Beyond Methods: Macrostrategies for Language Teaching

I was fortunate to attend the training session by the Linguistic Genius, Dr. B Kumaravadivelu. It was 2007, when Dr. Kumar gave teachers training to CTA teachers. His one hour presentation cum talk cum training taught me about Language Teaching. "Language teaching is more than teaching a language" - Dr. Kumar.

Wanting to explore further about Language teaching, I read his book "Beyond Methods - Macrostrategies for Language Teaching". The book is a wealth of resources for Language teachers. There is lot to learn in every page. To write what I think about this book, I will have to reproduce the whole book here which is not practical. I present here the key points I learned from the book. My objective here is not to write a book report or review. It is about presenting the key concepts, and strategies I understood from the book.

"It is not instruction," said Ralph Waldo Emerson, "but provocation that I can most accept from another soul". This opening statement from the book tells what the main job of a teacher should be. It is not the instruction, but provocation. Teachers job is not to just give instruction, but, it is to enable students to think, question, learn, and improve.

A macrostrategic framework consisting of 10 macrostrategies is presented to help teachers become strategic thinkers and practitioners. The key lesson here is to go beyond known and currently practiced methods since the known methods are limiting. Involve learners in the creation and utilization of lesson plan.

What is our job as a teacher? A teacher's job is not just to passively transmit knowledge; it is to be a transformative intellectual.

He talks about three language teaching appraoches:

• Language Centered - Language-centered methods are those that are principally concerned with linguistic forms, also called grammatical structures. This approach has limited value in helping the learner acquire language.
• Learner Centered - Learner-Centered Methods are those that are principally concenred with language use and learner needs. While this is lightly better than Language-centered approach, the value is still limited
• Learning Centered - Learning-Centered Methods are those that are principally concerned the learning processes. These methods seek to provide opportunities for learners to participate in open-ended meaningful interaction through communicative activities or problem-solving tasks in class. Language development is considered more incidental than intentional.

All these methods have limitation. To address the limitations in these methods, Dr. Kumar presents a macrostrategic framework consisting of the following macrostrategies. (Copied from the book as is)

• Maximize learning opportunities: This macrostragy envisages teaching as a process of creating and utilizing learning opportunities, a process in which teachers strike balance between their role as managers of teaching acts and their as mediators of learning acts.
• Minimize perceptual mismatches: This macrostrategy emphasizes the recognition of a potential perceptual mismatches between intentions and interpretations of the learner, the teacher, and the teacher educator.
• Facilitate negotiated interaction: This macrostrategy refrs to meaningful learner-learner, learner-teacher classroom interaction in which learners are entitled and encouraged to initiate topic and talk, not just react and respond.
• Promote learner autonomy: This macrostragey involves helping learners learn how to learn, equipping them with the means necessary to self-direct and self-monitor their own learning.
• Foster language awareness: This macrostrategy refrs to any attempt to dra leaners' attention to the formal and functional properties of their L2 in order to increase the degree of explicitness required to promote L2 learning
• Activate intuitive heuristics: This macrostrategy highlights the importance of providing rich textual data so that learners can infer and internalize underlying rules governing grammatical usage and communicative use;
• Contextualize linguistic input: This macrostrategy highlights how language usage and use are shaped by linguistic, extralinguistic, situational, and extrasituational contexts
• Integrate language skills: This macrostrategy refers to the need to holistically integrate language skills traditionally separated and sequenced as listening, speaking, reading, and writing
• Ensure social relevance: This macrostrategy refers to the need for teachers to be sensitive to the societal, political, economic, and educational environment in which L2 learning and teaching take place;
• Raise cultural consciousness: This macrostrategy emphasizes the need to treat learners as cultural informants so that they are encouraged to engage in a process of classroom participation that puts a premium on their power/knowledge

Dr. Kumar presents detailed explanations on each of the above in separate chapters. It is best to read the book. I would say every language teacher must read this book. Read the book, understand the strategies, and transform yourself and become better language teacher.


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