The Constructions of ELT Methods
7.0. Introduction
7.1.2. The Constructions of ELT Method from Lecturers with Non/Semi-TESOL Background Lecturers from non/semi-TESOL backgrounds had different understandings of methods, not
176 with four strategies (out of ten): “contextualising linguistic input”, “minimising perceptual mismatch” “maximising learning opportunities”, and “ensuring social relevance” (p.41). The teaching involved contextualised inputs as the two topics were taken from the students’ own context. This minimises mismatch in the lecturer’s and students perceptions, as both students and lecturer shared background knowledge about the topics. It also maximised students’ learning opportunities as they were familiar with the content to write about. Also, the topics were socially relevance because the topics were taken from their daily social interaction.
Although the lecturers above did not seem to articulate specific constructions of ELT Methods, their discursive statements and their teaching practices during my classroom observations suggest that both lecturers had developed complex practices.
7.1.2. The Constructions of ELT Method from Lecturers with Non/Semi-TESOL Background
177 teaching strategies, ways to select materials, criteria of good teaching (lectures), and good teaching and learning processes. As a result, he saw himself as having learned a lot from this instruction. It seems that the workshops he joined emphasised the “design and procedure”
aspects of the method. Selecting materials is a sub-component of design, while teaching strategies is a sub-component of procedure (Richards and Rodgers, 2014, p.36). Theoretically, the lecturer was unfamiliar with the discursive constructions of Method and approaches.
However, the lecturer’s statements “criteria of good lectures, good teaching and learning process” and “I learned quite a lot from those” seem to indicate that he was still governed to some extent by the power of the disciplinary discourse of ELT coming from the positivist tradition from the West. The word “good” which is attached to the words “lectures” and “teaching and learning process” indicates a binary characteristic, so that if there is a good lecture there is also a bad lecture (and there can be a particular measurement of this). This binary construction indicates the traces of a Western positivist tradition.
Foucault was not interested to categorise discourse as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ but was interested in ‘how’
discourses operate. For Foucault what counts as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is historically, politically, and socially constructed (see O’Farrell, 2005). This senior male lecturer may not have been able to escape from the power of ELT Methods even though he had not particularly learned about these theoretical approaches during his undergraduate or Master’s degree. What had happened to this lecturer is described in the following quote:
What makes power hold good, what makes it accepted, is quite simply the fact that it does not only weigh on us as a force that says no, but it traverses and produces things, it induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourses. It needs to be considered as a productive network which runs through the whole social body much more than as a negative instance whose function is repression. (Foucault 1980b, p.119).
The power of ELT Methods, in the above lecturer’s context, has formed knowledge such as the
“criteria of good lectures” and “good teaching and learning process” as narrated by the lecturer.
These discourses then become a discursive network of desirable lecturers’ subjectivities, and
178 teaching and learning strategies, running through the department, faculty and university’s regulations. This lecturer was the one who emphasised autonomy and student-centred learning.
He always created chances for students to provide opinions, responses to the materials being presented and so on, techniques used to make the students became the subject of their own learning. In that regard, the lecturer’s discursive statement and teaching practices has an aspect of Content Based Instruction (CBI) because, as understood in this approach, the lecturer had made students “active creator[s] of knowledge and understanding and autonomous learner[s]”
(see Richards and Rodgers, 2014, p.391). In his Cross-Cultural Understanding (CCU) classroom, the lecturer was also not bothered with grammatical mistakes. This suggested that the lecturer focused more on content of the course. It is this emphasis on content that suggested that his teaching resonates with the Western approaches of Content Based Instruction. The lecturer also emphasised the importance of “affective” “cognitive” and “psycho-motoric” approaches, Western-based concepts in teaching.
On the other hand, in terms of content, the lecturer practiced the ethos of the possibility aspect of Post Method (Kumaravadivelu, 2006b), through questioning the hegemonic power of the West over Asia including Indonesia. He also used local jokes which in his opinion still has a cross cultural understanding relevance. In that context, the lecturer also practiced particularity aspect of Post Method (Kumaravadivelu, 2006b).
There is a very interesting contrast between this lecturer and the following lecturer from a semi-TESOL background from IU who appeared to have been constructed by two competing regimes of truth in his theoretical underpinning of practice. The lecturer showed a lack of memory of this kind of theory, which he may possibly have once encountered. I categorised him as semi-TESOL because he gained his bachelor in ELT but did Masters and PhD in a non-TESOL discipline.
No, I think I have to say maybe I am not, well, of course, because I was studying in Tadris (English Language Teaching), I was learning actually how to teach English at the time, I know [the name of his former lecturer] was teaching me … as he was a lecturer at IU and he is retired now … But I don’t have special method that I am learning, adopting … but even though I know the special method sometime it does
179 not work at IU while I have like 40 something students and students don’t read …
any method does not work … if you make group discussion like and we divide that into several groups it did not work. (IUSML, Initial Interview)
This lecturer is the one who constructed his students as “lazy”, and stated that the fact the students “do not read” embodies their being lazy. In that context, he blamed the students for the problem. This also suggests that students were subjected by a discourse (Walshaw, 2007) in which Methods did not to work. The lecturer’s educational history (undergraduate in ELT with MA and PhD in non TESOL), might suggest that his discursive construction of Methods and approaches he probably learned in the past was “discontinued or [had been] broken” (O’Farrell, 2005) so that he is no longer able to employ the technical jargon of ELT Methods and approaches as part of his discursive practice. However, his statement that “any method does not work” seems to imply that, more or less, he is still aware of “method” even though his understanding of methods might be different from the Methods discussed by such works as those of Richards and Rodgers (2014). There seem in other words in the lecturer’s statement, “any method does not work”, discursive traces left behind by his undergraduate learning history (O’Farrell, 2005).
Moreover, in post-structural terms, the lecturer’s seemingly contradictory answer might come from the effect of at least two dissimilar disciplinary discourses, one which is a Bachelor’s degree in English Language Teaching, and one shaped by Masters and PhD degrees in non TESOL discourses. In this context, the lecturer’s self is “decentred”, an effect of discourses and “open to redefinition” and “constantly in process” (Walshaw, 2007, p.5). The lecturer may as a result be working under different regimes of truth.
The lecturers’ non-TESOL backgrounds seemed to contribute to their unfamiliarity with the technical terms of ELT Methods. One lecturer from this category rejected categorising her method of teaching:
Uhm … I’m not sure, I can’t classify it. I don’t want the term. [My question: Maybe your personal term?] My personal term. The method that I do in teaching is more like involving them in it, [My question: dialogue?] not just dialogue, I want them
180 to create something, I want them to ask me, and then they might tell me, they
might tell me that no mam this is wrong, this supposed to be like this. I want them to try because I see that when I just telling them what to do, it’s just gone like that, but when I involved them in doing anything any-thing it’s not just merely creating project but try to build the mindset in their head about the thing I want to tell them, it takes better, so I don’t know how you call this method, more like asking them to get into it, give me a question, answer questions that their friend give, create something, you know I just let them free. [My question: So a bit different from one class to another because the characteristics of the class different?] Of course, you can’t treat like every class the same. Every kids are special, so they have their own way to learn, like this class better loves to go with more games, the other one like small discussion the other one or make something I just follow whatever to do the thing is I want them to know that my hidden message would get to them so I don’t really have one ultimate method. (MRUJFL, Initial Interview)
The following lecturer’s statement “I’m not sure, I can’t classify it. I don’t want the term” is interesting. It seems there is a contradiction between the first two statements and the third statement. The first two statements “I am not sure, I can’t classify it” may suggest that the teacher was not sure how to categorise her method(s) to existing ELT Methods (as discussed formerly) some lecturers are not familiar with the technical jargon such as the Grammar Translation Method, Communicative Language Teaching. However, with the lecturer’s third statement “I don’t want the term” it seems that the teacher deliberately rejected the term. The lecturer resisted the technical term of ELT Method (Foucault, 1977b). Furthermore, the lecturer seemed to position (Ball, 1994; Walshaw, 2007) the technical term of the Method as something not important.
In summary, all the three lecturers, even though they were not familiar with the discursive constructions of ELT Methods, suggested complexity in terms of their discursive statements and classroom practices. Some aspects of their discourses and practices resonated with some indicators of existing ELT Methods, Post Method, and macro-strategic frameworks of teaching
181 and learning. The lecturers, without being bothered by the technical terms of ELT Methods, taught in a way that would work “best” in their own context.