Language Teaching Approaches: An Overview!

INTRODUCTION

The field of secon language teaching has undergone many fluctuations and shifts over the years. Different from physics or chemistry, in which progress is more or less steady until a major discovery causes a radical theoretical revision, language teaching is a field in which fads and heroes have come and gone in a manner fairly consistent with the kinds of changes that occur in youth culture.

Pre –twentieth- Century Trends :

A Brief Survey

Prior to the twentieth century, language teaching methodology facilitated between two types of approaches : getting learners to use a language versus getting learners to analyze a language. Both the classical Greek and medieval Latin periods were characterized by an emphasis on teaching people to use foreign languages. The classical languages, first Greek and then Latin, were used as lingua francas.

During the Renaissance, the formal study of the grammars of Greek and Latin became popular through the mass production of books made possible by the invention of the printing press. In retrospect, strange as it may seem, the Renaissance preoccupation with the formal study of classical Latin may have contributed to the demise of Latin as a lingua franca.

Since the European vernaculars had grown in prestige and utility, it is not surprising that people in one country or region wants to learn the language of another country or region. Some of the techniques that Comenius used and espoused were the following :

»        Use imitation instead of rules to teach a language.

»        Have your students repeat after you.

»        Use a limited vocabulary initially.

»        Help your students practice reading an speaking.

»        Teach language through pictures to make it meaningful.

Thus Comenius, perhaps for the first time, made explicit an inductive approach to learning a foreign language, the goal of which was to teach use rather than analysis of the language being taught.

            By the end of the nineteenth century, the Direct Method which once more stressed the ability to use rather than to analyze a language as the goal of language instruction, had begun to function as a viable alternative to Grammar Translation.

            The Direct Method became very popular in France and Germany, and has enthusiastic followers among language teachers even today as does the Grammar Translation does. In 1886 the International Phonetic Association was established by scholars such as Henry Sweet, Wilhelm Vietor, and Paul Passy. These phoneticians made some of the first truly scientific contributions to language teaching when they advocated principles such as following :

»        The spoken form of a language is primary and should be taught first.

»        The findings of phonetics should be applied to language teaching.

»        Language teachers must have solid training in phonetics.

»        Learners should be given phonetic training to establish goo speech habits.

The Reading Approach, as reflected in the work of Michael West (1941) and others held sway in the United States until the late 1930s and early 1940s, when World War II broke out and made it imperative for the US army to quickly and efficiently teach foreign language learners how to speak and understand a language. At this time, the Audiolingual Approach (Fries 1945) which drew heavily on structural linguistics (Bloomfield 1933) and behavioral psychology (Skinner 1957), was born.

Nine Twentieth Century Approaches to Language Teaching

There are four other discernible approaches to foreign language teaching that developed and were widely used during the final quarter of the twentieth century. There are nine approaches altogether that shall be referring to :

1.       Grammar-Translation

2.       Direct

3.       Reading

4.       Audiolingualism (United States)

5.       Oral-Situational (Britain)

6.       Cognitive

7.       Affective-Humanistic

8.       Comprehension-Based

9.       Communicative

Namely, what do we mean by approach, methods, and technique? Anthony (1963) has provided a useful set of definitions for our purposes. An approach to language teaching is something that reflects a certain model or research paradigm. A method, on the other hand, is a set of procedures, a system that spells out rather precisely how to teach a second language. A technique is a classroom device or activity an thus represents the narrowest of the three concepts.

The most problematic of Anthony’s three terms is method. Some methods and their originator follow

»        Silent Way (Gattegno 1976)

»        Community Language Learning (Curran 1976)

»        Total Physical Response (Asher 1977)

»        Suggestology, Suggestopedia, or Accelerated Learning (Lozanov 1978)

At this point I will outline each of nine approaches listed above :

1.       Grammar Translation Approach

2.       Direct Approach

3.       Reading Approach

4.       Audiolingualism

5.       Oral-Situational Approach

6.       Cognitive Approach

7.       Affective Humanistic Approach

8.       Comprehension Based Approach

9.       Communicative Approach

To sum up, we can see that certain features of several of the five arose in reaction to perceived inadequacies or impracticalities in an earlier approach or approaches. The four more recently developed approaches also do this to some extent.

A Note on Approach, Method, and Syllabus Type

            An approach is general, that a method is a specific set of procedures more or less compatible with an approach, and that a technique is very specific type of learning activity used in one or more methods. Most of them have used a structural syllabus, which consists of a list of grammatical inflections and constructions that the teacher is expected to teach and the students is expected to master.In the Communicative Approach, one type of syllabus is organized around notions and functions.

CONCLUSION

ESL / EFL is to learn more about the various approaches and methods available and to find out which practices have proved successful. There are also five other things the teacher should do to make a good decisions concerning the choice of an approach, a method and finally techniques and materials :

1. Assess the student needs.
2. Examine instructional constraints.
3. Determine the attitudes and learning styles.
4. Identify the discourse genres, speech activities, and text types that students need to learn so that you can incorporate them into materials and learning activities.
5. Specify how the students language learning will be assessed.