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Grammar Translation
Grammar as a set of rules (e.g. verb conjugations).
The practice was done through written exercises.
The mother tongue as the instruction´s medium.
The vocabulary was learned by translated lists, related to the comprehension of written texts.
Speaking and listening were less important.
We use it when it is quick and efficient to get across the meaning. -
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Direct Method
It started in the USA.
Speaking and listening were the most important skills.
The medium of instruction was English.
Students learned sequences of strictly-chosen, grammatical phrases by listening and repetition.
Grammar ‘rules’ were avoided, and replaced by phrases.
The vocabulary was learned as part of the phrases or via lists grouped under types of situations.
The method is still successful in language schools. -
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Audio-lingual method + Structuralist view of language (USA)
A scientific version of the direct method.
Linguistics: language as a set of structure and vocabulary.
Grammar rules were an illusion.
Speaking and listening: the most important skills.
Method: behaviorist psychology – stimulus-response learning.
Exercises for speaking: listen and repeat, and extend.
Exercises for writing: multiple choice and gap fill.
Criticism: learners need people like teachers, not machines -
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Structural-situational method (UK)
A pragmatic version of audio-lingualism.
Language presentation and practice with social meaning.
Speaking and listening: the most important skills.
The idea of PPP (presentation, practice, production) the Present Simple Tense for routines (called the target item), was presented (P) and given controlled practice (P) and then given further semi-controlled practice (P) (‘free practice’) in a role-play, all in one lesson.
The technique situation was added (mimes, pictures, sounds). -
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Humanistic approaches (USA)
Language classes as places of fear for language learners. Specifically associated with: the Silent Way, Community Language Learning, Suggestopedia, and Total Physical Response.
Personalization: students assimilate things best when they are talking about themselves. -
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Functional syllabuses – Communicative Language Teaching 1
From the work of the Council of Europe: the idea of grouping bits of language according to communicative functions (in the USA ‘speech acts’) like apologizing, requesting, and advising.
The relationship between function and language: ‘my apologies’ for apologizing, ‘do you mind if I’ + pres simple, for asking permission.
The listen-and-repeat and repeat-and-extend methods persisted, (rhythm and intonation). -
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Communicative methodology – Communicative Language Teaching 2
The separation of classroom work into ‘accuracy’ work and ‘fluency’ work. Accuracy work: learning new bits of language (grammar patterns, functional exponents, vocabulary). Fluency work: getting the students to speak freely (discussions). Information gap: students interview each other about their daily routines to get controlled practice of Present Simple for routines. Free discussion: students discuss a real thing without interruption. -
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Test-Teach-Test
Variation of traditional PPP. Test Phase: The students are given a task, such as a role-play, without any prior teaching of the relevant language points. Teach Phase: If the students have problems and make mistakes, the teacher knows that they have to teach the biggest errors. Test Phase 2: teach phase is followed by the students doing further practice exercises of these target items. -
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Negotiated syllabus
Mostly relevant to executive and Business English students: needs are specific and focused. First: find out what students want and test them to find out what they need. Negotiate the syllabus with them. It is especially good when the syllabus is emerging and flexible and is being negotiated on a regular basis during the whole course, it has to be applied carefully, depending on whether it is appropriate to the specific context -
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Task-based approaches
This is very relevant to business English teaching and has become established in General English teaching. Students are given communicative ‘tasks’ to prepare for. They ask the teacher to ‘give’ them whatever language bits they might need in order to fulfill the task. Teachers tend to use it with telephone role -plays, meetings, negotiations, and presentations. But students need some controlled practice (PPP) -
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Lexical views of language
Language is full of set phrases which are part of a memorized store of pre-fabricated ‘chunks’ which, once learned, we appear to use them like single vocabulary units. The Lexical View of Language affects what we teach – lexical chunks rather than single items of vocabulary and, some have argued, lexical chunks in place of grammar (e.g. should + infinitive is seen by some as a lexical chunk, not as a piece of grammar); -
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Output-feedback
It is based on language focus. If we simply set our students off in authentic communicative activities in the classroom, we can use the ensuing language ‘output’ as data for feedback (or ‘reformulation’) The teacher listens to the students discussing something, notes the problems down, and then goes through a sequence involving eliciting, concept questions, and guiding questions, so that the students come to a reformulated version of the selected language errors from their discussion. -
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Noticing 'consciousness-raising'
The relationship between what the teacher teaches and what students learn in one lesson as conscious learning. When we do presentation-practice work on any language item, we are raising the noticeability of that language in the minds of the students, in a process of ‘successive approximation’, or ‘layered noticing’; we are not teaching it for immediate active accurate production PPP has an important place in language teaching to raise noticeability in the minds of the students. -
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Grammaticisation
It helps students to see grammar in its global and communicative context. We can use global text exercises in which the 'grammar' has been taken out (the articles, the infinitive markers) and which the students have then to put back. this is very motivating for the learners, it is very individualized, and it is very efficient for the teacher. We use it to see how each student’s individual grammar is progressing. -
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The Modern Integrated Language Teacher
The modern teacher is able to use any approach from the past as long as it is appropriate and useful.