History of Language Teaching

By Sole Hernandez
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    Grammar Translation

    -Grammar was taught as a set of rules after the classical languages,
    -practice was done through written exercises and the medium of instruction was the mother tongue
    - vocabulary was learnt via translated lists
    -written texts seen as the ‘real’ language and they were translated and composition in L2
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    Direct Method

    -speaking and listening were the most important skills
    -students learnt sequences of strictly-chosen grammatical phrases by listening and repetition
    - grammar ‘rules’ were avoided
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    Audio-lingual method + Structuralist view of language

    -the new science of linguistics suggested that language was a set of ‘structures’
    -grammar rules were an illusion, so it was more important to focus on these ‘structures’
    - learning method was based on behaviourist psychology language exercises

    -exercises based on drilling.
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    Structural-situational method (aka PPP)

    • This approach gave rise to the idea of PPP (presentation, practice, production) -It was a pragmatic version of audio-lingualism.
    • The key difference from the audiolingual approach was that the language presentation and practice was situationalised and so was always given social meaning.
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    Humanistic approaches

    -this movement was based on the assumption that language classes were places of fear for language learners
    -it has become an essential precept of language teaching that students assimilate things best when they are talking about themselves, something now called ‘personalisation’.
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    Functional syllabuses – Communicative Language Teaching 1

    • Based on the idea of grouping bits of language according to communicative functions (in the USA called ‘speech acts’) like apologising, requesting, and advising. -It was rare for a direct relationship between function and language to be established because functions can be expressed by a vast range of expression and non-verbal cues.
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    Communicative methodology – Communicative Language Teaching 2

    -The key principle was the separation of classroom work into ‘accuracy’ work and ‘fluency’ work. Much confusion was caused when teachers were trained to see these as closely linked together.
    -In the US in the late 70s, an influential version of second language learning theory was developed by Stephen Krashen, which postulated that learners ‘acquired’ language if fed a diet of genuine communication .
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    Test-Teach-Test

    -An inventive variation of traditional PPP, particularly appropriate to teaching functional exponents but also adaptable to grammar points and lexis, containing these three phases.
    -This is a popular and resilient piece of methodology which brings together a number of principles, and has stood the test of time.
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    Negotiated syllabus

    • It has become the norm for many professional language training organisations.
    • Based on the principle that we first find out what students want and test them to find out what they need, and then negotiate the syllabus with them.
    • It has recently had a big impact on general English classes.
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    Task-based approaches

    • Methodological idea which attempts to get away from PPP altogether; students are not taught language points in advance, but rather are given communicative ‘tasks’ to prepare for.
    • In the final phase, the students actually do the complete task and they ‘use’ the language they have asked for and been given.
    • There may be a danger that the task-based approach dominates teaching to the detriment of the other methodologies which have equal validity.
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    Academic Linguistics

    • Noticed that language was full of set phrases.
    • Problem: speakers tend to use this prefabricated chunks of vocabulary rather than single items of vocabulary.
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    Lexical views of language

    • Has become a central plank of both Business and General English teaching.
      • It particularly affects what we teach – lexical chunks rather than single items of vocabulary.

  • Output- Feedback

    • Reformulate output lightly but often consists on the teacher listening to students discussing about something.
      • Notes the problem down so that the students can reformulate their version taking into account these errors .
      • Mistakes get recycled over the next few lessons.
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    Noticing (consciousness raising)

    • When we are practicing or working with students on any language item all we are doing is racing that noticeability of language i.e helping the students to notice little by little and getting to the process of 'successive approximation' or 'layered noticing'.
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    Grammaticisation

    • View that Language is 'grammaticalised lexis' (rather than lexicalized grammar ).
    • The grammaticisation approach is becoming increasingly popular but it's important to keep it in perspective with other approaches of teaching grammar.

  • Modern Integrated Language teacher

    • For the penetration of the many teachers nowadays use the 'principle integration' which consist on the use of translation, grammar, drilling, practice exam, functional expressions, information gaps, task based approach, output feedback.