Methods of language teaching

METHODS OF LANGUAGE TEACHING

Kiarie Wa’Njogu
Yale University
Methods of language teaching include:
1) Grammar-translation approach
2) Direct approach
3) Reading approach
4) Audiolingual method
5) Community language learning
6) Suggestopedia
7) The silent way
8) Total physical response
9) The natural way
10) Communicative language teaching

Grammar-Translation Approach
In this method, classes are taught in the students` mother tongue, with little active use of the target language.
Vocabulary is taught in the form of isolated word lists.
Elaborate explanations of grammar are always provided.
Grammar instruction provides the rules for putting words together; instruction focuses on the form and inflection of words.
Little attention is paid to the content of texts.
Drills are exercises in translating disconnected sentences from the target language into the mother tongue, and vice versa.
Little or no attention is given to pronunciation.

Direct Approach
This approach was developed initially as a reaction to the grammar-translation approach in an attempt to integrate more use of the target language in instruction.
Lessons begin with a dialogue using a modern conversational style in the target language.
Material is first presented orally with actions or pictures.
The mother tongue is NEVER used. There is no translation.
The preferred type of exercise is a series of questions in the target language based on the dialogue or an anecdotal narrative.
Questions are answered in the target language.
Grammar is taught inductively--rules are generalized from the practice and experience with the target language.
Verbs are used first and systematically conjugated much later after some oral mastery of the target language.
Advanced students read literature for comprehension and pleasure.
Literary texts are not analyzed grammatically.
The culture associated with the target language is also taught inductively.
Culture is considered an important aspect of learning the language.

Reading Approach
The approach is mostly for people who do not travel abroad for whom reading is the one usable skill in a foreign language.
The priority in studying the target language is first, reading ability and second, current and/or historical knowledge of the country where the target language is spoken.
Only the grammar necessary for reading comprehension and fluency is taught.
Minimal attention is paid to pronunciation or gaining conversational skills in the target language.
From the beginning, a great amount of reading is done in L2.
The vocabulary of the early reading passages and texts is strictly controlled for difficulty.
Vocabulary is expanded as quickly as possible, since the acquisition of vocabulary is considered more important that grammatical skill.
Translation reappears in this approach as a respectable classroom procedure related to comprehension of the written text.
Audiolingual Method
This method is based on the principles of behavior psychology.
It adapted many of the principles and procedures of the Direct Method, in part as a reaction to the lack of speaking skills of the Reading Approach.
New material is presented in the form of a dialogue.

Based on the principle that language learning is habit formation, the method fosters dependence on mimicry, memorization of set phrases and over-learning.
Structures are sequenced and taught one at a time. Structural patterns are taught using repetitive drills.
Little or no grammatical explanations are provided; grammar is taught inductively.
Skills are sequenced: Listening, speaking, reading and writing are developed in order.
Vocabulary is strictly limited and learned in context.
Teaching points are determined by contrastive analysis between L1 and L2.
There is abundant use of language laboratories, tapes and visual aids.
There is an extended pre-reading period at the beginning of the course.
Great importance is given to precise native-like pronunciation.
Use of the mother tongue by the teacher is permitted, but discouraged among and by the students.
Successful responses are reinforced; great care is taken to prevent learner errors.
There is a tendency to focus on manipulation of the target language and to disregard content and meaning.

Hints for Using Audio-lingual Drills in L2 Teaching
The teacher must be careful to insure that all of the utterances which students will make are actually within the practiced pattern.
2. Drills should be conducted as rapidly as possibly so as to insure automaticity and to establish a system.
3. Ignore all but gross errors of pronunciation when drilling for grammar practice.
4. Use of shortcuts to keep the pace of drills at a maximum. Use hand motions, signal cards, notes, etc. to cue response.

5. Drill material should always be meaningful. If the content words are not known, teach their meanings.
6. Intersperse short periods of drill (about 10 minutes) with very brief alternative activities to avoid fatigue and boredom.
7. Don’t stand in one place; move about the room standing next to as many different students as possible to check their production. Thus you will know who to give more practice to during individual drilling.
Community language learning (CLL)
This approach is patterned upon counseling techniques and adapted to the peculiar anxiety and threat as well as the personal and language problems a person encounters in the learning of foreign languages.
The learner is not thought of as a student but as a client.
The instructors are not considered teachers but, rather are trained in counseling skills adapted to their roles as language counselors.
The language-counseling relationship begins with the client`s linguistic confusion and conflict.
The aim of the language counselor`s skill is first to communicate an empathy for the client`s threatened inadequate state and to aid him linguistically.
Then slowly the teacher-counselor strives to enable him to arrive at his own increasingly independent language adequacy.
This process is furthered by the language counselor`s ability to establish a warm, understanding, and accepting relationship, thus becoming an "other-language self" for the client.
The process involves five stages of adaptation:
STAGE 1
The client is completely dependent on the language counselor.
1. First, he expresses only to the counselor and in English what he wishes to say to the group. Each group member overhears this English exchange but no other members of the group are involved in the interaction.
2. The counselor then reflects these ideas back to the client in the foreign language in a warm, accepting tone, in simple language in phrases of five or six words.


3. The client turns to the group and presents his ideas in the foreign language. He has the counselor`s aid if he mispronounces or hesitates on a word or phrase. This is the client`s maximum security stage.
STAGE 2
1. Same as above.
2. The client turns and begins to speak the foreign language directly to the group.
3. The counselor aids only as the client hesitates or turns for help. These small independent steps are signs of positive confidence and hope.
STAGE 3
1. The client speaks directly to the group in the foreign language. This presumes that the group has now acquired the ability to understand his simple phrases.
2. Same as 3 above. This presumes the client`s greater confidence, independence, and proportionate insight into the relationship of phrases, grammar, and ideas. Translation is given only when a group member desires it.
STAGE 4
1. The client is now speaking freely and complexly in the foreign language. Presumes group`s understanding.

2. The counselor directly intervenes in grammatical error, mispronunciation, or where aid in complex expression is needed. The client is sufficiently secure to take correction.
STAGE 5
1. Same as stage 4.
2. The counselor intervenes not only to offer correction but to add idioms and more elegant constructions.
3. At this stage the client can become counselor to the group in stages 1, 2, and 3.
Suggestopedia
-This method developed out of believe that human brain could process great quantities of material given the right conditions of learning like relaxation.
music was central to this method.
Soft music led to increase in alpha brain wave and a decrease in blood pressure and pulse rate resulting in high intake of large quantities of materials.
Learners were encouraged to be as “childlike” as possible.
Apart from soft, comfortable seats in a relaxed setting, everything else remained the same.
The natural approach
This method emphasized development of basic personal communication skills
Delay production until speech emerge i.e learners don’t say anything until they are ready to do so
Learners should be as relaxed a possible
Advocate use of TPR at beginning level
Comprehensible input is essential for acquisition to take place.
The Silent Way
This method begins by using a set of colored wooden rods and verbal commands in order to achieve the following:
1)To avoid the use of the vernacular.
2)To create simple linguistic situations that remain under the complete control of the teacher .
3)To pass on to the learners the responsibility for the utterances of the descriptions of the objects shown or the actions performed.
4)To let the teacher concentrate on what the students say and how they are saying it, drawing their attention to the differences in pronunciation and the flow of words.
5) To generate a serious game-like situation in which the rules are implicitly agreed upon by giving meaning to the gestures of the teacher and his mime.
6) To permit almost from the start a switch from the lone voice of the teacher using the foreign language to a number of voices using it.
7) To provide the support of perception and action to the intellectual guess of what the noises mean, thus bring in the arsenal of the usual criteria of experience already developed and automatic in one`s use of the mother tongue.
8) To provide a duration of spontaneous speech upon which the teacher and the students can work to obtain a similarity of melody to the one heard.

Materials
The materials utilized as the language learning progresses include:
A set of colored wooden rods
A set of wall charts containing words of a "functional" vocabulary and some additional ones
A pointer for use with the charts in Visual Dictation
A color coded phonic chart(s) Tapes or discs
films, drawings and pictures, and
A set of accompanying worksheets transparencies, texts, a Book of Stories.
Total Physical Response (TPR)
Total Physical Response (TPR) method as one that combines information and skills through the use of the kinesthetic sensory system.
This combination of skills allows the student to assimilate information and skills at a rapid rate. The basic tenets are:
Understanding the spoken language before developing the skills of speaking.
Imperatives are the main structures to transfer or communicate information.
The student is not forced to speak, but is allowed an individual readiness period and allowed to spontaneously begin to speak when the he/she feels comfortable and confident in understanding and producing the utterances.
Procedure:
Step I The teacher says the commands as he himself
performs the action.
Step 2 The teacher says the command as both the
teacher and the students then perform the action.
Step 3 The teacher says the command but only
students perform the action
Step 4 The teacher tells one student at a time to do
commands
Step 5 The roles of teacher and student are reversed.
Students give commands to teacher and to other
students.
Step 6 The teacher and student allow for command
expansion or produces new sentences.
Communicative language Teaching
The method stresses a means of organizing a language syllabus. The emphasis is on breaking down the global concept of language into units of analysis in terms of communicative situations in which they are used.
There is negotiation of meaning.
A variety of language skills are involved
Material is presented in context
It pays attention to registers and styles in terms of situation and participants.
Fluency and accuracy (different competencies)
Form and functions
development of autonomous learners