Celce-Murcia's article, I found, was the very user-friendly. It was easy to read and understand the brief history of language teaching, and I found the bullet point chart quite useful to organize so many methods. I was able to recognize many bullet points of the later methods from my own high school language learning. Some of the more recent theories can still be partially found in classrooms!
After reading both of the articles, I couldn't get one image out of my head. Reading about how each method replaced another reminded me of fad diets. Researchers find one method and see that it works. Then they find out that certain aspects aren't being adequately tended to, and they find another one to replace it. It seems like a money-making market to the researchers and the theorists to me. And all this time I'm wanted to yell, "What about what's best for the students!" I feel that now the theorists are still leaning towards a best method (whatever that is...) to teach students quickly and efficiently, even though many authors of the articles we've been reading swear against it. Which is why, at the end of the Kumaravadivelu article, when he stated that task-based learning is the newest non-method approach to teaching and a sort of awakening toward language teaching, I wondered what is coming next? Surely this is another fad, as it follows the same pattern as the previous ones, replacing the seemingly outdated methods of teaching. The author made it seem as if this approach is the end-all. But I took a different view: Is task-based teaching really the total potential of language teaching and learning? TESOL seems too new to have already figured everything out. Or is this a new method hiding under the fact that it claims NOT to be a method, and just part of the research (or fad) stage? If that is true, then what will come next?
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