On Feb. 28, 2013, Professor Theodore Rodgers, a well-known applied linguist fromHawaiiUniversity, gave an interesting and inspiring talk on “Evolution of Language Teaching Methodology under the invitation ofResearchCenter.

Professor Rodgers’s talk covered three parts. The first part is about the history of teaching methodology from 1956 onwards, and he sang a song to cover all the changes that happened in this field. The second part is about the present trends. In his point of view, the early “Methods” has been replaced by “Approaches”. Communicative Language Teaching has been ever the most pervasive and preferred approach teachers adopted for over 20 years. However, the two branches—the content-based and the task-based—have both come across suspicions and definition problem. Nowadays, people talk more about “Principles” than “Approaches”, and even the word “principle” has not been able to reach far and smooth. After all, teaching is a practice rooted in miscellaneous contexts and carried out by individuals. The most recent call in teaching methodology is the “Real Language”, which advocates the teaching material be chosen from authentic dialogue, however, many teachers feel amused because of some unworthy characteristics of realistic data. The last part is on personal pedagogy. Professor Rodgers concluded that every method has its own strength and weakness, and the key to teaching is that teachers should make choice or adjustment according to one’s own personality and style. To show this, he sang a few songs he composed.

Professor Rodgers’s talk has aroused great attention and interest among teachers and students. Some audience have asked a few questions and made anticipation about the future development of teaching methodology. His talk undoubtedly has given a good demonstration of how to carry out language teaching individually, and encouraged people to make further innovations in teaching practice.