Post-Method Principles
The document discusses 12 strategies for effective language teaching: 1) maximize learning opportunities by adjusting lessons based on student understanding, 2) minimize mismatches between teacher intentions and student interpretations, 3) facilitate negotiated interaction to encourage student participation beyond simple reactions, 4) promote learner autonomy by teaching students how to self-direct their learning, 5) foster language awareness to explicitly draw attention to language properties, 6) activate intuitive heuristics by providing rich data for students to infer rules, 7) contextualize linguistic input within themes to mirror natural language use, 8) integrate language skills rather than separating them, 9) ensure social relevance by considering the educational environment, 10) raise cultural consciousness by acknowledging student power and knowledge, and 11) treat students as cultural
Post-Method Principles
- 2. Maximize Learning Opportunities Teaching is a process of creating and utilizing learning opportunities. “Teachers need to constantly monitor how the lesson is unfolding and make suitable changes as necessary”. (p. 45).
- 3. Minimize Perceptual Mismatches There are potential perceptual mismatches between intentions and interpretations of the learner and the teacher. Teaching should aim to minimize the mismatches that exist between learner and teacher perceptions of what is available to learn.
- 4. Facilitating Negotiated Interaction Refers to meaningful learner-learner, learner-teacher classroom interaction in which learners are entitled and encouraged to participate in conversations. By employing this macrostrategy, teachers take students beyond the limited action of “react and respond” (p. 39).
- 5. Promoting Learner Autonomy Help learners learn how to learn, equipping them with strategies necessary to self-direct and self-monitor their own learning. “A crucial task of the teacher wishing to promote learner autonomy is to help learners take responsibility for their learning, and to bring about necessary attitudinal changes in them” (p. 137).
- 6. Foster Language Awareness Draw learners’ attention to the formal and functional properties of their second language (L2) in order to increase the degree of explicitness required to promote L2 learning. It is important for language teachers to “design activities that foster both general and critical language awareness in the classroom” (p. 168).
- 7. Activate Intuitive Heuristics Provide rich textual data so that learners can infer underlying rules governing grammatical usage and communicative use. “Heuristics refers to the process of self-discovery part of the learner”. (p. 176).
- 8. Contextualize Linguistic Input Highlights how language usage and use are shaped by “linguistic, extra-linguistic, situational, and Extra-situational contexts”. (p. 39). For example, presenting linguistic input within thematic contexts reflects the natural use of language.
- 9. Integrate Language Skills Stresses the need to holistically integrate language skills traditionally separated and sequenced as listening, speaking, reading and writing. The separation of skills is inadequate for developing integrated functional skills because “language skills are essentially interrelated and mutually reinforcing” (p. 228).
- 10. Ensure Social Relevance Teachers need to be sensitive to the societal, political, economic, and educational environment in which L2 learning and teaching take place.
- 11. Raising Cultural Consciousness Teachers need to treat learners as “cultural informants” (p. 39) so that they are encouraged to engage in a process of classroom participation that acknowledges their power and knowledge.