A field of fashions
Language teaching has always been a field of fashions. Each decade seems to bring a new ‘answer’ to the question of how best to teach a second language: one method is hailed as revolutionary, another declared outdated, only for the cycle to repeat again. Teachers swap stories, academics publish papers and institutions cling to whatever approach promises measurable success. Yet after decades of debate and experimentation, one thing remains remarkably consistent: no single methodology has been proven superior across all contexts (Chang et al., 2011).
I’ve lived through several of these swings first . . .
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