A Case Study On Junior High School English Teachers’ Teaching Macro-strategies From The Perspective Of Post-method

In recent years, it seems that foreign scholars and Chinese scholars never quit their research on teachers’ teaching methods. Nevertheless, the outcome is not so satisfying. When it comes to the effect of teaching methods, Britain applied linguist Allwright even regarded it as “relative helplessness” and proposed “the death of method” in 1991. After that, some other scholars also showed their dissatisfaction with current methods. However, while people were feeling confused about the current situation, American scholar Kumaravadivelu(1994, 1999, 2003, 2006) put forward a large quantity of theories about post-method, which consist of “three pedagogic parameters” and “ten macro-strategies”. These theories allowed us to break away from the limitation of methods. It also aroused people’s awareness that the period of EFL teaching research has turned into post-method era.The thesis aims to do research on English teachers’ teaching macro-strategies in a junior high school. Both quantitative and qualitative methods have been used to investigate “ten macro-strategies” mentioned above. The subject of this research was chosen from a junior high school in Kunming. The aim of the research is to explore the relationship between these macro-strategies and the current situation of English teaching in junior high school. Furthermore, this research tries to investigate how the micro-strategies are embedded in the macro-strategies, and to what extent teachers are aware of these strategies. At last, the author hopes the study can help English teachers construct their own post-method framework. In the process of collecting data, Zhou’s questionnaires, Tao’s macro-strategies/mismatch observational scheme and semi-structure interview have been used. After the author collected data from student questionnaires, classroom teaching observation and teachers’ interview, he found that there is awareness about using macro-strategies among teachers, but such awareness should be further strengthened. After analyzing and discussing the results of the research, the author found that some micro-strategies are in accordance with Kumaravadivelu’s macro-strategies. But the characteristics of macro-strategy construction were somewhat different. In contrast to teaching objective and teaching content, teachers paid more attention to those macro-strategies of teaching technique and teaching interaction.