Appropriate Methodology

(Context and Culture in Language Education)

Adrian Holliday (1994) argues that for language education to be effective it must be relevant and
appropriate to the particular social context and culture in which it takes place. He points out that
classroom instruction, approaches and methods, materials and tests must cater to the particular
learners in a particular setting and that lack of consideration of the specificity of context and
culture that one is working with may result in disappointment and failure. Holliday critiques the
Western model of oral-based communicative language teaching and learner-centredness, and of
the dominant ‘native speaker’ approach in ELT in the Periphery. According to him, ELT
principles and practices must be sensitive to local contextual realities and cultural traditions to be
effective. He also advocates for the use of ethnographic action research into local contexts for
making language teaching methodologies more culture-sensitive.

Context

In ELT, ‘context’ refers to the sociocultural, political, demographic and economic conditions in
which language education takes place. Contexts around the world are diverse and language
educators need to be sensitive to the particular demands and needs of the learners in their
workplace. Methods borrowed from the West may not work in a different language learning
context because of lack of sensitivity towards the local classroom cultures in which they are
implemented. In Bangladesh, for example, we have a three-pronged education system with
mainstream Bangla medium institutions, English medium schools concentrated in urban areas
and madrasas or Islamic religious schools. Appropriate methodology will take into account
differences between these institutions in terms of learners’ background, resources and logistic
support available, etc. If the direct method is considered as appropriate for English medium
schools, it does not mean that the same method will work well in all Bangla-medium schools.
Again, two Bangla medium schools with very different classes, teachers and facilities will
require different approaches and methods for achieving success in language education. Whereas
a task-based approach may work in a class of twenty students, interaction and communication
may become too ambitious a goal in a class of a hundred. Success itself has to be defined,
therefore, not in an ideal world, but in terms of the existing set up in the institutions.

BANA & TESEP

Holliday (1994) makes a distinction between contexts in which language teaching methodologies
are developed and internationally dominant literature on English language education is published
and contexts where those methodologies are borrowed and implemented. He calls the former
context BANA -- derived from the initial letters of Britain, Australasia and North America.
Language teaching methodologies are designed in BANA with an “instrumental approach” in
mind as thousands of adult learners of English visit BANA countries with a clear goal of learning
English, often a particular type of English. Private language schools and university ESL
departments usually provide training to those groups of learners in return for money depending
on the learners’ needs. Many of the teaching ideas, approaches that BANA has offered to the rest
of the world have emerged from this experience of providing language instruction on a
commercial basis in a private setting. This can be contrasted with the state sector ELT in the rest
of the world where students learn English as part of the curriculum at the tertiary, secondary and
primary levels. Holliday (1994) has coined the term TESEP with initials from “tertiary,
secondary, primary” (p. 12) to refer to this latter context. Thus methodologies borrowed from the
instrumental BANA context may not always work in state sector TESEP context without local
adjustments and adaptations.

Micro social aspects

While talking about the social context of English language education, he makes a distinction
between macro and micro aspects. If a classroom represents the micro aspects, the “wider
societal and institutional influences on what happens in the classroom” (p. 13) represent the
macro aspects. Holliday argues that influences from outside the classroom have to be examined
carefully to understand what happens between people inside the classroom. The classroom is a
“microcosm of wider society” (p. 19) and what happens within it reflects the world outside it.
The classroom is situated in a host institution and will be influenced by the host institutions’
educational environment. Influences from parents, guardians, employers, market forces, other
institutes in competition will all have a bearing on the classroom. The respective peer and
reference groups of students and teachers, i.e. other students and role models in the family for
students and colleagues and professional associations for teachers, will also form part of the
educational environment referred to above. Another influence on the classroom is the prescribed
learning materials, such as The English for Today coursebook published by NCTB in
Bangladesh, and the content and methodologies that the materials carry. Again, political and
bureaucratic organizations within the wider society, the economy, resources and facilities
available for teaching and learning will have an impact on what happens between teacher and
students inside the classroom.

Need for classroom ethnography and “thick description”

Holliday (1994) suggests that the classroom teacher, researcher or curriculum developer must
investigate the classroom in order to arrive at appropriate methodologies. One way of doing is by
doing classroom ethnography by embarking upon “thick description” (p. 5). Thick description
here refers to indepth analysis and description of the many fragmented pictures we have of our
classroom. When these small fragments are analysed, understood and put together they will
produce a bigger picture of the particular setting we are concerned about. An ethnographic
exploration of our classroom is therefore vital in making sense of our pedagogic practices.

Large culture versus small culture

From the perspective of national cultures, there are differences between western and Asian
classrooms in terms of teacher’s and students’ roles, preferred modes of teaching and learning.
Julian Edge (1996) points out that the teaching environments of many ESL/EFL contexts may be
very different from the western setting and, therefore, western-trained teachers often encounter
incompatibilities on their return home. For example, when the teacher is deliberately or
subconsciously moving away from a teacher-centred style that learners are used to s/he is seen as
disappointing her/his students for whom teacher dominance or teacher control is the culturally
sanctioned basis of good teaching. Raqib Chowdhury’s (2004) comments on the mainstream
context and culture in Bangladesh seem to confirm Edge’s observations:

In Bangladesh students expect teachers to be authority figures and the teaching methods
to conform to lock-step teacher-centred approaches where teachers give orders to
students, who then comply. By the time students are enrolled at a university, they have
already completed a twelve-year schooling with English as a compulsory subject. In the
pre-university years, students are not exposed to skills development courses. Hence the
more communicative approaches they come across for the first time at the university
seem to them foreign….Students feel tempted to discard the new style and complain that
the teacher is not teaching when tasks and activities are done in the class without meeting
the sociocultural expectations of the students. This may be because the sense of security
and order, which they found in the familiar routines in which they knew their status and
role, had suddenly been violated by something new. They are no longer familiar with the
rules of this new game. (p. 30)

Holliday, however, makes a distinction between “large culture” and “small culture” and
emphasizes “small culture” as critical for understanding and facilitating language education. He
argues that discussions of large culture such as national culture or ethnic culture often lead to
misleading overgeneralizations and misconceptions about learners, learning style preferences in
particular nations. Small classroom cultures may vary from context to context but it does not
mean that all classes in a certain Asian country will necessarily be different from all classes in a
country in Western Europe. There may be more similarities between two classroom cultures in
two different regions than between two institutions in the same geographical area. Thus although
there may be certain national traits influencing classrooms in a country, the world cannot be
“neatly divided into national categories” (Holliday, 2009, p. 146) in terms of their cultures.
According to Halliday (1994), stereotypical national cultural definitions are often the basis of
“destructive ethnocentricity” and “it is more useful to talk about the cultures of individual
classrooms and of individual teacher and student groups” (p. 6). It is because these small cultures
are close to us and we are more likely to know about them as we participate in them on a daily
basis. The small classroom culture in a particular setting, therefore, has to be the main
consideration while selecting classroom tasks, methods or techniques, materials and tests.

There is often conflict of interests between those who attempt at curriculum innovation and those
who are supposed to implement it. ‘Culture’ is often used as a rallying point against change and
innovation. According to Holliday (1994), there is a need for constructive dialogue and mutual
understanding between both parties to find a satisfactory solution to local challenges. Local
‘culture’ must be understood and acted upon and should not be seen as a constraint.

Classrooms as coral gardens

Classrooms constitute small cultures. There are tacit understandings about what sort of behaviour
is acceptable providing guidelines for both teachers and students in the classroom. The cultures
of individual classrooms are transmitted to new members and are then strengthened by their
acceptance. That does not mean cultures cannot change as indeed they do as Holliday (1994)
argues:
 Although the classroom culture is largely conservative, it is also open to large degrees of
change. This is specially the case in English language education, which has given birth to
a proliferation of new methodologies. (p. 27)

However, we must be wary of sudden change or large scale reform:

Where the change is too harsh, crisis leads to the closing of ranks among both teachers
and students. If the structure they are used to seems at risk, they hang on to their cultural
values and resist…change can only be effective if crisis is avoided, through deep
understanding of the classroom culture. Teacher agendas easily fail, and classrooms fall
into irreconcilable conflict when classroom cultural forces are not understood and worked
with. (ibid, p. 27-8)

To understand classroom cultures we have to delve deep into the complexities that exist under
the surface. Breen (1986, cited in Holliday, 1994, p. 31) conceptualizes classrooms as “coral
gardens” as the outer surface of the reef visible to us barely reveals the mysterious and complex
life forms under the surface. Like coral reefs, complexities in a classroom can only be seen and
understood when thoroughly investigated by the sincere ethnographer.

Tissue rejection
ELT aid projects sponsored by UK, USA donor agencies often have little success in changing
classroom teaching and learning practices. Task-based and interactive pedagogy, promoted under
project support is not always well-received within the host institutions which have had a history
of teacher-fronted and transmission pedagogy. Holliday (1994) calls this ‘tissue rejection’ using
a metaphor from medical science. When patients need a replacement organ in the event of an
organ failure, the success of the new implant depends on the acceptance of the new organ by the
whole system of the body. If the new organ does not work in harmony with the rest of the body,
the organ transplant fails known as ‘tissue rejection’ (p. 134). In the same way, ELT innovations
are often rejected by the host educational institutions when project aid runs out.

Conflicting agendas: teachers and students at cross purposes

Holliday (1994) reveals that students and teachers have their own agendas once a class is
underway. Thus, the teachers and students might have differing expectations, goals and
aspirations for a lesson. When students and teachers are at cross purposes, the lesson might not
be successful. Teachers should not think that students will simply take in what they are
delivering or learn what they want them to learn. It is important for teachers to investigate and
understand students’ culture and to discuss and negotiate classroom activities for the benefit of
all sides concerned. In many Asian classrooms, students prefer to listen to the teacher and take
notes rather than participate in classroom activities. Collaboration and participation may be
preferred outside the classroom rather than inside the classroom in the presence of the teacher.
Inside the classroom, as Canagarajah (2004) clarifies, there are hidden spaces or “safe houses”
that provide a safe site for students to negotiate their roles and identities in their own way (p.
120). Thus, even though the school policy required everyone to use English only, students might
employ code-mixing while interacting with each other when they are not watched or monitored.
In the same way, students might resort to silent translation as a reading strategy in classrooms
where instruction is strictly in the target language.

Shahidullah (2002) emphasizes the importance of learning about students’ culture for teachers to
be successful and effective. Citing research by Hatano and Miyake, he provides three reasons for
this view. Firstly, with the help of knowledge about the culture of students, teachers can set up
situations in the classroom which correspond to learners’ culture outside the classroom.
Secondly, teachers can design instruction based on prior knowledge of learners so that they can
make connections and learn quickly and with ease and pleasure. Thirdly, teachers’ success in
implementing any kind of learning depends a great deal on their knowledge of learner beliefs and
values. If there is a mismatch between what the teacher does in the classroom and what students
desire, very little learning will take place. As Shahidullah (2002) clarifies:

…language teachers specially need to know the preferred learning styles and content
expectations of their students. If students in a learning culture feel, for example, that
second language learning is mainly a question of knowing in explicit detail the rules of
grammar, then this has clearly an effect on their learning, no matter whether they are
‘right’ or ‘wrong’ to hold to such views. Anything different from their expectations
develops an internal resistance for learning (p. 88).

Appropriate pedagogy

Shahidullah (2002) urges ELT practitioners in Bangladesh to devise an “appropriate ELT

pedagogy” based on “a respect for and recognition of cultural diversity” (p. 90). It should not be
based on cultural stereotypes but on a view of culture as a dynamic changing phenomenon. That
is, it recognizes traditional local cultural practices as well as new patterns of behaviours
emerging from global connectedness. Thus an appropriate pedagogy acknowledges the link
between local and global cultures and proposes to address both local diversity and global
connectedness. Shahidullah cites Berman to put forward the mantra of appropriate pedagogy
which is “think globally; act locally” (ibid, p. 93). What it means is that it is imperative to
examine both the existing teaching-learning practices of a particular context and the extent to
which pedagogical developments in the field elsewhere “prove culture sensitive to that specific
teaching-learning culture” (ibid, p. 93). Shahidullah goes on clarify that an “integration of the
apparently contradictory ideas of the traditional and progressive modes of teaching and learning”
can be beneficial for ELT in a given context. Basu (2013, p. 157) concurs with the ideas of
integration between the local and the global emphasized by Shahidullah (2002):
Global innovations in pedagogy have to be continuously synthesized with the locally
valued practices to forge a pedagogy that will serve all-stakeholders in the longer term.
Bangladeshi ELT practitioners must use local knowledge and awareness of global
developments to develop their own expertise in ELT.
According to Shahidullah (2002), an appropriate pedagogy will be a bottom-up one (as opposed
to top down methods imposed on teachers) based on a careful analysis of:
 Learners’ and teachers’ past experience of teaching and learning
 Learners’ preferred mode of teaching and learning

 Potentials and constraints of the situation

Listening to learners’ voices is an imperative in a bottom up approach to pedagogy. The lesson

should be made relevant to learners by making links between lesson content and learners' past
knowledge and experience, their history and tradition. Kumaravadivelu (1999) reveals what can
happen when the classroom teacher fails to hear students’ voices. He discusses a lesson by
Debbie, an American ESL teacher, and her non-American students where the teacher does not
tap into the learner’s culture. The lesson, therefore, loses relevance for her non-American
students and they resist her teaching method by either remaining silent or answering only in
monosyllables.

Shahidullah suggests that ELT in EFL/ESL contexts need an “antimethods pedagogy” (Macedo,
1994, cited in Shahidullah, 2002), a pedagogy that does not blindly follow one model but will
instead take an “eclectic approach” and “use whichever methods prove effective with a particular
group of students in a particular context” (p. 95). That does not mean the tried and tested in
pedagogy will be marginalized, however, as he clarifies:

…a repertoire of classroom procedures that reportedly work well in other contexts should
be prepared and trial tested in EFL/ESL contexts, and if found effective, those must be
used in combination with other existing but effective methods in that context.

Conclusion

Lack of attention to the wider educational needs and cultures of the learners in diverse ESL/EFL
contexts has produced less than satisfactory outcome in English language education. As Holliday
(1994) admits, the communicative approach developed in the BANA context and adopted in its
narrow form has been reported as a failure in delivering the goods in TESEP contexts.

Teachers return from training programmes unable to implement what they have learnt,
because it does not fit the conditions, needs and philosophies of their classrooms,
students, institutions and communities. (Holliday, 1994, p. 2)

Similarly, educational aid programmes based on western models have enjoyed limited success in
the developing world for the same reason. Innovations in state sector ELT in Bangladesh, for
example, largely based on UK and US models and supported by donor-agencies, have been
“characterized by wild swings from one extreme to another” (Basu 2013, p. 157) and have
achieved rather modest success as a result (Hamid 2010). Commenting on state sector ELT in
Bangladesh, Basu (2013) points out that whereas the earlier system prioritized critical literacy
skills with little provision for everyday communication, the innovative pedagogic model works
on a narrowly-defined construct of communicative competence with little regard for critical,
creative or analytical skills. Whereas literature was the focal point in the previous approach, the
new approach virtually banished it from the curriculum. ELT reform efforts have thus been
driven by the rhetoric of a complete overhaul rather than by any pragmatic consideration of
contextual and cultural factors (p. 157). An appropriate ELT pedagogy in this context would be a
harmonious fusion between the local and the global depending on what works in practice.

Bibliography and further reading

Basu, B. L. 2013. Critical pedagogy and appropriation of English in post-colonial ELT in

Bangladesh. IATEFL 2012 Glasgow Conference Selections. Canterbury: IATEFL.

Canagarajah, S. 2004. Subversive identities, pedagogical safe houses, and critical learning. In B.
Norton and K. Toohey (eds.), Critical Pedagogies and Language Learning. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

Chowdhury, R. 2004. The Cultural Disillusionment Factor in International TESOL Training. The
Dhaka University Studies. 59(1&2) & 60(1): 29-54.

Edge, J. 1996. Cross-cultural paradoxes in a profession of values. TESOL Quarterly. 30(1): 9-31.

Holliday, A. 1994. Appropriate Methodology and Social Context. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

Holliday, A. 2009. The role of culture in English language education: key challenges. Language
and Intercultural Communication. 9(3): 144-155.

Hamid, M. O. 2010. Globalization, English for everyone and English teacher capacity: language
policy discourses and realities in Bangladesh. Current issues in Language Planning. 11/2: 289-
310.

Kumaravadivelu, B. 1999. Critical Classroom Discourse Analysis. TESOL Quarterly. 33(3):

453-484.

Shahidullah, M. 2002. Developments in Learning Theories and the Concept of Appropriate ELT
Pedagogy. Panini: NSU Studies in Language & Literature. Vol.1: 79-98.

Study questions:

i. What does ‘context’ mean? How does context influence pedagogy?

ii. What do the acronyms BANA and TESEP refer to?
iii. Distinguish between macro and micro social contexts. How are they related?
iv. What is the difference between large culture and small culture, according to Holliday
(1994)?
v. What is meant by “thick description”?
vi. Why are classrooms compared with ‘coral gardens’?
vii. What does ‘tissue rejection’ refer to?
viii. What happens when students and teachers have conflicting goals?
ix. Why is it important for teachers to learn about students’ cultures?
x. What is ‘appropriate pedagogy’?
xi. How do the local and the global interact in contemporary language pedagogy?
xii. Evaluate the role of context and culture in determining appropriate methodology /
pedagogy for an EFL/ESL programme.