The Postmodern Language Teacher - The Future of Task-based Teaching

The Postmodern Language Teacher

  EFL teachers are living in a time of rapid social change. This inevitably affects the nature of a profession that both reflects society and helps to shape it. Hierarchical ways of thinking inherited from the students" past, along with sociopolitical preconceptions and metanarratives inherent in the target language are no longer seen as appropriate by new generations of language learners in Asia, and in Korea in particular. This paper considers the implications of this situation and reviews postmodern trends in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) theory and practice, suggesting ways in which Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) might make foreign language acquisition a personally relevant, socially meaningful, and culturally acceptable process.