The Contextual-Experiential Approach in ELT

The Contextual-Experiential Approach reimagines English Language Teaching as a values-driven, ethically anchored, and technologically enriched approach that resists abstraction and performative compliance. Grounded in the Narrative Language Ecology (NLE) Method, it fuses Dewey’s experiential learning, Gardner’s cognitive pluralism, and the pluralistic lens of World Englishes to empower teachers as diagnostic designers, learners as narrative agents, and institutions as ethical infrastructures. Central to this approach is the integration of values—social, ecological, and cultural—which are not taught as add-ons but embedded within bilingual story loops, ethical dilemmas, and contextualized tasks that provoke reflection and agency. Technology, especially AI, is not used to automate but to visualize, remix, and critique language use, enabling learners to map their own Englishes and interrogate linguistic power structures. For the future of language teaching and learning, this approach offers a radical shift: from standardization to humanization, from compliance to critique, and from passive acquisition to active reclamation. It positions ELT as a transformative force capable of provoking ethical reckoning, institutional reform, and narrative justice in postcolonial, policy-driven landscapes.