The eclectic approach to language teaching has become common and fashionable in modern language teaching. However, not much has been done to explain what eclecticism is in the context of language teaching. Thus, this paper sets to explain two sides of the argument. Firstly, it argues for what the eclectic approach is (conceptions) and secondly, the commonly held misconceptions about the method are presented and discussed. Methodologically, the study was purely qualitative involving both primary and secondary data. Secondary data was collected through reading of literature on the eclectic approach. Primary data was collected through focus group discussions with 90 secondary school teachers of English who were purposively sampled from 9 secondary schools from the central province of Zambia. Part of the findings show that the eclectic approach is a hybrid which should be viewed as one method comprising features of different methods. One of the misconceptions held by some teachers was that the eclectic approach refers to the use of more than one method in a lesson one after the other.