Kuma 3 and Brown 4 and 16

Brown's chapter 4 was about various language learning principles and how to teach toward/for these principles.  To organize these principles he used sub categories, cognitive, affective, and linguistic principles. Automaticity is one of the cognitive principles which claims that "both adults and children must sooner or later move away from processing language unit by unit, piece by piece, focusing closely on each, and 'graduate' to a form of high-seed, automatic processing in which language forms are only on the periphery of attention." For me as a language learner I would like to know at which point in language does this actually occur?  Is this an ongoing struggle for even beginning level learners or is this principle to be used only for reaching level learners?  The book mentions that focus on form is not harmful but especially helpful when there are adult language learners, which makes me think that teaching through a variety of principles may be a good alternative to method.  The section on automaticity also mentions the quality of a teacher you need to be when teaching automaticity which is patience (one of the things I had in the beginning of the year on my list of qualities of teachers of ELLs). 
Chapter 16 concentrates on teaching listening.  In this chapter it mentions the silent period that language learners go through, which is nothing new to me, however, I would really like to know how to tell when a student is in a silent period (so that I am not grading them on low participation) and how to encourage them to speak?  The interactive model of listening gives processes that I have noticed in my beginning level learners at the ELI go through.  Finding out their background knowledge is always important so that they can decode a question based on the background vocabulary they have.  Many times, I will ask a question and get an answer that is unanticipated.  Like if I asked "Who is in your family?" and they respond "My family is in Nigeria." I can tell that they knew it was a "wh" question and about family and decoding the wh question went wrong.  Speaking of asking questions, I liked how Kuma broke down different types of questions to ask language learners.  the question that I mentioned above was I think a display question, because it had predetermined answers.  Kuma states that "learners' responses to referential questions [not display] were propositionally longer and grammatically more complex than their responses to display questions."  But if my students are not able to produce correct answers to these types of questions that are provided in real life contexts shouldn't they be valued just as much as the display questions? 

Bax, Skehan, Hu

Bax decribes in his article the end of the CLT approach and compares it to a context approach.  He points out that context is not included in the Methodology of CLT and purely the teachers support for communication.  In comparing the two he points out that CLT is very narrow in its approach, "CLT is the complete answer, If we don't have CLT, then we can't learn a language, No other factors count in learning a language--only teaching methodology, If you don't have CLT, then you are backward."  Context is so important to having a classroom community, a community of learners.  This is an intuitive reaction of good teachers.  I think it is unnatural to not take into account the context in which you are teaching.  They give examples of CLT not working in foreign classrooms. 
Hu also gives this example with Chinese schools.  The context and tradition of the schooling does not quite fit with the principles of CLT.  With the ultimatums that Bax describes, that CLT is the only way to learn language, when actually it is a small portion of language learning.  I believe if CLT was used in a general way or a portion of what is used in a class it could work in other contexts.  But then again Bax finds that "good teachers naturally take account of the context in which they teach."  Is it safe to say that good Chinese teachers that grew up in the context where they are practicing will take context into consideration naturally?  Just as elementary teachers in the United States figure out ways to teach outside of the textbook, even though they are required to, language teachers will use a variety of methods.  Is there such a thing as a teacher teaching with one method?
For me, an English teacher in the US, it helps me know about the contexts the students I have from different countries had in their first country.  Going to Mexico and actually seeing the various types of elementary schools that Mexican students are coming from helped immensely with how I view and will teach my students that are from Mexico.  This was an opportunity that I will never have with other countries.  How do we understand the contexts of education in other countries so that we can incorporate that into our language teaching?

Kumara's Article and Ch 3 of Brown

Chapter 3 of Brown goes more into detail about the different approaches language teachers take in comummunicative language teaching like learner-centered instruction, cooperative and collaborative learning, interactive learning, whole language education, content-based instruction and task-based instruction.  The book is directed towards already practicing teachers, and as a new tutorial teacher at the ELI I took it upon my self to analyze/start analyzing which aspects of these approaches I use in my classrooms.  I am not required to teach grammar, since I am meant to improve the communication skills of the students in the small 50 minute period that I have them.  But I will say that there are ways of making a communication class non-comunicative like Kumara's article suggests.  Researchers have found "so-called communicative classrooms they examined were anything but communicative" where "form was more prominent than function" (62).  It is hard especially with our culture and as a new teacher to allow for silence and thinking.  One of the things that I was warned before I went to my first class is that new teachers have a tendancy to speak too much, where the object is to get the students to speak.  Ofcourse in different contexts such as English as a Foreign Language, the teacher would have trouble making the students speak in the target language.  Even bilingual teachers will have difficulty having their students communicate in a way that is improving their language. 
Although CLT has been so widely acclaimed the fact that two teachers could be using the same method but for one teacher it is working and for the other teacher it is not working.  However for postmethod pedagogy Kuma says that "Any actual post method pedagogy has to be constructed by teachers themselves by taking into consideration linguistic, social, cultural, and political particularities" (69).  I feel as though the post method pedagogy is very adaptable to specific classes and teachers.

Kuma Ch. 1 and 2

Kuma starts off in chapter one describing the different roles of teachers.  The first are teachers as passive technicians which is when teachers are more concentrated on relaying the knowledge than actually teaching, using the knowledge that others have deemed worthy to transfer to generations of students.  He states that this "outlook inevitably leads to the dis empowerment of teachers whose classroom behavior is mostly confined to received knowledge rather than lived experience."  I feel as though this becomes a common trend in older "experienced" teachers.  Perhaps they started out with experimenting with theory and method, but eventually they become a drone of same-old same-old, tired and disempowered to change with changing times and changing classrooms.  The next role Kuma describes is the role of a reflective practitioner.  I find this to be an effective role in my teaching at the ELI.  We are supposed to write weekly reports reflecting on various aspects of the lesson, students, teaching.  I like how Kuma quotes that "anticipatory planning" is a role of a teacher.  He also says that "reflection-on-action can occur before and after a lesson."  I feel as though this is a helpful tool to go into the classroom with a changes you want to make to your teaching in advanced because that's when changes actually occur.  You cannot go into a classroom and just "wing it."  Somethings will work and some will not, and when they do not work analysis should be made on what caused that and which solutions to implement to avoid these in the future.  A couple characteristics of a reflective practitioner I really liked, they are aware of the "assumptions and values they bring to teaching" and are "attentive to the institutional and cultural contexts in which he or she teaches."  As much as good practice is important to understand, so is bad practice.  I think that it is human nature to use our past experience in our practice, whether it is good or bad experience or practice and that many teachers will teach as they have been taught, whether it was good practice or not.  Many of my education courses capitalize on this concept, asking students to recall things that occurred in our experiences as students to determine whether they were good or bad practices and whether to use them or not.  This is something that method neglects and postmethod recognizes.  Teachers have "tacit knowledge about teaching...by virtue of their lives as students."  When it comes to language learning, however, I feel as though I do not have that tacit knowledge as the postmethod suggests.  As much as I like to think that there is a relation between L2 learning among any age group, I never had the same experiences as a young ESL student trying to learn the common language of a country.  Although I have learned about the struggles of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse learners, and now am learning some of the best ways to teach them, will my not having a similar experiences as my students help or hinder their education?