Eclectic Theory Analysis

This article is a short overview of the Eclectic theory or ideology of teaching English and how it fits into the modern classroom. What are the origins of the philosophy when was it born, and why it did it evolve and stay alive in many fields of study to this day. Many old school style linguists see it as an unprincipled and vague method, without structure or rules. Eclectic ideology though does have strong concepts and principles about language acquisition and learning environments, choices of activities and reasons for these varieties, A look at what prominent linguists say about the advantages and the disadvantages of this theory and how it suits modern day environments.

Eclectic Theory Makes Sense

Over the last hundred years

It was first brought into ESL methodology in 1922 by Harold Palmer, (1877 - 1949) who was an English linguist. He was the Father of “Eclectic Way” and is thought of as a pioneer in the field of English language pedagogy and teaching. “The complete method will embody every type of teaching except bad teaching, and every process of learning except defective learning” (Gabrielatos, 2016).The idea being to take all that is good and leave bad teaching practices behind. ”The 'complete method' is not a compromise between two antagonistic schools; it boldly incorporates what is valuable in any system or method of teaching and refuses to recognize any conflict, except the conflict between the inherently good and the inherently bad” (Gabrielatos, 2016). The principles being that since language learning has many varied aspects and needs and though there are many theories, there are none that alone can facilitate for all that is needed on the timeline to fluency. Therefore, choose the best techniques and theories to best serve the purpose of eventual

Johnson (1998, 1999) noted that “eclecticism’s strength is in the recognition of diversity, its weakness a tendency to vagueness and lack of principle. Vagueness has often been criticized because it may be arbitrary, a theoretical, incoherent, naïve, uncritical, unsystematic, and lacking in philosophical direction” (e.g., Glascott & Crews, 1998; Lazarus & Beutler, 1993; Schwab, 1971). In a relevant analysis of communicative language teaching, Allen (1983) has argued that “in the absence of a well-defined theory, there is a danger that the development of communicative language teaching materials will be guided not so much by principle, but by expedience, rule-of-thumb, and the uncoordinated efforts of individual Danger write” (Dillon, J. M., and A. A. Long,