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English Language Teaching in the "Post-Method" Era:

Toward Better Diagnosis, Treatment, and Assessment
H. Douglas Brown
INTRODUCTION
In the century spanning the mid-1880s to the mid-1980s, the language teaching profession
was involved in what many pedagogical experts would call a search. That search was for a single,
ideal method, generalizable across widely varying audiences, that would successfully teach students
a foreign language in the classroom. Historical accounts of the profession tend, therefore, to
describe a succession of methods, each of which is more or less discarded in due course as a new
method takes its place. I will comment on "the changing winds and shifting sands" (Marckwardt,
1972, p. 5) of that history momentarily; but first, we should try to understand what we mean by
method.
What is a method? More than three decades ago, Edward Anthony (1963) gave us a definition
that has quite admirably withstood the test of time. His concept of method was the second of three
hierarchical elements, namely, approach, method, and technique. An approach, according to
Anthony, was a set of assumptions dealing with the nature of language, learning, and teaching.
Method was defined as an overall plan for systematic presentation of language based on a selected
approach. It followed that techniques were specific classroom activities consistent with a method,
and therefore in harmony with an approach as well.

Some disagreement over Anthony's definition can occasionally be found in the literature. For
Richards and Rodgers (1986), method was an umbrella term to capture redefined approaches,
designs, and procedures. Similarly, Prabhu (1990) thought of method as both classroom activities
and the theory that informs them. Despite these and a handful of other attempted redefinitions
(see Pennycook, 1989), we still commonly refer to methods in terms of Anthony's earlier
understanding. For most researchers and practicing teachers, a method is a set of theoretically
unified classroom techniques thought to be generalizable across a wide variety of contexts and
audiences. Thus, for example, we speak of the Audiolingual Method, the Direct Method, and of the
Silent Way or Suggestopedia, all as methods.

METHODS: A CENTURY-OLD OBSESSION

Ironically, the whole concept of separate methods is no longer a central issue in language
teaching practice (see Kumaravadivelu, 1994, among others). In fact, in the mid-1980s, H. H. Stem
(1985, p. 251) lamented our "century-old obsession," our "prolonged preoccupation [with methods]
that has been increasingly unproductive and misguided," as we vainly searched for the ultimate
method that would serve as the final answer.
That search might be said to have begun around 1880 with Francois Gouin's publication of The
Art of Teaching and Learning Foreign Languages (1880), in which his Series Method was
advocated. This was followed at the turn of the century by the Direct Method of Charles Berlitz. The
Audiolingual Method of the late 1940s and the so-called Cognitive-Code Learning Method of the
early 1960s followed. Then, in a burst of innovation, the "spirited seventies," as I like to refer to
them, brought us what David Nunan (1989) termed the "designer" methods: Community Language
Learning, the Silent Way, Suggestopedia, Total Physical Response, and others. This latter flurry was
not unlike an earlier period in the field of psychotherapy which burgeoned with a plethora of
"methods" of therapy; some of the '"designer" terms of that era were T group, encounter group,
analytical, Gestalt, marathon group, conjoint family, shock, client-centered, and narcosis therapy,
electro-narcosis, biochemotherapy, and analytic psychobiology!

Why are methods no longer the milestones of our language teaching journey through time? Our
requiem for methods might list four possible causes of demise:

1. Methods are too prescriptive, assuming too much about a context before the context has even
been identified. They are therefore overgeneralized in their potential application to practical
situations.

2. Generally, methods are quite distinctive at the early, beginning stages of a language course and
rather indistinguishable from each other at later stages. In the first few days of a Community
Language Learning class, for example, the students witness a unique set of experiences in their
small circles of translated language whispered in their ears. But, within a matter of weeks, such
classrooms can look like any other learner-centred curriculum.

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3. It was once thought that methods could be empirically tested by scientific quantification to
determine which one is "best." We have now discovered that something as artful and intuitive
as language pedagogy cannot ever be so clearly verified by empirical validation.

4. Methods are laden with what Pennycook (1989) referred to as "interested knowledge" - the
quasi-political or mercenary agendas of their proponents. Recent work in the power and politics
of English language teaching (see, especially, Pennycook, 1994; Tollefson, 1995; and Holliday,
1994) has demonstrated that methods, often the creations of the powerful "centre," become
vehicles of a "linguistic imperialism" (Phillipson, 1992) targeting the disempowered periphery.

David Nunan (1991, p. 228) summed it up nicely:

It has been realised that there never was and probably never will be a method for all, and
the focus in recent years has been on the development of classroom tasks and activities
which are consonant with what we know about second language acquisition, and which are
also in keeping with the dynamics of the classroom itself.

A PRINCIPLED APPROACH

And so, as we lay to rest the methods that have become so familiar to us in recent decades,
what assurance do we have today of the viability of our language teaching profession?

Through the 1970s and into the early 1980s, there was a good deal of hoopla about the
"designer" methods. Even though they were not widely adopted standards of practice, they were
nevertheless symbolic of a profession at least partially caught up in a mad scramble to invent a new
method when the very concept of method was eroding under our feet. We did not need a new
method. We needed, instead, to get on with the business of unifying our approach to language
teaching and of designing effective tasks and techniques informed by that approach.

By the end of the 1980s, such an approach was clearly becoming evident in teaching practices
worldwide. We had learned some profound lessons from our past wanderings. We had learned to
make enlightened choices of teaching practices that were solidly grounded in the best of what we
knew about second language learning and teaching. We had amassed enough research on learning
and teaching in a multiplicity of contexts that we were indeed formulating an integrated approach to
language pedagogy. Of course, we had not attained a theoretical mountaintop by any means; much
remained - and still remains - to be questioned and investigated.

It should be clear from the foregoing that, as "enlightened" teachers, we can think in terms of a
number of possible methodological - or, shall we say, pedagogical - options at our disposal for
tailoring classes to particular contexts. Our approach - or theory of language and language learning -
therefore takes on great importance. One's approach to language teaching is the theoretical
rationale that underlies everything that happens in the classroom. It is the cumulative body of
knowledge and principles that enables teachers, as "technicians" in the classroom, to diagnose the
needs of students, to treat students with successful pedagogical techniques, and to assess the
outcome of those treatments.

An approach to language pedagogy is not just a set of static principles "set in stone." It is, in
fact, a dynamic composite of energies within a teacher that changes (or should change, if one is a
growing teacher) with continued experience in learning and teaching. There is far too much that we
do not know collectively about this process, and there are far too many new research findings
pouring in, to assume that a teacher can confidently assert that he or she knows everything that
needs to be known about language and language learning.

One teacher's approach may, of course, differ on various issues from that of a colleague, or
even of "experts" in the field, who differ among themselves. There are two reasons for variation at
the approach level: (1) an approach is by definition dynamic and therefore subject to some
"tinkering" as a result of one's observation and experience; and (2) research in second language
acquisition and pedagogy almost always yields findings that are subject to interpretation rather
than giving conclusive evidence.

The interaction between one's approach and classroom practice is the key to dynamic teaching.
The best teachers are able to take calculated risks in the classroom: as new student needs are
perceived, innovative pedagogical techniques are attempted, and the follow-up assessment yields
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an observed judgment on their effectiveness. Initial inspiration for such innovation comes from the
approach level, but the feedback that teachers gather from actual implementation then reshapes
and modifies their overall understanding of what learning and teaching are - which, in turn, may
give rise to a new insight and more innovative possibilities, and the cycle continues.

TWELVE PRINCIPLES
I would like to suggest that viable current approaches to language teaching are "principled," in
that there is perhaps a finite number of general research-based principles on which classroom
practice is grounded. The twelve principles that I list are an inexhaustive number of what I would
assert to be relatively widely accepted theoretical assumptions about second language acquisition.
There is sometimes disagreement in their interpretation and their application in the classroom, but
they nevertheless comprise a body of constructs which few would dispute as central to most
language acquisition contexts. They are:

1. AUTOMATICITY

2. MEANINGFUL LEARNING

3. THE ANTICIPATION OF REWARD

4. INTRINSIC MOTIVATION

5. STRATEGIC INVESTMENT

6. LANGUAGE EGO

7. SELF-CONFIDENCE

8. RISK TAKING

9. THE LANGUAGE-CULTURE CONNECTION

10. THE NATIVE LANGUAGE EFFECT

11. INTERLANGUAGE

12. COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

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DIAGNOSIS, TREATMENT, AND ASSESSMENT

A principled approach to language teaching encourages the language teacher to engage in a

carefully crafted process of diagnosis, treatment, and assessment. It enables us initially to account
for communicative and situational needs anticipated among designated learners, and to diagnose
appropriate curricular treatment for those specific learners in their distinctive context and for their
particular goals. It helps us then to devise effective pedagogical objectives which have taken into
account all the contextual variables in a classroom. A sound, comprehensive approach underlies
the creation of a set of learning experiences that are appropriate, given specific contexts and
purposes, for realizing established objectives. It enables teachers to assess what went right and
what went wrong in a lesson, that is, to systematically evaluate the accomplishment of curricular
objectives. And it assists them in revising activities, lessons, materials, and curricula.

DIAGNOSIS

The first phase of the diagnostic stage of language pedagogy begins with curricular plans and
continues as an ongoing monitoring process in the classroom. Language curricula call for an initial
study of what Richards (1990) calls "situational" needs, or the context of the teaching. Situational
needs include consideration of the country of the institution, the socioeconomic and educational
background of the students, the specific purposes the students have in learning a language, and
institutional constraints that are imposed on a curriculum. Some of the twelve principles cited
earlier come into play in isolating situational needs:

 Is language proficiency perceived by students as intrinsically motivating?

 To what extent will the language in question involve students in wrestling with a "new
identity" and therefore imply a language ego issue?
 What is the relationship between the target language and the native culture of the students?

A host of other educational, sociological, and administrative principles come to bear in specifying
situational needs; these are but a few.

The second phase of curricular development is typified by the specification of linguistic - sometimes
called "communicative" - needs: the specific language forms and functions that should be
programmed into a course of study. Here again, certain principles of learning and teaching inform
our choices:

 To what extent are native-language and target-language contrasts important to consider?

 How should interlanguage systematicity and variation affect curriculum designs?
 What do studies of contrastive analysis, interlanguage, and communicative competence tell
us about the sequencing of linguistic forms and functions in a curriculum?
 How can the curriculum realize the principle of authenticity?

Of equal importance in the planning stages of language courses is the specific diagnostic
assessment of each student upon entering a program. Once courses have been carefully planned,
with pedagogical options intricately woven in, how can teachers and/or administrators become
diagnostic scientists and artists, carefully eliciting language production and comprehension on the
part of every student? How should those elicitations be measured and assessed in such a way that
the language course can be either slightly or greatly modified to meet the needs of the particular
students who happen to be in one's class at this moment?

None of these complex questions can be answered with the language teaching profession's recently
interred methods! The crucial import of the diagnostic phase of language courses precludes any
consideration of methods that are pre-packaged for delivery to all learners. One of the principal
fields of inquiry in the profession today is this very stage of diagnosis, that of more adequately
pinpointing learners' linguistic needs as they enter a program of study.

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TREATMENT

One may be tempted to think of "treatment" as the appropriate stage for the application of
methods. One can still find people arguing, for example, that if a diagnostic phase discovered
learners who need a great deal of physical activity, little metalinguistic explanation, and a strongly
directive teacher, then surely Total Physical Response (TPR) is the treatment that should be offered.
The problem with this conclusion is that it is over-generalized and much too restrictive. Certain
learners can indeed benefit from occasional doses of "TPR-like" techniques, but certainly the
complexity of the second language acquisition process warrants a multiple-treatment, multiphase
approach to a language course. The principles that collectively underlie the method as we knew
them provide a few valid correlates of an approach to diagnosis and treatment, but a single method
covers far too narrow a band of possibilities to suffice for a whole curriculum.

Second language "treatments" may be thought of as courses of study or, better, sets of learning
experiences, designed to target learner needs exposed by diagnostic assessments. For such
treatments, the profession offers an extraordinarily large number of options. Consider, just as a
start, the thirty-eight language teaching techniques categorized by Crookes and Chaudron (1991,
pp. 52-54), ranging from controlled (drills, dialogues, reading aloud, display questions/answers,
etc.) to semi-controlled (referential questions/answers, cued narratives, information gap activities,
etc.) to free (role-plays, problem solving, interviews, discussions, etc.). Consider as well an
abundance of whole-class, group-work, and pair-work activities at our disposal. Then, just take a
look at the mountain of textbooks and other materials represented at a major language teaching
conference! It is the teacher's task to carefully and deliberately choose among these many options
to formulate a pedagogical sequence of techniques in the classroom. And this is where a teacher's
choices must be "principled."

One way of looking at principled choices for treatment is the extent to which a technique promotes
a desired goal. For example, let's suppose a teacher wishes to deliver techniques that seek to
create intrinsic motivation in learners. The principle of intrinsic motivation implies more than a few
corollaries that can act as a "test" of a technique's potential for creating or sustaining intrinsic
motivation (see Brown 1994b, pp.33-46, for a full development of intrinsic motivation in the
classroom). Consider the following checklist, each item of which represents a facet of the principle
of intrinsic motivation:

1. Does the technique appeal to the genuine interests of your students? Is it relevant to their
lives?
2. Is the technique presented in a positive, enthusiastic manner?
3. Are students clearly aware of the purpose of the technique?
4. Do students have some choice in: {a) choosing some aspect of the technique? and/or (b)
determining how they go about fulfilling the goals of the technique?
5. Does the technique encourage students to discover for themselves certain principles or
rules (rather than simply being "told")?
6. Does it encourage students in some way to develop or use effective strategies of learning
and communication?
7. Does it contribute - at least to some extent - to students' ultimate autonomy and
independence (from you)?
8. Does it foster cooperative negotiation with other students in the class? Is it a truly interactive
technique?
9. Does the technique present a "reasonable challenge"?
10. Do students receive sufficient feedback on their performance (from each other or from you)?

By the careful delivery of techniques that incorporate many of these criteria, teachers can be more
assured of offering treatments that are specifically designed to accomplish the goal of fostering
intrinsic motivation. This is a far more sophisticated and effective option than grabbing at a
particular method and programming it into a course of study regardless of diagnosed student
needs.

Another way of looking at the relationship between approach and treatment is illustrated in the
following list of suggestions for building a sense of strategic investment in the classroom. Each
principle implies certain activities that may be appropriate.

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1. LOWER INHIBITIONS

2. ENCOURAGE RISK TAKING

3. BUILD STUDENTS’ SELF-CONFIDENCE

4. HELP STUDENTS DEVELOP INTRINSIC MOTIVATION

5. PROMOTE COOPERATIVE LEARNING

6. ENCOURAGE STUDENTS TO USE RIGHT-BRAIN PROCESSING

7. PROMOTE AMBIGUITY TOLERANCE

8. HELP STUDENTS USE THEIR INTUITION

9. GET STUDENTS TO MAKE THEIR MISTAKES WORK FOR THEM

10. GET STUDENTS TO SET THEIR OWN GOALS

What are the implications this shift in paradigm has had in assessment?

What conclusions can you draw after reading the article?

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