Language Teaching Methods and Approaches
See the difference!
✓ Approach
- Reflects a theoretical model
Examples: teacher-centered, subject-matter centered, teacher-dominated, banking
approach, guided approach, learner-centered, interactive, and collaborative approach.
✓ Method
A set of procedures (step-by-step manner)
Examples: direct method, lecture method, demonstration method, or group methods.
✓ Strategy
certain procedure that needs to be followed to accomplish the introduced tasks.
Examples: inquiry-based strategy, differentiated instructions strategy, and cooperative
learning strategy.
✓ Technique
how to complete specific tasks.
showcase the well-defined procedures and the teacher’s style to carry out a specific method
and strategy.
Examples:
Think-pair- Share, role playing, Cards techniques
Situational Example for Approach, Strategy, Method, and Technique
Background:
Highschool teacher for Grade 7 students
Teacher Anna believes every student must adapt to new people and environments. A collaborative
approach guides her.
Hence, she has chosen group demonstration methods to achieve her lesson objectives. She
assigned groups with six members each, and each group needed to propose a new project based
on the problem.
Before proceeding to a group demonstration, the students must brainstorm and evaluate the issues
using the think-pair-share strategy.
While the activity is ongoing, she uses cards to facilitate the activity. The card technique has been
helpful to provide hints, feedback, and props to the students.
Pre-twentieth trends: A survey of key approaches
✓ Use language (to speak and understand it)
✓ Analyze the language (learn the grammatical rules)
Techniques in Language Teaching (Comenius-1631-1658)
✓ Use of imitation instead of rules to teach a language
✓ Have your students repeat after you.
✓ Use of limited vocabulary initially
✓ Help your students practice reading and speaking
✓ Teach language through pictures to make it meaningful.
PRE-TWENTIETH APPROACHES
✓ Grammar Translation Approach
✓ Direct method
❖ Grammar Translation Approach
• Instruction- native language of the students
• Grammatical parsing (forms and inflections of words)
• Translate sentences from the target language into the mother tongue (or vice versa)
• Teachers – speak English fluently (not required)
❖ Direct method
• Ability to use rather than to analyze a language
• No use of the mother tongue is permitted
• Lessons- dialogue, and anecdotes
• Actions and pictures
• Grammar – learned inductively
• Literary text – read for pleasure, not analyzed grammatically
• Teacher – native speaker or proficient in the target language
❖ The reform movement (1890s)
• Spoken Form of Language
• Findings of phonetics
• Language Teachers- solid training of phonetics
• Learners – basic phonetic training (good speech habits)
• Teaching Pronunciation and Oral skills
EARLY AND MID-TWENTIETH APPROACHES
✓ Reading Approach
✓ The audiolingual approach
✓ The oral-situational approach
❖ The Reading Approach
• Modern Language Association of America (Coleman Report, 1929)
• Reading Comprehension
• Vocabulary
• First Language is used.
❖ The Audiolingual Approach
• Lessons begin with dialogues
• Mimicry and Memorization
• Grammatical structures (inductive)
• Skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing
• Accurate pronunciation
• Vocabulary
• Teacher (proficient)
❖ The Oral Situational Approach
• The spoken language is primary
• All language material is practiced orally before being presented
• Target language should be used in the classroom
MOST RECENT APPROACHES TO LANGUAGE TEACHING
✓ The cognitive approach
✓ Affective Humanistic Approach
✓ The comprehension-based approach
✓ The communicative approach
✓ The Designer Methods (Nunan,1989)
• Silent way
• Community of language learning
• Total physical response
• Suggestology, suggestopedia, or accelerated learning
❖ The Cognitive Approach
• Reaction to the audiolingual approach
• Cognitive Psychology
• Language learning- rules acquisition
• Instructions – individualized
• Grammar – deductive and inductive
• Pronunciation – deemphasized
• Errors – inevitable
• Teachers – proficiency of the target language
❖ The Affective-Humanistic Approach
• Reaction to lack of affective considerations
• Social climate and positive relationships – teachers and students
• Respect for each individual
• Communication- personally meaningful
• Instructions- pairs and small groups
• Teacher- counselor and facilitator
❖ The Comprehension-Based Approach
• Listening comprehension
• Silent Period
• Enough time
• Meaningful input
• Learners can understand and can make themselves understood
• Teachers and the utilization of audio-visual materials
❖ The Communicative Approach
• Goal- Learners ability to communicate
• Semantic notions and Social functions
• Work in groups or pairs
• Role plays and dramatization
• Authentic tasks and projects
• Skills integrated from the beginning
• Teachers – facilitate communication, next correct errors. Fluent in the L2
❖ Designer methods (Nunan,1989)
✓ Silent way
• Use an array of visuals
• Inductive
• Use only the Target language
✓ Community Of Language Learning
• Sitting in a circle
• Teacher –counselor-facilitator
✓ Total Physical Response
• Teacher gives commands
• Comprehension
• Appropriate physical action as a response
✓ Suggestology, suggestopedia, or accelerated learning
• Setting – like a living room
• “Suggest Pedagogy”
Check this article! (https://www.brightkidzsongs.com/accelerated-learning-techniques-part-
2-suggestopedia/)
The Post Method Era
• Maximize learning opportunities
• Facilitate negotiated interaction
• Minimize perceptual mismatches
• The Post Method Era
• Activate intuitive heuristics (problem solving techniques)
• Foster language awareness
• Contextualize linguistic input
• Integrate language skills
• Promote learner autonomy
• Raise cultural consciousness
CLASSROOM APPLICATIONS
(Mastery of the approaches, methods, and frameworks)
1. Assess students’ needs
2. Examine the instructional constraints
3. Determine the attitudes, learning styles, and cultural backgrounds of individual students
4. Identify the discourse genres, speech activities and text types students need to learn
5. Determine how students’ language learning will be assessed
Please ponder!
Language Teachers must be ready to continually ADAPT to new and CHANGING circumstances
since there is NO FIXED body of knowledge that one can master and say, “Now I know
everything!”
