September 21

Reading Chapter 4 in the textbook really opened my eyes to the idea of mismatches in the classroom. It is so important for us as teachers to be conscious of this before entering the classroom so that we are well-equipped to turn them into opportunities. It was really striking for me that in the episodes in the chapter, the teachers were actually unaware at times that they were even occuring, leaving the students very confused. I loved the questionnaires that were included in the chapter because it is clear that if the students and teachers are aware that mismatches are unavoidable and are going to happen, it will be much easier to use these situations as learning opportunities.

In Kumaravadivelu's article, Toward a Postmethod Pedagogy, he talks about the three parameters of particularity, practicality, and possibility. As I was reading about the parameter of particularity, I thought back to last week's readings, particularly Guangwei Hu's article, which discusses the use of CLT in the People's Republic of China. The article states that "It is dangerous for educational policymakers to take an 'autonomous' attitude as opposed to an 'ideological' one, to pedagogical innovation and to succumb to shifts in intellectual fashions" (102). We need to recognize that every situation and context calls for its own particular methods and practices, and Kumaravadivelu emphasizes this concept yet again with this parameter. He gives great examples of trying to implement CLT in classrooms around the world, such as in "Pakistan, Shamim (1996) reports that her attempt to introduce communicative language teaching into her classroom met with a great deal of resistance from her learners, making her 'terribly exhausted' and leading her to realize that, by introducing this methodology, she was actually 'creating psychological barriers to learning' (p. 109)." For me, this is all coming back to refusing to accept just one single end-all, be-all method that is going to work in any situation or context. It is clear that context, in every aspect of the word, plays a huge role in deciding which method(s) to use in the classroom.