits their learners’ needs.

n The constant use of cleverness, which disarms the barriers the studentwants to put up, which gets us from point A (the student’s currentknowledge or ability) to point B (the desired knowledge or ability). Giventhe fact that students may be in class at 7 a.m. and at 9 p.m. So they didn’talways have the required energy. So it’s trying to give them the requiredenergy.

The question: ‘Do you distinguish between method and approach?’ wasintended to assess teachers’ response to Richards and Rodgers’ (2001)definition in which method subsumes approach, design, and procedure.Ten teachers felt there was no distinction between method and approach.One experienced NESTteacher saw the so-called distinction as politicallymotivated:

For me it is a difficult distinction. I think the words are adopted alonga historical time-line and created just for the reason of wanting to departfrom a certain era. Really, on a fundamental level they are the same thing.Approach is a political term to distinguish the departure from previousmethods.

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Of the remaining 20 teachers who felt there was a distinction betweenmethod and approach, they were evenly divided as to which was thesuperordinate term: 11 teachers agreed with Richards and Rodgers and feltthat method was the larger term while nine felt that approach was the largermore theoretical term and methods derived from it. Whatever thetheoretical intention of distinguishing between method and approach, inpractice the distinction appears unclear and, for many teachers, unhelpful.

In the next part of the interview, teachers were asked to respond to variousstatements, most of which were made by the methodologists cited above.Here, I sample just a few of those statements and teacher responses. Inresponse to Brown’s (2000: 170) definition— ‘Virtually all languageteaching methods make the oversimplified assumption that what languageteachers ‘‘do’’ in the classroom can be conventionalized into a set ofprocedures that fits all contexts’—five teachers agreed, but most teachersresponded by talking about the uniqueness of each teaching context(17 teachers) as in the first two examples and the individuality of the teacher(8 teachers) as in the last two examples:

n Every class is unique.

n When I use the term method I am not suggesting that this method appliesto all contexts.

n As a teacher we don’t just have to choose one method.

n The way we use a method depends on the teacher.

One teacher spoke of a dialectic between the simplification of method andthe complexity of the classroom:

I do think there is a dialogue going on where teachers are trying to addressthese concerns. You do have to simplify your views on language learningwhen you go into a class. It would be very difficult to address everystudent’s individual needs in a multi-level, multi-lingual classroom.Teaching makes you simplify things, makes you conventionalize them.But I do think that most teachers are aware of that problem.

In response to a similar pejorative definition of method by Richards andRodgers, (2001: 245): ‘A method . . . refers to a specific instructional designor system . . .. It is relatively fixed in time, and there is generally little scopefor individual interpretation. Methods are learned through training’, fourteachers agreed while 24 teachers disagreed, especially with the notion of‘fixed in time.’ Most teachers again stressed the mediating role of teachers inhow a method is put into practice:

n I think there is always room for interpretation and adaptation.

n I do think that some methods have built into their philosophy thatteachers will ultimately put their own interpretation on the method.

When teachers were asked to respond directly to the statement: ‘Methodsare dead. In our current practices we have gone beyond methods’, 28teachers disagreed in some way with the statement. Teacher responsesagain reflected a non-pejorative judgement and the view of methods aseclectic resources for teachers to solve the demands of particular teachingcontexts.

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n Knowing methods helps teaching—more options.

n Knowing methods is useful to decide our practices. We need to knowmethods in order to make our choices.

n Not dead. Certainly there is no one answer. We are more selective.

n I don’t think methods are dead and that we have gone beyond them.I think there are pieces of methods which are incorporated into mostteaching practices.

n I don’t think methods are dead in that they are no longer useful. I don’tknow anyone who will say: ‘This is my method and I will subscribe to noother.’ Most teachers will say, well I like this from this method and thisfrom that method.

Some teachers agreed that we have gone beyond methods but neverthelessdid not equate that with the death of methods:

We’ve gone beyond methods but they are still there, we can still refer backto them, we can still incorporate them.

At the same time, some teachers took a more realistic rather than theoreticalunderstanding of the death of methods:

n I agree but it’s not the reality in Mexico.

n I don’t think methods are dead. Some should be dead.

The insistence on the uniqueness of each teacher and by implication theimpracticality of applying a one-size-fits-all method was borne out by thepassionate response to the following statement advocating a best practicesapproach: ‘We don’t need methods. We need to study what successfulteachers do and copy them’. For 27 of the teachers, the notion of ‘copying’touched a nerve. The following was a typical response.

I don’t think we have to copy what other teachers do. What works fora particular teacher may not work for me in a particular context.

From the evidence of the interviews, most teachers see methods not as a setof restrictive practices but rather as useful resources.

Discussion boardpostings

My second source of direct data comprised 21 electronic discussion boardpostings drawn from two sessions of a methods course. The discussantswere all masters students and consisted of 14 NEST and six NNEST, of whom10 teachers had two or more years of teaching experience. One major themethat ran through the discussions was whether in fact the post-methodmacrostrategies of Kumaravadivelu (1994) or the principles embraced byBrown (2000) constituted a method in themselves. Although some felt thatthey could be construed as a method, as in the first example, most felt thatpost-methodology was not, as in the second:

n I think that post-method is another method in itself. The teachers thinkthat they won’t be stick (sic) to one method/approach and use the one thatis the most suitable for the learning situation. I think this is alsoa teaching method.

n I think that a post-method approach is not another method but justa freedom of combining all and any methods in their most incredibleand, still, practically most effective combination in the teaching-learning

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process. This allows teachers to think of their objectives and productiveprocedures for specific situations rather then analyze whether theirtechniques coincide with those of famous founders and supporters ofa particular method.

This latter view is similar to that of Bygate, Skehan, and Swain (2001: 2),who argue that the Communicative Approach ‘was explicitly a post-methodapproach to language teaching . . . in which the principles underlyingdifferent classroom procedures were of paramount importance, rather thana package of teaching materials’. Although most teachers did not equate theCommunicative Approach with post-methodology, they did equate post-method with eclecticism:

n I think what it means by beyond method is what we will encounter in thefuture as the recycling and mixing of methods already proposed so far.

n Some methods work for some students and other methods work forothers. The teacher’s job is to learn the students and find ways toincorporate the necessary methods into one larger method, and this largermethod is likely to change from class to class.

The predominant view of post-method is that it confirms the alreadyestablished teacher practices of eclecticism, if on a more informed andsystematic level.

Language learning/teachingautobiographies

My first source of indirect data consisted of 82 language learning/teachingautobiographies (206,000 words) written by 43 NEST and 39 NNEST.Thirty-five of the teachers had two or more years of teaching experience. Theautobiographies, collected over a five-year period, were written as anassignment for a methods course with the aim of promoting self-reflectionon the teachers’ own language learning/teaching experience.

Almost half of the 191 uses of the terms ‘method(s)’/‘methodology’ wereused in connection with established methods—the Grammar TranslationMethod and the Audio-Lingual Method accounted for 74 instances. Incomparison, there were only 63 instances of ‘approach(es)’, over a half ofwhich were used in connection with particular approaches—theCommunicative Approach and the Natural Approach accounting for mostof those occurrences. The largest occurrence of ‘method’ (when not used toname particular methods) was in connection with notions of eclecticism,teacher autonomy, and context sensitivity:

n My reversion to a method I once abhorred may seem counterintuitive, butI should reiterate that my aversion to CLT was not a result of the methoditself but rather of its exclusive use. I am confident that as long as I do notpin myself down to any one method in particular to the exclusion ofothers, and instead maintain a dynamic relationship with my students,changing and responding to their needs, I will remain an effective teacher.

n The teacher should use a teaching method or group of methods that suithis/her personality, the classroom atmosphere, and the student’sproficiency and interests. There are no good or bad teaching methods,instead there are better methods. The successful teacher usuallyorganizes and makes a blend of methods he/she thinks are appropriate.

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Each method has its value and uniqueness on one side and its difficultiesand disadvantages on the other side.

The evidence from this indirect source suggests that the concept of methodis not a significant topic in teacher thinking. When method is discussed, it isagain seen as a potential eclectic resource to solve particular classroomproblems.

Teaching journals I looked at 29 randomly chosen teaching journals, which consisted of180,000 words written by 16 NEST and 13 NNEST on a practicum in generalEnglish with international students in a university setting. Eighteen werebeginning teachers and 11 teachers had two or more years of teachingexperience. Thirteen journals were by teachers on the masters programmeand 16 were on a pre-service certificate programme.

What was most evident was the almost complete absence of the term‘method’ and discussion of methods in general. The word ‘method’occurred only seven times. And when it was used, it was used in the sense oftechnique as mentioned earlier in the discussion of the interviews. Twoteachers talked about using the tape recorder and human computerprocedures from Community Language Learning, another useda visualization technique from Suggestopedia, while another used a SilentWay approach to error correction. On all these occasions, the methods werementioned with respect to particular techniques rather than underlyingphilosophies.

The absence of discussion of methods seems to indicate both an acceptanceof a larger paradigm, namely an eclectic, CLT-based approach, and a concernwith the daily exigencies of the chalk face. So teachers’ journals wereconcerned with issues of teacher talking time, the use of pair and groupwork, the use of L1 and translation, etc. In short, teachers were concernedwith creating and structuring learning activities and how activities could bestrung together into lessons. Teachers were overwhelmingly focused on thelocal rather than the generic aspect of language teaching or what Murphyand Byrd (2001: 4) refer to as the ‘situated nature of language teaching’. Inthis way, the findings here agree with Richards and Ho’s (1998) study ofjournal entries, which suggested that, with regard to methods, ‘teachers’focus was primarily on classroom experience, and there were few referencesthat went beyond the classroom to the broader contexts of teaching andlearning’ (p. 160).

Discussion Few teachers define methods in the narrow pejorative sense used by post-methodologists. Most teachers think of methods in terms of techniqueswhich realize a set of principles or goals and they are open to any methodthat offers practical solutions to problems in their particular teachingcontext. Given this degree of openness, it is not surprising that when askedto describe their own methodology, teachers overwhelmingly use the term‘eclectic’. Teachers’ eclecticism appears to be based on an awareness of theexistence of different methods and a willingness to draw from each of them.Eclecticism is most often connected to notions of teacher autonomy andcontext sensitivity. A knowledge of methods is equated with a set of options,which empowers teachers to respond meaningfully to particular classroom

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contexts. In this way, knowledge of methods is seen as crucial to teachergrowth.

So is Block (2001: 72) right in claiming that method ‘certainly retainsa great deal of vitality at the grass-roots . . . level’? To a certain extent yes, but itwould be wrong to describe teacher affiliation or disaffiliation with methodson the same level of intensity of theoreticians, whose goal is to create orcremate them. Adamson (2004: 617) has argued that ‘Methods are stilluseful props for teachers in constructing their own pedagogy’. And thatpedagogy, as Cummings (1989: 46–7) has described, is highly personalized‘based on unique experiences, individual conceptions, and theirinteractions with local contexts’. The evidence here suggests that teacherattitude to methods is highly pragmatic. Their interest in methods isdetermined by how far they provide options in dealing with their particularteaching contexts. In this way, the voices of teachers we have heard throughthe data in this paper most readily support the intuitions of Diane Larsen-Freeman:

People who say we are beyond methods are making more of a politicalstatement than anything else. I think they misconstrue what a methodcan be. They’re saying there is no room in language teaching forformulas, for prescriptive practices to be imposed on teachers worldwide.Certainly I have no quarrel with that. But I think it’s a big mistake to mixup method and its implementation or how a method is used. I wouldn’twant to impose a method on anybody, but it seems to me the moremethods we have, the more we see the variety of human experience, themore we have a bigger palette from which to paint our picture. We havemore choices . . .. It is a question of expanding, revising one’s thought-in-action repertoire. (2001: 5)

So methods are best understood as both potential and realized resources. Aspotential resources they may be loosely or tightly linked to an establishedpattern of beliefs and procedures. As realized resources, they appear in theindividual teachers as an emergent set of regular practices which may bemore or less identifiable with a more widely held set of practices. Whatessentially gives life to the meaning of methods is teacher choices assolutions to particular contextual needs and the resulting set of practices.

Implications andconclusion

There are three implications for teacher education that emerge fromthis data:

1 Theorists have tended to underestimate teacher autonomy. Teachersare far more intellectually discerning than applied linguists give themcredit for. Just as proponents of designer methods often doubted thatteachers left to their own devices would teach systematically, post-methodologists fear teachers will slavishly follow whatever method theyhave been trained in. The evidence here suggests that the pessimism ofboth sets of theorists underestimates the intellectual autonomy anddiscernment of the practitioner.

2 A knowledge of methods can be seen as essential to the foundationalknowledge all teachers should have. Teachers’ interest in knowing aboutmethods both as a source of options and a basis for eclecticism in the

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classroom suggests that the history of methods should be a keycomponent of a teacher education programme in addition toopportunities which allow teachers to reflect on the appropriateness ofsuch methods to their particular teaching context.

3 Methods, however that term is defined, are not dead. Teachers seem to beaware of both the usefulness of methods and the need to go beyond them.Post-method need not imply the end of methods but rather anunderstanding of the limitations of the notion of method as it is narrowlydefined and a desire to transcend those limitations. In this sense, theevidence here suggests that teachers have always been ‘beyond methods’,as this final ‘teacher voice’ suggests:

I think that teachers should be exposed to all methods and theythemselves would ‘build’ their own methods or decide what principlesthey would use in their teaching. We cannot ignore methods and all thefacts that were considered by those who ‘created’ or use them in theirteaching. We need a basis for building our own teaching.

Final revised version received August 2005

ReferencesAdamson, B. 2004. ‘Fashions in language teachingmethodology’ in A. Davies and C. Elder (eds.). TheHandbook of Applied Linguistics. Maldon, Mass.:Blackwell.Anthony, E. M. 1963. ‘Approach, method andtechnique’. English Language Teaching 17: 63–7.Bell, D. M. 2003. ‘Method and postmethod: Are theyreally so incompatible?’ TESOLQuarterly 37/2:325–36.Block, D. 2001. ‘An exploration of the art and sciencedebate in language education’ in M. Bax and J.-W.Zwart (eds.). Reflections on Language and LanguageLearning: InHonour ofArthur vanEssen. Amsterdam:John Benjamins.Brown, H. D. 2000. Principles of Language Learningand Teaching. White Plains, N.Y.: Addison WesleyLongman.Brown, H. D. 2002. ‘English language teaching inthe ‘‘post-method’’ era: toward better diagnosis,treatment, and assessment’ in J. C. Richards andW. A. Renandya (eds.). Methodology in LanguageTeaching: An Anthology of Current Practice.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Bygate, M., P. Skehan, and M. Swain. 2001.‘Introduction’ in M. Bygate, P. Skehan, and M. Swain(eds.). Researching Pedagogic Tasks. Second LanguageLearning, Teaching and Testing. Harlow: Longman.Cummings, A. 1989. ‘Student teachers’ conceptionsof curriculum: towards an understanding oflanguage teacher development’. TESLCanadaJournal 7/1: 33–51.

Kumaravadivelu, B. 1994. ‘The postmethodcondition: (e)merging strategies for second/foreignlanguage teaching’. TESOLQuarterly 28/1: 27–47.Larsen-Freeman, D. 2001. ‘‘‘The joy of watchingothers learn’’. An interview with Diane Larsen-Freeman by William P. Ancker’. English TeachingForum 39/ 4: 2–9.Murphy, T. and P. Byrd. 2001. Understanding theCourses We Teach. Ann Arbor: The University ofMichigan.Prabhu, N. S. 1990. ‘There is no bestmethod—Why?’ TESOLQuarterly 24/2: 161–72.Richards, J. C. 1990. ‘Beyond methods’ in J. C.Richards (ed.). The Language Teaching Matrix.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Richards, J. C. and B. Ho. 1998. ‘Reflective thinkingthrough journal writing’ in J. C. Richards (ed.).Beyond Training. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.Richards, J. C. and T. S. Rodgers. 2001. Approachesand Methods in Language Teaching. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

The authorDavid Bell is Assistant Professor of AppliedLinguistics at Ohio University. He has taught EFLinBritain, Italy, Japan and the USA. Besides TESOL

methodology, his research interests are listeningcomprehension, language and movement,pedagogical grammar, and pragmatics.Email: belld@ohio.edu

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