History of Language Teaching

By Sagrario Escobedo
  • Period: 1500 to

    Sixteenth Century XVI

    • Latin was the dominant language of education, commerce, religion and goverment in the Western World.
    • French, Italian and English gained importance in Europe.
  • Period: to

    Seventeenth Century XVII

    • Children entered in "grammar schools". They were learning grammar rules, conjugation, translation and they were practicing sentences.
  • Period: to

    Eighteenth Century XVIII

    • Modern languages such as French, English and Italian were taught using the same basic procedures that were using for Latin.
    • Textbooks consisted of grammar rules, list of vocabulary, and sentences for translation.
    • Speaking the foreign language was not the goal. Oral practice was limited.
  • Period: to

    Early Nineteenth Century XIX

    • Oral work was reduced to an absolute minimum.
    • Written exercises were the most common.
    • Grammar Translation Method was used in the early ninteenth century. Is based on the grammar rules of the language.
    • The Grammar Translation Method dominated European and foreign language teaching.
    • Reading and writing were the major focus.
    • The sentence is the basic unit of teaching and language practice.
  • Period: to

    Mid-Nineteenth Century XIX

    • A typical textbook in the mid-nineteenth century consisted of chapters organized around grammar points.
    • In Europe, new approaches of language teaching were developed.
    • Gouin developed an approach to teaching foreign languages. His approach was more related to oral communication based on common activities that were used in daily life.
  • Period: to

    Late Nineteenth Century XIX

    -The Direct Method
    - Linguists emphasized that speech was more important.
    - The International Phonetic Association was founded in 1886.
    - The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) was designed to enable the sounds of any language to be accurately transcribed.
    - Only everyday vocabulary and sentences were taught.
    - Oral communication skills were the target.
    - Grammar was taught inductively.
  • Period: to

    1920 - 1930

    • The use of the Direct Method had consequently declined.
    • In 1923 a study concluded that not a single method could guarantee successful results in teaching a foreign language.
    • The emphasis on reading continued to characterize foreign language teaching in the United States.
  • Period: to

    1950- 1960

    • The emergence of the Audiolingual Method and the Situational Method, which were both superseded by the Communicative Approach.
  • Period: to

    1980 - 1990

    • Content-Based Instruction and Task-Based Language Teaching emerged as new approaches of language teaching.
    • Competency-Based Instruction came out, focus on the outcomes of learning rather than methods of teaching.
    • Approaches sucha as Cooperative Learning, Whole Language Approach, and Multiple Intelligences developed education and second language teaching.