Scott Thornbury – What’s the latest teaching method? — Transcript

It's great to be here and to talk with people from, what was it, how many countries? Reproduce 1834, not all of which I've ever visited, but you're on my list. One of the pleasures I get from my job, and there are many pleasures, not least is the traveling, as exhausting as it can be, but I have a hobby and I use my traveling around all these wonderful countries talking to wonderful teachers around the world to indulge my hobby.

pleasures not least is the traveling as exhausting as it can be but I I have a hobby and I used my traveling around all these wonderful countries talking to wonderful teachers around the world to indulge my hobby and

Those of you who know me know that my hobby is looking for old books, not just any old books, but all books about teaching or books about language, old grammars, old course books, old dictionaries, old phrase books. So wherever I go, I spend a little bit of time if I can. I kind of play truant from the conference and I go off and I look for the bookshops or the bookshop where I might find some treasure.

wherever I go I spend a little bit of time if I can I kind of play truant from the conference and I go off and I look for the the book shops or the bookshop where I might find some treasure

And actually, I was only two weeks ago at the Better Learning Conference in Kiev, and I discovered that in Kiev there's one of the largest secondhand book markets I've ever seen anywhere. I was like, oh my God, this is a kook, this is amazing, and I'd bought a ton of books, none of which I've yet had a chance to really sift through. But this is a bookshop in Malta. I was in Malta, the letter is the lovely old Mediterranean town of the mass of history, and I knew that somewhere in Valletta there would be a secondhand bookshop, and somewhere in that secondhand bookshop there would be a book that I didn't have.

is amazing and I'd bought a ton of books none of which I've yet had a chance to really sift through but this is a bookshop in Malta I was in Malta the letter is the lovely old Mediterranean town of the mass of history and I knew

And sure enough, after a lot of wandering around the back streets of Valletta, I found this place, which is hardly even a books table anymore. It's mainly a tourist shop, but they do have a few old books, and I found this book, which you can tell from the covers, pre-design, early nothing in terms of design, and it's basic in its approach and its basic in its design, and it's undated, but I'm assuming it probably can the 30s or 40s.

this place which is hardly even a books table anymore it's mainly a tourist shop but they do have a few old books and I found this book which you can tell from the covers pre-design early nothing in terms of design and its basic and its

And there is interesting history behind the methodology behind this book, and the history behind the book. I haven't got time to go into it now, but just to give you a flavor of the book itself in its methodology, this was what I did. These were some of the delights that I found in my hotel room when I took it back and had a look at it.

now but just to give you a flavor of the book itself in its methodology this was what I did these were some of the delights that I found in my hotel room when I took it back and had a look at it

Forget authenticity. Can you think of a context in which somebody would say, "Your fingers on my knife"? Purpose? When you go to the Tokyo Patrick, you'll find maybe in the subway this is something that people—excuse me, your fingers on my nose. It actually gets better.

better [Music] I mean I could understand it hurt in a gym or something maybe and I've been in suits why suits so anyway one of the one of the pleasures then of course of finding these old boxes is finding material like

I mean, I could understand it hurt in a gym or something, maybe, and I've been in suits. Why suits? So anyway, one of the pleasures then, of course, of finding these old books is finding material like this and realizing how far we have come since whenever this was published and written.

around in circles and as funny as this looks there is probably some sensitive and somebody probably did learn English by saying you'll excuse me your hand is on my nose so that's what I want to look at today and these are some of the books

And it is salutary to think how far we've come, but what I'm going to argue today is that we think we've come a long way, but in fact, we're going around in circles. And as funny as this looks, there is probably some sensitive, and somebody probably did learn English by saying, "You'll excuse me, your hand is on my nose." So that's what I want to look at today.

amusing but they're also solitary and informative and I think it's part of this sort of I think we forget we we forget how long people have been learning second languages and particularly English but not really English and I have a number of books in

And these are some of the books that I've collected, and I have got shelves and shelves of them, and I have no idea what I'm going to do with them eventually, but I do go through them periodically looking for particular things. And as I say, they are both amusing, but they're also solitary and informative.

talk is called what is the best method and that's a question that I'm often asked when I travel around people come up to me thinking that I have somehow I'm bringing some kind of news that hasn't reached the the distant southern

And I think it's part of this sort of—I think we forget how long people have been learning second languages, and particularly English, but not really English. And I have a number of books in French, if you see, or in French at least, and other languages. And I usually have a serious purpose for using these, which I think, I hope, will come apparent during the course of this talk.

going to be the best for here and so on and so on it's also confused by the fact that the word method doesn't translate clothes I mean this I found this when I first went to Argentina and anybody from

And the talk is called, "What is the best method?" And that's a question that I'm often asked when I travel around. People come up to me thinking that I have somehow brought some kind of news that hasn't reached the distant southern Asia or wherever I'm visiting.

or correct me if I'm wrong it says is synonymous with course books so having written a course book you are in fact the author of a method a method of teaching English and so there is a sort of conflation there between this notion

And in fact, it's a question that baffles me because there are all sorts of implications behind the question, "What is the best method?" as if there is one, and if the one that's best for there is going to be the best for here, and so on and so on.

just another course book it's not that innovative nevertheless I think that confusion is an interesting one and I want I'll return to it and this has just happens to be a picture from that same book the new British method and the if

It's also confused by the fact that the word method doesn't translate close. I mean, this I found when I first went to Argentina, and anybody from—Hudson Tina? Ah, good. So they asked me, you know, "What could you talk about your method?" and I didn't understand what they meant.

if this is a pleasant method actually if you go back some of these are I mean there's a book here called interesting English and that would never sell nowadays interesting English it has to be awesome English if it's gonna be

But I haven't designed a method, I know. But you've written a method because a method, or correct me if I'm wrong, it says, is synonymous with course books. So having written a course book, you are in fact the author of a method, a method of teaching English.

English the second book in the series is called I'm still learning English so so what are the adjectives that collocate with method and that's interesting if you go into a corpus and look at the adjectives that immediately precede method and a general corpus of

And so there is a sort of conflation there between this notion on the one hand of course book, on the other hand of method. So you get it here in a book I found in Barcelona. It's a method of English, the new British method, but it in fact basically means it's just another course book. It's not that innovative.

see these are very positive adjectives we think of method as being scientific systematic new modern and generally good good fewer method is good few there's a very positive association with that we're not talking necessary about language teaching methods with all sorts

Nevertheless, I think that confusion is an interesting one, and I want, I'll return to it. And this just happens to be a picture from that same book, the new British method. And if you can't read that, the question is, "Why do you always recommend this method?" because it's both practical and pleasant.

method the word method in our own field and contrast it with approach and I want to look at this notion of being beyond methods or post method and then the notion come back to ism of method or elmatador the book the course book which

And that's interesting in itself, the adjectives that collocate with the word method. Pleasant is not one you're normal—if this is a pleasant method. Actually, if you go back, some of these are—I mean, there's a book here called Interesting English, and that would never sell nowadays. Interesting English, it has to be awesome English if it's going to be—there's a title for you, publishers, by the way, awesome. I'm sure somebody's thought of it. Interesting, which doesn't wash.

even earlier people were talking about the death of method in fact tick alright wrote a paper I think called the death of methods and probably wrote a publicly there was no best method why and HH stern here and has in a very important

And then other ones like I Am Learning English. This is actually, this is from Romania. I Am Learning English. The second book in the series is called I'm Still Learning English. So, what are the adjectives that collocate with method? And that's interesting.

the vacuum that have been created by the end of audio lingual ISM essentially which had been the prevailing method of the of the mid century and then of course Chomsky came along and sort of undercut the whole theoretical basis of

If you go into a corpus and look at the adjectives that immediately precede method in a general corpus of English, you'll find, unsurprisingly perhaps, that they are often very positive and there are connotations. So you get a new method is the most common, in fact, new method as the most common adjective collocation with method.

you've got all those sort of things that people talk about write about read about but I don't think anybody ever does very little correct me if I'm wrong Herbert they were I'm think it'll pockets of suggester pedia and places

But scientific follows, best, effective, simply. See, these are very positive adjectives. We think of method as being scientific, systematic, new, modern, and generally good. Good, fewer method is good few. There's a very positive association with that.

negative connotations for many people because it sounds too top-down too prescriptive this is what you must do and there was this a resistance away from the idea of a top-down method and the ID and words substitute words came

We're not talking necessarily about language teaching methods with all sorts of different kinds of methods. And notice that direct method actually figures in that list. So what I want to do then, I want to initially explore this notion of method, why has it got out of fashion, supposedly it has.

came along and 1994 wrote a very important paper where he identified what he called the post method condition which again we had moved beyond individual methods off-the-shelf methods if you like and now he taught according to a set of principles or parameters as

So I want to look at method, the word method in our own field, and contrast it with approach. And I want to look at this notion of being beyond methods or post-method, and then the notion come back to ism of method or elmatador, the book, the course book, which is the method, which is the course book.

had proliferated on he was big before them but with absolutely global massive by the turn of the 21st century but happening in so many different contexts for so many different purposes and the feeling was that notes one-size-fits-all and so hence the notion of the postman

So I want to look at that. And I did a very, very quick summary. It's the end of the day, so this is about as theoretical as we all get, I think. In the 1990s or even earlier, people were talking about the death of method.

designing their own courses out of particular principles and parameters because in the context that he was looking at which his native Iran teachers are teaching 30 hours a week they've got teaching classes of 45 students they're teaching mandated

In fact, Tick Alright wrote a paper, I think, called the Death of Methods, and probably wrote a publicly there was no best method. Why? And HH Stern here has, in a very important book, identified that there was a definite shift in thinking away from the idea of a single method.

but rather by the ear off textbook defined practice what the majority of teachers teach and how they teach they're now determined by the textbook so in other words it is the matador el matador the textbook is the method and

And I don't know that your memory goes back as far as mine, but in the 1960s and 1970s, there was a proliferation of methods to fill the vacuum that had been created by—

books or textbooks exist and that's it Punto well anyway to be discussed going back to my collection of books though as I said are I find them interesting form all sorts of points of view not least the design they're so

beautiful some of them but the methods that they enshrine or rather not so much the methods but the principles or the methodology I haven't defined methodology when I'm talking about methodologies the more descriptive thing it just describes what teachers - it

doesn't prescribe what they shouldn't method and the methodology underlying a lot of these books is very interesting when you and peel it and often it's unstated it's implicit you have to find it look at these books and say no what

is it that's going on here Wow would these people how are people learning from this way what would the teachers doing but occasionally you get explicit statements of what the methodology what the writer was intending so this is a

book there was a series produced in the 1920s and 30s written by a woman and interestingly enough which was rare and my land my corpus of textbooks and written for different languages so the same book was produced for German for

French and also for Esperanto and using the same illustration so it's basically it's a picture dictionary with these fabulous illustrations or everything beautifully numbered row I think it's particularly interesting as in the short introduction that the writer writes this

is the teacher this is a advice for the teachers she says in oral and written exercises of all kinds an effort must be made to associate the matter under treatment with the pupils own observations to illustrate it from his

own experience now I don't those of you who are Sara Moses talk just before the break we'll see a connection here Sara was talking about relevance in the importance of making the classroom activities relevant to the learners own

interest lives needs etc and I think what's that's fascinating so thora Goldschmidt doesn't use the word relevance but she is talking about relevance essentially she's saying make the material relevant to the learners by associating it with their own lives oh

there you are and then so this was in 1923 1923 this was even before I was born people who were saying this about relevance so this is what I find really interesting about these books they said actually we can laugh at them but

sometimes they're little gems of wisdom that are tucked away here which to me suggests that there's there are methods and methods and methods but there is good methodology and that doesn't actually change and that's really the the point of what I want to talk about

today good methodology so what I want to do I'm just going to share a couple more observations so this is it from my collection of books for teachers so these are books written for teachers methodology books these are the earlier

equivalents of books like pen ears book on methodology for example written some of these going back to the nineteen tens I think English for coming Americans these are Americans who are coming to America and so on and so on and so on

that's how beautiful these books I just love the kind of simplicity of the design apart from anything else and their titles but looking at these methodology books and going through them you find some really really interesting things I just want to share with you

some of the some quotations from a mixture of these books and I'm really annoyed that I didn't think of witness Chris here Chris Alison used paddle it in his course and his talk so with padlet you can answer the questions

I'm going to give you without any fear of being judged thank you and but we can't do that so you're just going to have to do this and be judged but you're old enough and and the point is that

there's no right answers to this but what I'm going to throw out some equations and I just want you to decide if it's if it were padlet you say yes I agree no I don't agree yeah but I'm

going to give you to do this instead of how did you do the the thumbs up or the thumbs down if you agree now that's it's very crude measure of agreement it's not a a what's its name scale like a scale

you have no choice here it's either you like it or you don't okay it's a game it's not a test okay so this is the quotation number one from 1956 language is not a sterile subject to be confined to the classroom one of

two things must be done either life must be brought to the classroom or the class must be taken to life thumbs up or thumbs down I'll give you an easy one first anybody got their thumbs down incidentally I'd be really interested in

here if you do because there's always a there's always a transgressive answer to all these questions but I think what interesting again yes what we try to do all the time tape the classroom to life will bring life into the classroom again

it's that same thing about authentic ating the language learning experience making it relevant the way that Sarah was talking about and of course you see this was the 1956 how did you take the classroom to life or bring life to the

classroom in 1956 how can you do it now I mean so much more easily because of Technology with all the problems that are involved with that but nevertheless the idea of the poorest class in the classroom which has you know

Horace walls where you can life impacts on the classroom and you can take learners out and have them communicating with people in the real world that's fantastic but in 1956 people were saying this Peter Streete words was saying that so yeah no problem

with that 1964 the students should never be called upon to say anything that he has not already learned through imitation of his teacher thumbs up yeah good oh yeah I mean okay we know where this was coming from this was where this

is 1964 this was that's kind of this period sort of mid century where there was this kind of like retraction in terms of the generosity of the methodology it suddenly became very constrained and in fact I dare I say

this is how I was trained this was how I was trained that you know know the students mustn't say anything that they haven't heard you say first and they must write anything that they haven't seen written first because what will

happen if they say something that they haven't heard they might make a mistake then imagine all hell will break loose somebody might leave off the third person s and then other people pick it up and sooner or go through the class

like a virus so don't let them make mistakes that's how is I was trained my whole methodology initially was don't do anything and which students might possibly make a mistake and of course now we know we only learned through

making mistakes learn anyway so yes 97 so that's when I would say I'm not saying it's unequivocally wrong but I would question it now and the light of where we are like in 1961 forgive the gender bias in this quotation but that's

where we were 1961 the teacher must really be himself or herself and give himself or her so talking to real people about real things and then training his pupils to talk to one another about real things you've got your thumbs down

because okay okay not about the teacher yeah I think that implication is that they're talking about real things that relate to them so so in a sense it's not inconsistent with the idea we've been looked at before about authenticating

but of course if it's just the teacher whose agenda then of course that would be suspect but it is interesting again these notions of student-centered learning and student-centered driven content were around long before the advent of the communicative approach

which you think was at least another decade down the line a commander structure is more easily acquired by reading speaking and writing the language than by hearing and studying explanations you get it really speaking and writing the language then

by hearing and studying explanations yeah you are happy with that so again this is interesting also again given the date that it's a sort of like experiential skills based learning it doesn't say tasks based learning or project-based learning but that's the

natural extension is and if you take this idea of experiencing the language rather than learning about the language then we associate that with the communicative approach and everything that came after not with 1955 the key to language learning is well plan a lively drill

drill drill anyone want to commit themselves on this anybody happy with that the key the key okay not to say that drilling doesn't ever have a role that I would say which the key to anybody I mean correct me if I'm wrong I

think we may have moved on but I'm not holding as I say I mean I'm keeping my options open in terms of drilling and I'll come back to that point shortly and let the wonderful Lionel billows in this

book takes the language teach you said the language must not be allowed to stay in prison between the pages of a book and I think again this is part of a theme you see developing here but again this was in 1961 and one more

good measure this is a book for teaching juniors what we'll call juniors then they should feel the juniors the primary well the infant's should feel that each lesson is their lesson not that not the teachers in an English caste which is

well run the teachers only a guide that's amazing this is but this is actually before I was born and I thought these ideas were like progressive education you know 1980 is humanism caring and sharing in the classroom no

these were ideas so good ideas have been around for a very long time and this is one of the things we need to remind ourselves first of all there's nothing new Under the Sun but also may be worth

backtracking from time to time see what it is we can salvage from the history of English language teaching the archaeology of length English language teaching or language teaching generally or education generally see what is valid and relevant today and not pat ourselves

on the back too much that we're so modern and innovative most of these ideas have been around for a very long time so we're on teacher training courses and I'm be guilty of this as much as anybody there's a tendency to teach the history

of methods as if it were a bit like this the evolution of the species so we started off with these very kind of crude forms grammar translation and then we saw the light and more evidence based learning and research etc and so you

could map on to this all the various people you know Berlitz Parma Skinner Chomsky and of course the immortal Henry would assume as them as at the at the top of the ladders that were at the top of the tree this is how we teach the

narrative the modernist narrative which is methodology on courses you know methodology 101 kind of thing that it started off in the darkness but slowly we've been moving into the light and now we have wonderful methods and we have

the technology to to expedite them I'm not sure if it is if you look back it through my books and any other books on language teaching over the last 500 years or even more you'll find in fact it's not about evolution it's about sort

of revolution or recycling even and this is not an idea books that I had at all in fact Alistair penny called way back in 1989 looked at the history of methods and said actually it's just about the same basic parameters of your

life or factors that are being reconfigured for each generation the same things come round again and again but with different reconfigurations tart it up a little bit modern that will glassy etc and made ideologically acceptable for successive generations

but their basic the same options so what are these options and that's what I want to look at very quickly now what are the options he's talking about if you go to any definition of method in any of the

encyclopedias or dictionaries this is a very well-known one it's been around which isn't remit dictionary of language teaching reply linguistics they identify at least six dimensions if you like in terms of what these options are a method is going to have inbuilt into it some

views about the nature of language about the nature of language learning specifically second language learning about the goals and objectives about the types of syllabus the role of the teachers etc and the activities themselves and the procedures and

perhaps along with that the materials that go with these activities those some of that so looking for the these options that Pennycook was talking about this is where I went and well there's at least six different dimensions here let's see

how this pans out in fact so if we take the nature of language we can see that the history of methods is really being a pendulum swing between methods that focus on form on structure today we're going to do the present perfect

continuous and methods that focus on function today we're going to talk about how to make requests today we're going to do narration today we're going to talk about complaining or whatever you see what I mean is that very much has

been the trajectory in my own experience a swing between form and function not to say that one is better the other or that they aren't they can't both be implicated in language teaching but there the way that syllabus is

designed for example as often a reflection of a bias towards one end of that dimension or the other and then the nature of language also oh no this should be the nature of learning language not nature of language

whether the approach is analytic that is to say we're going to analyze the present perfect continuous we're going to take it apart and look at it and identify all its parts or whether is more experiential we're going to learn

it by actually using it in doing it and that would be the nature of of language learning and and I say yeah and again the pendulum has swung backwards and forwards over centuries between analyzing language and experiencing language a Scholastic academic approach

if you like on the one hand and then a more experienced you what are the goals of second language learning well again the goals have fluctuated between a focus on accuracy so when I was first trained was accuracy accuracy accuracy

hints no mistakes to drill drill drill to they get it right and then move on or communication so only after about a year of teaching or two years of teaching when I was very frustrated with the accuracy approach the community would

approach blessedly burst upon us and just in time as I would have given up teaching but I couldn't go and drilling for the rest of my life and communication came across and it was all bliss was it in that dawn to be alive it

really was it was like oh the shackles were off we could talk about anything in the classroom didn't matter if they made mistakes they never pass IELTS but you know hey so that's um so that's a very important

kind of distinction and then the kinds of syllabuses that we've seen over the years syllabuses is based on the systems that is a grammar of a dog phonology lexis whatever you want to put in there and and the skills reading writing

listening speaking etc and whether of course a more recent debate is whether the syllabus is segregated from the curriculum so we have your English language class or your French language class or your whatever on the one hand and then all the other subjects in the

curriculum or where the second languages are integrated into the other subjects so you're teaching math you're teaching biology or teaching geography through the target language a sin will no that would be an integrated curriculum and I put it the role of teachers and learners

and materials using the label from Richards and Schmidt I mean I've said cognitive and affective because I wanted to put that in somewhere I'm not sure I actually was listening to Chris's talk this afternoon I was thinking is

cognitive affective is a kind of relationship almost between teachers and learners whether the focus is on cognition more than I'll say effect that is to say emotion whole person learning etc and there has been a fluctuation in that direction and related to their to

the notion of the teacher as the transmitter of knowledge I am the teacher I know the present perfect continuous you do not know the present perfect continuous I'm going to teach you the present perfect continuous and you're going to be eternally grateful

and that would be the transmissive the transmissive rock and I got to test you I noticed you you won't be so grateful after that and then dialogic where it's more symmetrical the relationship between the teachers and the learners

and dialogic I'm borrowing of course acknowledging our Brazilian French here from the work of power of three where you have a more reciprocal relationship where we're learning as co-constructed between the people in the room as it were and finally the teaching procedures and

as all sorts of ways we could categorize these but a very basic distinction between deductive approaches this is the rule and I'm going to teach you the rule and then you're going to practice it versus inductive approach approaches that here are some examples

or here's a text or here's some corpus data you're going to work out the rule and then we're going to practice it and then of course a very important distinction in the second line which are in a very fraught distinction in the

sense that it generates a lot of heat is the role of the first language and the process should instruction a second language involve the first language or should we keep the first language right out of the picture because after all the

first language might interfere with the second language as I was originally trained so we've got bilingual approaches which involve both language learners both languages being compatible in the classroom and then monolingual approaches where you keep the first language out of the classroom

so those are some of the kind of options and if you can drag oh my ties them on like this you can see that there's one two three four five six seven eight nine at least options there that they are

presented as being diametrically opposed but of course they're not we know as teachers as administrators and as publishers and as course book writers and as teacher educators that in fact when it will be an interesting exercise to give this to a group of teachers they

situate yourself on these dimensions and you'd find what most teachers would probably draw a kind of wiggly line down the middle not committing themselves totally to a form-based approach who would who would I mean there must be some focus on meaning on functional and

language use in the classroom and so but some people might take a more radical stand and and push themselves either to the very far left or the very far right now you notice that in fact I've organized them so that there are there's

a commonality between most of these dimensions on this side and a commonality in if you had to take one method in the history of methods which method would you say which most down this end which for folks analytic

accuracy based on and bilingual grammar translation translation well this is the still the default method in many vast parts of the world people are still ready unless nothing wrong with that there's nothing wrong with it but that they're in a sense

missing out on some of the other things that could be going on in the curriculum if you had a method that was way over this end what will might it be yeah something experiential clearly something focus on meaning something which is more

sort of learner effective more holistic more integrated and so on and that would be one would be task based learning project-based learning activity based learning some again the things that Sarah mentioned I think which yes which are more engaging perhaps apart from

anything else so but that doesn't mean to say that there's not there's not all sorts of other possibilities down the middle different combinations of cetera the point is that this probably when you think about it just been only ever in

the history of language teaching being two methods two methods that is to say the methods that are associated the left of the top of the diagram and the methods and these I would say to attract the Scholastic academic intellectual

kind of methods versus the natural natural as in first language acquisition acquisition like experiential methods and everything else is just to be in a combination that's the point the Pennycook we're saying everything is just a permutation of those two basic

extremes yeah with me okay however method is the term method is very persistent in the literature it hasn't gone away just because we've reconfigured the framework aside like I said people still like talking about methods and and and Bell says in this article that came

out a few years ago methods and not dead teachers teaches themselves seem to be not only aware of the usefulness but they're kind of hungry to know more about methods and I'm interested in this as a teacher educator I'm interested in

why this is the case why has the notion of mere one of the reasons method hasn't gone away of course that for those reasons I said at the beginning it's associated with nice thing methods and new methods of systematic

methods of scientific etc no nobody's gonna gain say that and also the discourse of Education favors the use of the term method generally and but secondly if you go into websites you'll find and this is taken directly from

different websites that advertising different methods methods or materials or courses etc programs on the Internet and I've taken out the names but this is the term method it's easy to find again and again and again just Google language

learning method and 500 hundred hundreds of references so method as a as a term certainly hasn't gone away it's very durable and it has a certain potency and I think it was that reason that might have motivated me here's a bit of a shameless

plug to write a book called thirty teaching methods because I figure there is some something to be got from looking at these methods and going back part of the general interest of know more about our profession historically but looking

at what is in these methods now that we could take away from them what's in it for us so what I did in this book was two very very very briefly look at 30 different methods some of them going

quite a way back and to describe the method and then also to identify the takeaways now what this must have worked with somebody so it's trying to tease out what might be a takeaway from this and it's an interesting exercise apart

from anything else and also I think part of what I wanted to do was show that this is only thirty I mean but every but since I wrote this book over a year ago people have come in Abood she didn't

include such and such a method or what about XML that oh my god there may be a sequel which is the thirty more method [Laughter] you read it here first but but there is a serious side to that which is that not

only what we can take away but also we mustn't get trapped in a single method and that's the whole problem actually becomes blind or blinkered to the other possibilities that are out there just because the method that we've been

trained in says you should not do this and you should do that doesn't mean to say that perhaps there are alternatives and it might be worth exploring those alternatives and that's a very interesting teacher education professional development agender saying

okay I know that you did and I know you believe in this but how about doing it differently and just see what it feels like so that was half the point of this book and I think going back to Richards

and well going to Richards and Rogers here in their book on methods they're much more comprehensive book or methods which many of you will know have used as a textbook and is now in its third edition Karen is that right and it was a

it certainly it was a go-to book for me when I was writing my own book methods can be studied not as prescriptions notice how you should teach but as a source of will use practices which teachers can adapt or implement based on

their own needs so it's interesting and I think particularly for novice teachers for new teachers people come into the profession you can't just say to new teachers Oh doesn't really matter what you teachers go out there and you know

get a feel for it in an effort not to be prescriptive go with the flow no no no I mean you that's like forget it it's teachers need a structure they need routines they need a framework then over

time they can abandon that structure or they can adapt it they can find new frameworks they can incorporate such but initially methods do serve that kind of structuring role but the key thing here is not the method perhaps is whether the

teacher believes in it Jayne Spiro wrote the critical factor in success is the of a method as the commitment and belief of the teacher and the methods he or she is using and the continuing reflection of the teachers to earth I mean the two

things there the commitment belief on one hand and then the reflection on the other don't get stuck in the method just because you believe in it but belief in a method is very very important and I think Sara would confirm this is the

teachers own the the way that teacher projects his or her commitment and belief in the method is going to go a long way towards convincing the learners the method right you think you know even your hand is on my nose if the teacher

really believes that's going to help the learners will true all of these methods had practitioners and many of those predict practitioners were very convinced and the efficacy of those methods and the we we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that it's your

conviction as a teacher that is very very important and finally and I think Karin quoted this yesterday in her talk the British educate early British American education is William Dylan William visit said he's writing about curricula but I think it's a equally

applies in I'll show how it applies a bad curriculum well taught you get it a bad curriculum world toward is invariably a better experience for students than a good curriculum badly taught pedigree I hate the use of a verb

here but it's one we're lumped with pedagogical Trump's curriculum that it's a pedagogy is more important than the curriculum or more precisely pedagogy is curriculum because what matters is how things are taught rather than what is taught how things are taught rather than

what is taught and so if you take out the world curricula replace it by method I think it equally well applies a bad method of bad in the sense that we don't you know there's no there's no theoretical basis for this method like

grammar translation or for audio lingual ISM or whatever but if it's world torts and they're really better than that experienced in a good method like communicative approach which is badly taught petteri Trump's method or pedagogy is myth so the point is you know the point

that I'm trying to make is what's the name of this conference better learning it's all about better learning and better and as result of better teaching and the relationship between the two things it's not necessarily about a better method so when people come to me

and say that's Kai what's the what's the latest method what's the best method no I can't tell you that I don't actually think it matters I think the best method is the ones that your teachers are teaching well with conviction and

passion because they believe in it and because they believe in better learning this is what's becoming an expert professional is all about its learning it's was the term that was used earlier this morning I think in bridges talk

about adaptive expertise and the ability to recognize is actually say that that class I just did exactly the same lesson at nine o'clock it just didn't work at at 11 o'clock now why would a reflective teacher goes back it says okay I'm gonna

have to rethink here the non reflective teacher just soldiers on is if nothing had happened but but that ability to adapt if not on the spot but certainly in reflection is really really important I think this is why there is as you say

there's no best method because your reflective teacher will be constantly changing even if they're teaching supposedly from what just app method or app course book they were making adaptations for every different class that they teach and I mean it is true

that we do know not a lot more than we did a hundred years ago or even 50 years or even 20 years ago about how people learn languages or how people learn generally and there are still lots of

stuff that's coming and we know a lot more about language now so it would be false to say that in their sense yeah the picture that I painted of going around in circles it's not going around circles it's going around in a spiral

though each time we pick up on the same sort of techniques and approaches but we're they're informed by by new evidence at cetera at the same time in the social sciences you're always going to be well there's two problems here one

is that social science is generally being sort of soft science is always difficult to get convincing results from however much research that is done so they're always you'll say oh yeah but it's you know but that you didn't take into account such

and such and there's so many variables not least the teacher themselves and that's the point about the teacher being very committed doesn't any matter what she's teaching as long as she's committed to it in a sense but I think

we need as a profession to take evidence seriously and we need to be rigorous at the same time we need to keep a little bit of softness there and flexibility in wiggle room for the fact that there are

never going to be black and white answers to any of these questions and I do in fact the last chapter of the book of my methods booker's is on principle of good collectors is where I try to sort of say well this is but that itself

has been a concept that has been contested and people who say well actually this principle is just it's just it's an excuse for sort of lack of rigor I think that's a really interesting argument and discussion and I think it's one that's worth pursuing

and I totally agree with you Patrick as I said before the need for rigor at the same time I have to keep my options open and I you know I've got a lot softer now than I used to be I used to be as

Herbert well knows I used to be a strong critic of certain methodologies which I thought were too soft and too and rigorous and the Herbert and I have had very interesting discussions about that's coming from different and I think

we probably met in the middle now and I think this is something that you do learn with age and certain wisdom sets area you say yeah actually you know I was Herbert is probably one of the best teachers I know who have seen as the

talks in anything that I've ever met so I have to take what he does in the classroom seriously even if I find a little bit not sure if I would do that myself so this is what we learned

through experience not just our own personal experience but experience like this coming to accomplish letters and talking about them for me one of the most formative experiences in terms of my own development as a teacher trainer was going in to watch teachers who what

are you doing I wouldn't I was told never to do that and I was what and yet the students were loving it I said I really had to rethink it was a real major chip changing exercise like this

it gets all the rules but it seems to be some kind of effect not saying I was working in terms of language learning and this is one of the difficult things to ever trace how to what extent and

method is affect that's what they gave up in the nineteen Age one of the problems with the method approach was it was impossible to prove when you're compared to a method you could never rule out all the variables so you could

never say that yes this conclusive despite what people have said about particular method this you cannot say this method is conclusively better than that method Patrick is it the point there are some things you would never do in a classroom

and that's true and you're not going to get much mileage out of for example beating the students every time they make a mistake you would lose your job there's certain things you that are completely out of bounds but

there's a lot less that's out of bounds from my point of view than they used to be when I was rather more rigid in terms of my approach so there's a difference between rigor and rigidity and I would

go for rigor any day not rigidity but sometimes it's difficult to draw them whether these principles are explicit or implicit and I think that's a very interesting thing from an institutional point of view is whether you often they're not explicit and I'm not sure

that's a good idea that institution is running along with the same principles but they're not really very clear and they may have derived from a similar training procedure that all the people were trained in the same way initially

the same textbooks etc but what often brings out these principles and makes them explicit is some kind of crisis and the crisis maybe that's we're going to redesign at the end of course test for example and we're going to do that

together and I've never guarantee you get a group of teachers and groups planning a test and you see all sorts of issues come out there have been latent and suddenly it's all about with is it accuracy we should be testing or is it

fluency we should be testing is it communicative effectiveness should be testing should be testing holistically should we in testing subjectively or object to be etcetera etcetera etcetera now this is really important discussion to have and I'm very grateful again were

the organizations that I've worked and we've been able to make these principles explicit through activities like this joint syllabus writing joint test writing norming procedures whereby for example we're all going to listen to ah learn speaking recorded spontaneous speech

we're going to grade it on a scale of one to five and then give our reasons why we graded it's amazing the variety of different responses you will get in one institution people got white from one to five in terms of fluency or

whatever ranking so this is a very very important exercise I think at any institution is making these principles explicit because unless they're explicit you can't do anything about them Thank You Betsy I think we're probably out of time so I'll leave it to

[Applause] [Music]