CHAPTER IEnglish Language Teaching in the “Post-Method” Era: Toward Better Diagnosis, Treatment, and Assessment
A PRINCIPLED APPROACH
Through the 1970s and into the early 1980s there was a good deal of hoopla about the “designer” method. Event 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 designing effective task and technique informed by that approach. One teacher’s approach may of course differ on various issues from that of a colleague, or even of “expert” 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. These two reasons that differentiate variation of each approach level.
The first phase of the diagnostic stage of language pedagogy begins with curricular plans and continues as an ongoing monitoring process in the classroom. The second phase of curricular development is typified by the specification of linguistic sometime called “communicative” need; the specific language forms and functions that should be programmed into a course of study. When we have diagnosis of basic language pedagogy we will easy to create or make a language teaching learning process.
TREATMENT
After we have diagnosis the student especially the language pedagogy, next step is Treatment, One may tempted to think of “treatment” as the appropriate stage for the application of method. One can still 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.
Second language “treatment” may be thought of as courses of study or better, sets of learning experiences, designed to target learner need exposed by diagnostic assessment. 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 classroom.
Each principle implies certain activities that may be appropriate are : lower inhibition, encourage risk taking, build students self-confidence, help students develop intrinsic motivation, promote cooperative learning, encourage students to use right brain processing, promote ambiguity tolerance, help student use their intuition, help students to make their mistakes work for them, and get students to set their own goals.
ASSESMENT
After we diagnosis of students ability and characteristic, then make good treatment to the students, finally our requiem for method has propelled us into a new and fruitful domain of language pedagogy, namely, improved approaches and technique for assessing students’ accomplishment of curricular objective.
One of these facets is the increased emphasis on ongoing assessment of students performance as a course progresses, or what has commonly been called formative evaluation with the advent of techniques for performance-based assessment, portfolio development, oral production inventories, cooperative students-student technique, and other authentic testing rubrics, we are quickly developing the capacity to provide an ongoing program of assessment throughout a student’s course of study. With formative process of assessment in place, teachers can make appropriate midcourse pedagogical changes to more effectively reach goal.
REFERENCE
Richards, Renandya. 2002 Methodology in Langauge Teaching. Cambridge University Press.
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