I liked how in-depth these first two chapters went into choosing and construction effective pedagogical practices. I was able to visualize examples of them not only thinking about an ESL classroom but another foreign language classroom, such as Spanish, as well. Something that stuck out to me was Edward Anthony's (1963) idea that a method was actually a piece of a three-part hierarchy of sorts, beginning with the approach, followed by the method, and ending in the technique in which the method is executed (9). However, Richards and Rogers (1986) believe that a method is more of an umbrella term, encompassing approaches and procedures. I think that both of these definitions are valid. Both of these ideas present a method as either a part of a multi-step process or grouped together with multiple other actions. I believe that they are truly variable due to the fact that they are always changing, both in historical pedagogy and a teacher's usage of them, and the fact that "an approach to language pedagogy is not just a set of static principles "set in stone"" (11).
As I mentioned before, I like the fact that this text mentions a number of principles, meaning that these are the so-called rules that many effective language learning and teaching methods follow. Some that I found most interesting included automaticity (a timely control of the language forms, similar to fluency in my opinion), intrinsic motivation, and strategic investment. A successful teacher can inspire her students to have a high intrinsic motivation, or a motivation within themselves to succeed and a strong reason for investing in the language.
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