THE POSTMETHOD DISCUSSION IN THEORY AND PRACTICE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING
The paper proposes the analytical survey of the postmethod discussion that appeared at the turn of the XX and XXI centuries in the pages of western methodological editions devoted to teaching foreign languages. The postmodern discourse expanded classical linear horizons of thinking, touching not only the spheres of culture, philosophy, literature and politics, but also theory and practice of language teaching. A number of English-speaking methodologists criticized severely a search for universal method in foreign language teaching. They suggested a reverse scheme of methodological movement: instead of moving from theory to practice - knowledge development from practice to theory, laying more responsibility on pedagogues and students. In this case teachers are seen as creators of their own methodology. B. Kumaravadivelu advances 10 postmethod “macrostrategies” including “maximizing learning opportunities”, “facilitating negotiated interaction”, “minimizing perceptual mismatches”, “activating intuitive heuristics”, “fostering language awareness”, “contextualizing linguistic input”, “integrating language skills”, “promoting learner autonomy”, “raising cultural consciousness”, “ensuring social relevance”. Corresponding “microstrategies” are supposed to be worked out in accordance with the realia of a certain classroom, subjective and unique ones for each practitioner. In that way we conceptualize in effect intuitive teaching experience of theorizing for our own needs, for the needs of our students, that is shown by the author of the paper in the light of approaches of existential philosophy, in particular by means of objectification-subjectivation dichotomy in education. The technological side of foreign points of view under discussion is supplemented with a statement of the question about the importance of philosophic and pedagogical consideration of postmethod, its ethical components, such as freedom and violence in education. The criticism of postmethod itself does not exclude its significance in methodological knowledge dialectics, but allows to overcome habitual frames and to find new solutions to old problems.