Bala Kumaravadivelu

San Jose State University | SJSU · Department of Linguistics and Language Development

In this reflective article that straddles the personal and the professional, the author shares his critical thoughts on the impact of the steady stream of discourse on the native speaker/nonnative speaker (NS/NNS) inequity in the field of TESOL. His contention is that more than a quarter century of the discoursal output has not in any significant w...

The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.

In the context of task-based language teaching, a challenge facing the language teaching profession is to determine how learners perceive and treat the formal and functional properties of language learning tasks. The preliminary study reported here presents the interplay between teacher objectives, task input, peer interaction and learner perceptio...

This article traces the major trends in TESOL methods in the past 15 years. It focuses on the TESOL profession's evolving perspectives on language teaching methods in terms of three perceptible shifts: (a) from communicative language teaching to task-based language teach- ing, (b) from method-based pedagogy to postmethod pedagogy, and (c) from syst...

This book traces the historical development of major language teaching methods in terms of theoretical principles and classroom procedures, and provides a critical evaluation of each. Drawing from seminal, foundational texts and from critical commentaries made by various scholars, Kumaravadivelu examines the profession's current transition from met...

As a consequence of repeatedly articulated dissatisfaction with the limitations of the concept of method and the transmission model of teacher education, the L2 profession is faced with an imperative need to construct a postmethod pedagogy. In this article, I conceptualize the parameters of a postmethod pedagogy, offer suggestions for implementing...

My primary purpose in this article is to conceptualize a framework for conducting critical classroom discourse analysis (CCDA). I begin with a critique of the scope and method of current models of classroom interaction analysis and classroom discourse analysis, arguing that they offer only a limited and limiting perspective on classroom discourse....

SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION: SOCIOCULTURAL AND LINGUISTIC ASPECTS OF ENGLISH IN INDIA. AgnihotriR. K. and KhannaA. L. (Eds.). New Delhi: Sage, 1994. Pp. xiii + 389. $39.95 cloth. - Volume 17 Issue 3 - B. Kumaravadivelu

THE OTHER TONGUE: ENGLISH ACROSS CULTURES (2ND ED.). KachruBraj B. (Ed.). Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992. Pp. xxv + 384. $44.95 cloth, $19.95 paper. - Volume 16 Issue 4 - B. Kumaravadivelu

Recent explorations in L2 pedagogy signal a shift away from the conventional concept of method toward a “postmethod condition” that can potentially refigure the relationship between theorizers and teachers by empowering teachers with knowledge, skill, and autonomy. So empowered, teachers could devise for themselves a systematic, coherent, and relev...

Synthesizing theoretical and empirical insights from second-language acquisition, cognitive psychology, information processing, schema theory, and parallel distributed processing, this paper proposes an interactive framework of intake processes. It identifies intake factors and intake processes and argues that these factors and processes interweave...

If, as research reveals, even those teachers who are committed to communicative language teaching (CLT) fail to create genuine communication in their classrooms, it is partly because teacher educators have not given them the necessary tools to achieve their desired goals. This paper proposes that a framework of five macrostrategies offers a possibl...

Recent explorations in task-based pedagogy have pointed out that learning outcome is the result of a fairly unpredictable interaction between the learner, the task, and the task situation. From the teacher's perspective, then, achievement of success depends largely on the degree to which teacher intention and learner interpretation of a given task...

A balanced view of ethnic variation in a multilingual, multicul tural classroom is imperative in the context of maximizing learning potential in the second/foreign language classroom. The study reported here supports the hypothesis that the rules and norms governing L2 classroom interactional patterns will take on new dimensions depending as much o...

Several papers have appeared on the strategies of communication used by L2 learners. However, very little work has been done to determine the underlying psychological processes that generate communication strategies (CS). This paper assumes that any description of CS should be based on a description of the processes governing CS. The paper attempts...