reading of a particular method in this book saying, ‘This would never work where I
teach.’ While there is no doubt some truth to this position, and certainly teachers are
in a good position to judge the feasibility of a method, it would be a mistake to reason
that every situation is so unique that no similarities exist among them. Indeed, ‘it is a
very large claim that the process of language acquisition—a basic human attribute—
itself varies according to contextual factors’ (Prabhu 1990: 166). Indeed, learners are
very versatile and can learn well sometimes despite a given method rather than
because of it. What is true, though, is that there are sociopolitical reasons or demands
on teachers which may make one method more acceptable than another in a given
context.
There is another version of the relativist position, one that we might call pluralism,
which many other teachers find reasonable. Rather than deciding to adopt or reject
methods in their entirety as being suitable or unsuitable for a particular context, they
believe that there is some value to each method. Instead of believing that different
methods should be practiced in different contexts, they believe that different methods,
or parts of methods, should be practiced in the same context (Prabhu 1990). For
example, by playing the believing game, they see that the multiple perspectives on
language represented by methods in this book—that language is literary, deals with
everyday situations, is made up of patterns, rules, sounds, vocabulary, notions, and
functions, is meaningful, comprises texts, is used for interactions, and is a medium
through which to learn certain content, accomplish certain tasks, or become
empowered—are all true. Moreover, if language is complex, then it makes sense that
learning it is also complex, and therefore that associationism, habit formation, rule
formation, interactionism, emergentism, etc. can all be true or at least partially true,
although no single truth necessarily accounts for the whole of language acquisition.
Then, too, although teachers know that there are many similarities among students,
they also know that ‘each group has its own special characteristics, and that successful
teaching requires the recognition and acknowledgement of this uniqueness’ (Bolster
1983: 298, cited in Larsen-Freeman 1990; Allwright and Hanks 2009).
When teachers who subscribe to the pluralistic view of methods pick and choose
from among methods to create their own blend, their practice is said to be eclectic.
Remember, though, that methods are coherent combinations of techniques and
principles. Thus, teachers who have made their beliefs explicit—have constructed
their own theories—and fashion a teaching approach in accordance with their theories
(which may very well make allowances for differences among students), could be said
to be practicing principled eclecticism. They are in effect creating their own method
by blending aspects of others in a principled manner.
We should hasten to add that from an external perspective, it may be difficult to
distinguish eclecticism from principled eclecticism. Remember that a method involves
both thoughts and actions. We would not want to label teachers’ methods simply by