SARANI GHOSAL MONDAL (NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY )

ESL/ EFL AND POSTMETHOD PEDAGOGY : METHODOLOGIES AND TEACHING APPROACHES

Dealing with adult learners at the tertiary level is not so easy in countries like India because of varied socio-political influences. India is a multi-racial and multi-lingual country, where each state has its indigenous culture, customs, and creeds, which affect the learning of English as EFL/ESL. A classroom in the institutes of higher learning is governed by cultural and lingual heterogeneity. Many a time, adult learners also display ‘resistance code behaviour’ because of the influence of the personal socio-cultural situation of the learner. Any pre-determined method is not useful because it is not a homogenous grouping. Keeping this in mind, this paper will focus on the relevance of postmethod pedagogy in an ESL/EFL classroom, where different approaches are being adopted to make learners independent thinkers and speakers. Postmethod pedagogy is based on three parameters: particularity, practicality, and possibility as explained by B. Kumaravadivelu in his paper entitled: “Toward a Postmethod Pedagogy”. These three Ps rely on a humanistic approach on the part of the facilitator. Each adult learner is a case or situation. The individual experiences affect learning as well as speaking. Therefore, the postmethod pedagogy has an integral approach that deconstructs the ‘monolithic matrix’ of traditional method-based pedagogy of ESL/EFL.

Sarani Ghosal Mondal is an Associate Professor of English in the department of Humanities & Social Sciences at National Institute of Technology Goa, India. Her areas of interest include Applied Linguistics, Gender and Culture Studies