Episode 25: There Is No Best Method--Why? Artwork

Conversations about Language Teaching

"Conversations about Language Teaching" is a podcast of unscripted discussions of language teaching, drawing on both research and classroom & online language teaching. If you like thinking deeply about issues of classroom language teaching and how those relate to research and theory, this podcast might be for you.

Reed & Diane, the hosts, base our knowledge of language teaching on research we've read & done, theoretical views of language acquisition, our experiences as language teachers and learners, and our observations of language teaching in the US and elsewhere. We like to help build bridges among teachers and researchers and view ourselves as part of both communities. We collaborate on projects & like talking about language teaching & learning, and decided to have some of those conversations in a podcast format. Here it is!

A transcripted, video version of the podcast is on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/@ConversationsaboutLanguage

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Conversations about Language Teaching

Episode 25: There Is No Best Method--Why?

March 06, 2025 • Diane Neubauer, PhD & Reed Riggs, PhD • Season 3 • Episode 25

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Episode 25: There Is No Best Method–Why? Discussing Prabhu (1990)

Show Notes

We discussed this article:

Prabhu, N. S. (1990). There is no best method—Why?. TESOL Quarterly, 24(2), 161-176. https://doi.org/10.2307/3586897

It is freely available online at the link above. Diane missed the number of times it has been cited – “only” 1666 citations as of Feb. 28, 2025. That is still quite a lot in the field of applied linguistics/language teaching and learning.

Needs analysis:

Ch. 3 of this book is about needs analysis in language course design:

Macalister, J., & Nation, I. P. (2019). Language curriculum design. Routledge.

Information about the 2019 (2nd) edition is here:

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9780429203763/language-curriculum-design-john-macalister-nation

The first edition of the book (2010 edition) is available freely online here: https://shorturl.at/mX40e

Prabhu (1990) cites Brumfit, 1984, which appears to be his PhD thesis revised for book publication:

Brumfit, C. (1984). Communicative methodology in language teaching: The roles of fluency and accuracy.

Intro & outro music selected from "23 Light Years" by CavalloPazzo

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Conversations about Language Teaching
Diane Neubauer, PhD & Reed Riggs, PhD

"Conversations about Language Teaching" is a podcast of unscripted discussions of language teaching, drawing on both research and classroom & online language teaching. If you like thinking deeply about issues of classroom language teaching and how those relate to research and theory, this podcast might be for you.

Reed & Diane, the hosts, base our knowledge of language teaching on research we've read & done, theoretical views of language acquisition, our experiences as language teachers and learners, and our observations of language teaching in the US and elsewhere. We like to help build bridges among teachers and researchers and view ourselves as part of both communities. We collaborate on projects & like talking about language teaching & learning, and decided to have some of those conversations in a podcast format. Here it is!

More about Diane: https://sites.google.com/view/dianen/home
More about Reed: http://www.reedriggs.com

Watch on YouTube where episodes are captioned:
https://www.youtube.com/@ConversationsaboutLanguage

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