Dear Cunliffe,

Your claim that I �dismiss� books is by no means accurate, and the joke that I communicate with Krashen and Chomsky in my dreams cracked me up! I quoted Chomsky to highlight the process of language acquisition, and I quoted Krashen to shed lights on the natural approach. However, I haven�t quoted any other language expert to show how teachers should teach their students. My message was crystal clear though: instead of turning to methodology books, one should, with the help of other colleagues, develop professional learning communities to analyze and improve their teaching practices. I am pretty sure that each teacher should have their own teaching philosophy, and I am not convinced that having one depends on reading methodology books. The idea of resorting to these kinds of books will only lead you to spit out generic platitudes that are divorced from the realities of challenging and diverse teaching environments. At best, I have developed some varied practices that seem to work well for me given my personality and interests, practices that get modified and developed to suit the particular subject and students that I am teaching at any given time. The teaching practices I have developed over the years may neither suit your character as a teacher nor your students. I think that you support the idea that students learn by doing! This should apply to teachers as well. Teachers learn by doing, too. I embrace the belief that only critical reflection can enable teachers to assess the effectiveness of their teaching and take the necessary steps to refine it. It is not the books that they have read and their attempt to implement the dogma they preach! By trying to understand the consequences of their actions and by contemplating alternative approaches, teachers expand their repertoire of practice.

As for teaching grammar, be it in isolation or in context, deductive or inductive, it does more harm than good to the students simply because you will adhere to the form but not the content. Teaching grammar will help your students in one way only: knowing about the language, and that is not why langauges are taught. Languages are taught to serve a communication purpose. If students can express their ideas in a good way, this means that learning has taken place. Let�s consider the following example:

�I go to bed at 10 last night�. That�s a very clear message although there�s a grammar mistake. According to you, you need to intervene to correct such a mistake. And of course, you will have to revise the past tense forms. To my mind, that�s wasting your precious teaching time. Instead, you could simply respond in the following manner: �Aha, you went to bed at 10 last night�!