The Constructions of ELT Methods
7.0. Introduction
7.1.1. The Constructions of ELT Methods (methods) of Lecturers with TESOL backgrounds The following is the meaning of approach constructed in an informal context, as discussed
above:
Method is the way I used for teaching, and approach is the way I approach the students, ya (yes), how I approach the students to get into my class I call is approach, but method is how I deliver the subject to be interested in the class.
(IUJFL, Reflexive Interview)
The lecturer’s construction of approach seems to indicate what she meant by it was more or less her personal relationship with the students (rapport). The following quote from her initial interview, will add more context about her understanding about ELT Method:
172 At first I think about the method but now no (laughs). [My question: What do
you mean at first?] First when the first time I teach and I don’t have any experience in teaching. [My question: First what do you mean by first?] After I was graduating from the university in my bachelor degree in undergraduate, I should teach and I still learned about how to teach well. But now no. yeah sometimes I never read again about the method how to teach. But the one thing that I. Perhaps there’s no any method about this one. Personal approach, ya sometimes I use personal approach as well. [My question: What do you mean by personal approach?] like that one if we give some attention really carefully to our students some time about personal thing a I mean that. [For example we tried to understand our students, we placed ourselves in them and willingly or not unconsciously they follow us. And faktor kedekatan [the lecturer’s being close to students] made the delivery of materials easier. So that’s why I say that what kind of method is that ok personal approach (laughs).
(IUJFL, Initial Interview)
The above was the lecturer’s answer to my question about whether or not she was thinking about ELT Method when teaching. The above quote shows two things: first, that the lecturer only constructed ELT Method as desirable in her early career and no longer thought about Method in this way once she had had more experience in teaching. The above quote suggests that she discontinued or broke (O’Farrell, 2005) the construction of discourse of Method and approach as may be those technical terms may no longer important for her. In that case, she emphasised practice. The following statement suggests so:
I want to make it everything simple and easy so that’s why I don’t want to be bothered with theoretical framework … but I forget about how to teach well to the students (IUJFL, Reflexive Interview).
The above statement emerged when I asked if the lecturer used the term personal approach in the process of differentiating between Method and approach. Secondly, if analysed from Post Method Pedagogy, what the lecturer did use of personal approach, she was in effect theorising
173 what she practiced, embodying the practicality aspect of Post Method Pedagogy (Kumaravadivelu, 2006b). However, my classroom observation suggests that in some way, her teaching has the characteristics of the communicative approach as I noticed that the lecturer tried to facilitate engaged discussion between her and her students, and among the students. This made the lecturer the facilitator in the classroom, a characteristic of the Communicative Language Teaching Method (see Richards & Rodgers, 2014). The lecturer’s following statement confirmed my analysis above even though she was not entirely familiar with the Method.
To me, yeah I think it is Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), yeah I believe so. But I am not quite sure if there’s another method that it leads me because sometime what I believe it is communicative language teaching method. But I give them some personal approach. (IUJFL, Reflexive Interview)
Moreover, in some way, the lecturer’s discursive statement and her classroom practices has the characteristics of CBI or CLIL approaches, because the lecturer focused on content (see Richards and Rodgers, 2014), as shown through her frequent use of the Indonesian language as seen below:
Yes. So in my opinion because it’s not a speaking class, so what is that I didn’t want to make them confused, so they are allowed to speak Indonesia and me as well, it means that the main point to me is the material, because it’s argumentative essay and I think it’s very hard, not only when I was a learner, I thought that it’s hard to me, so that’s why I should make it a simple for them, so that’s why using the language Indonesian more than English. (IUJFL, Reflexive Interview)
The above quote was the answer to my question about why the lecturer used the Indonesian language more than English. The lecturer’s statement “the main point to me is the material”
suggests that she prioritised content rather than English as a medium of instruction. The lecturer’s discursive constructions of methods and practices in the classroom was complex; it has the characteristics of eclectic ELT Methods – CLT Method and CBI/CLIL – as well as Kumaravadivelu’s (2006b) practicality aspect of Post Method Pedagogy. In terms of the
macro-174 strategies of teaching (see Kumaravadivelu, 2003b), the lecturer had maximised learning opportunities in the belief that by using the Indonesian language the students might learn the materials of an argumentative essay more easily than in English. The lecturer also facilitated negotiated interaction as she made the class interactive. She encouraged the class to be a little more autonomous, as she had previously asked the students to decide their own topics.
The senior female lecturer 1 from MRU also was not concerned with her own construction of ELT Method as seen from the following quote:
No, I don’t differentiate those [approaches and methods], it means that those work at the same time. Approach is the basic from Method. Sir, I see that approach is the basic from method. That’s the easy way to say. My approach is to make the students become better (in terms of writing argumentative essays) in the end of the semester. (MRUSFL1, Reflexive Interview)
This statement that approach can sit under Method seems to be the embodiment of the discourse of Method as proposed by Richards and Rodgers (2014). This lecturer had told me that she had read this book in the 2001 edition and learned something from it, and in that regard, historically, the lecturer’s statement that “approach is the basic from method” might have been partially constructed from her reading of Richards’ and Rodgers’ (2014) book. The lecturer’s discursive statement that approach is basic from Method may also suggest that her focus was on teaching and learning activities. Therefore, in Richards’ and Rodgers’ (2014) framework the lecturer’s statement could be classified as concerned with design. However, the lecturer’s next statement, “the easy thing to say is like that” to refer to her construction of method and approach, seems to want to make the terms ‘method’ and ‘approach’, which are technical, less technical and more understandable, and to involve her goals. Her next statement “my approach is to make them [students] in the end of the semester … better than prior to the semester”
suggests that she was appropriating the Western concept to make it more understandable.
Appropriation is a postcolonial word to explain the context where postcolonial societies take aspect of colonial cultures, including “mode of thought” and “argument”, and use them in their own sociocultural context (see Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffins, 2007, p.15). However, if seen from
175 an ELT Method/Approach, the lecturer’s discursive practices and classroom teaching seemed to indicate characteristics of CBI or CLIL. This is because the lecturer emphasised content rather than language. In the classroom, the lecturer often used the Indonesian language and argued for this use in relation to content as can be seen below:
Yes, sir, because if I use English, I asked them where there was a question, no one sounded, no one answered [my question] so that I did not know whether they understood my question or not or they were not brave to ask. Finally, [students] in the class were silent. (MRUSFL1, Reflexive Interview)
Another indicator that the lecturer focused on content was the lecturer chose to focus only on topics for AW for the semester. The first was the pros and cons of the homogenous class (high and low achiever) class. The second topic was the five-year maximum period for undergraduate study. These two topics are very relevant locally. The lecturer introduced these local topics to the students before the students were asked to write essays. She explained this choice to use local topics in the following way:
Eee what is it so that the students can develop the ideas to write. (MRUSFL1, Reflexive Interview)
The lecturer however was not only concerned with developing ideas. My classroom observation also shows that the lecturer also corrected students’ grammatical mistakes, especially when providing one-on-one consultation with students. The lecturer also provided “continuous feedback” in relation to students’ individual writing. So the lecturer may have been in tune with Competency Based Language Teaching (CBLT) (Richards & Rodgers, 2014, p.392) in her concern to see the students’ ongoing progress. Seen from Kumaravadivelu’s (2006b) Post Method Pedagogy, the lecturer’s choice of using local topics is also in line with the particularity principle, that is exploring local context. More specifically, the use of the two local topics, in terms of Kumaravadivelu’s (2003) ten macro-strategies of language teaching and learning, were in tune
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