48

O texto a seguir apresenta lacunas numeradas de 41 a 51, das quais foi omitida uma ou mais palavras. Assinale a alternativa que apresenta a palavra ou expressão que completa corretamente cada uma das lacunas numeradas, tanto quanto à correção gramatical como quanto ao sentido e estruturação do texto.

Why talk about language teaching methods at all? In recent years, a number of writers have criticized the very concept of (41) in our field. “Let’s just focus on learners and teachers and everything else will fall into place,” they seem to suggest. Some say that teachers see methods as prescriptions for classroom behavior and follow them too (42) , too inflexibly. By contrast, others argue that in planning their lessons, (43) don’t really think about codified methods at all. In the one view, methods and the prefabricated materials that embody them (44) teachers to mere technicians; in the other, teachers are mere improvisers in the here-and-now, with no use for general statements about how (45) acts may fit together. Either view should make any writer about methods and materials stop and think.

Having stopped and (46) , I find myself giving a single reply to both of the above objections: Language teachers are simply not “mere.” They are neither mere technicians (47) mere improvisers. They are professionals who make their own decisions, informed by their own (48) but informed also by the findings of researchers and by the accumulated, distilled, crystallized experience of their peers.

Let me then suggest three questions that we might well ask about “method,” together with my proposed answers:

What is a “method”? A method is more concrete than (49) . An approach is a set of understandings about what is at stake in learning and also about the equipment, mechanical or neurological, that is at work in learning. At the same time, a method is more abstract than a teaching act, which is a one-time event that can be recorded on videotape and on the neurocortexes of learners.

Is it possible to evaluate or to profit from an approach without embodying it in some kind of (50) ? Possible, perhaps, to some limited degree, but not easy.

Is it possible to improvise teaching acts apart from some more or less conscious approach? Possible, perhaps, but rare.

“Method,” then, seems to occupy a strategic mid-position between approach and (51) . For this reason, whoever would either think usefully about teaching or would teach thoughtfully can profit from learning about methods.

_{(E. W. Stevick, Working with Teaching Methods)}