National Institute of Education
Tavush Branch
Research Work
Subject - English
Theme - FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING METHODS
Teacher - Anahit Asryan
Ijevan 2020
Content
Introduction
THE CONCEPTS OF APPROACH, METHOD AND TECHNIQUE
AND THE THREE MAJOR GENERAL PROBLEMS IN MODERN FLT
METHODS AS DEVELOPMENT OF A COMMUNITY OF
LiNGUISTS, RESEARCHERS AND TEACHERS
The Traditional or Grammar-Translation Method
The structuralist methods
Approach: theory of language and leaming
Changes in ELT
CONCLUSION
References
FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING METHODS
INTRODUCTION
The main purpose of this report is to provide a critical assessment of the role
played by methods in the educational process, though there is also an account of
the main different methods of foreign language teaching (FLT) that are in use today.
A knowledge of the different methods gives foreign language teachers a good
background reference to their own stand on pedagogical matters and classroom
practice, and in addition helps them understand the process that FLT has
undergone, particularly through this century. To consider FLT as a process means
that teaching is not static but changing to respond to new needs and demands as
teachers, applied linguists and educationists can prove.
This report deals with the differences between approaches, methods
and techniques, as well as the three major issues which are recurren! in FLT.
Then, the main characteristics, the psychological bases and the pedagogical
features of the principal FLT methods are considered chronologically,
presenting the contributions and iimitations of the different approaches and
methods. Finally, as a conclusión, a connection is established between FLT
methods, innovation and classroom research, as a way of teacher
development and of leaming improvement.
2 THE CONCEPTS OF APPROACH, METHOD AND TECHNIQUE
AND THE THREE MAJOR GENERAL PROBLEMS IN MODERN FLT
Its seems worthwhile, first of all, to clarify briefly the concepts of approach
or principies, method and technique, which are mutually and hierarchically
related. They represent, in fact, three levéis of analysis and teacher's decisión
making for teaching and leaming English in the classroom. An approach or
strategy is the most abstract of all three concepts and refers to the linguistic,
psycho- and sociolinguistic principies underiying methods and techniques.
Actually, every teacher has some kind of theoretical principies which function
as a frame for their ideas of methods and techniques. A technique is, on the
other hand, the narrowest of all three; it is just one single procedure to use in
the classroom. Methods are between approaches and techniques, just the
mediator between theory (the approach) and classroom practico. Some
methods can share a number of techniques and, though some techniques
have developed autonomously, the most important ones start from the main
methods (Hubbard et al. 1983: 31).
Now it seems oppropriate to mention the three major language leaming
issues that language pedagogy and ELT have deait with through this century
and that always concern researchers and the teaching profession.
In the 60s, and later on with Krashen's Monitor Theory, which makes a
distinction between language leaming (explicit and conscious) and language
acquisition (implicit and subconscious).
3. The code-communication dilemma has become a major issue recentiy. It
refers to the problems that learners have to cope with when learning a new
language, as they have to pay attention on the one hand to linguistic forms
(the code) and on the other to real communication.
3 METHODS AS DEVELOPMENT OF A COMMUNITY OF
LiNGUISTS, RESEARCHERS AND TEACHERS
In this section we will take a look, first, at methods as part of a paradigm or
model of FLT, second, at the main methods still in use in this century as
archetypes and, third, at other proposals of foreign language teaching.
3.1. Methods as part of a paradigm
Each of the nnain FLT methods that we present here was not superseded
by a subsequent one as soon as it appeared but, rather, it went on living, the
new one superimposing on the former. We can even say that the appearance
of a new method corresponds with a loss of expectation of the former one
along with the progressions of theory, research and the experience of school
practice. There is not, broadly speaking, a marked line between different
methods, but often an eclectic mixture between methods is present.
In this sense methods are considered representations of language
knowledge for pedagogical purposes and are part of a paradigm (a unit of
theory, research and practice), which means a predominant way of building
up theories, doing research and carrying out classroom activities. In fact,
FLT methods have appeared as a result of the application of the new
theoretical findings. Methods are also conditioned by educational
philosophy, approaches about language nature and how it can be taught
and learnt, and conceptions about classroom interaction. All this pervaded
by those valúes concerning society and human relationships.
3.2. The Traditional or Grammar-Translation Method
This method applied the study of Latín and Greek grammars to the
study of foreign languages from the XVIIth to the XXth centuries. In the
19th century this method was rather widespread for learning foreign
languages, though by the end of the century moves towards the Direct
Method were noticed. Even today, in spite of its obsolescence, it has not
entirely died out as some textbooks still in use and the practice of some
classes are there to prove.
a) The principies of the Grammar-Transiation lUlethod.
The most relevant principies of this method can be summarised as follows
(based on Larsen-Freeman 1986, and Richards and Rodgers 1986):
1) It emphasises the study and translation of the written language, as it is
considered superior to spoken language.
2) Successful learners are those who transíate each language into the
other, though they cannot communicate orally.
3) Reading and writing are the main language skills.
4) Teachers play an authoritarian role in the classroom and the
predominant interaction is between teacher-student.
5) Students must learn grammatical rules overtly and deduce their
applications to exercises.
6) Students have to know verb conjugations and other grammatical
paradigms.
7) The basic unit of teaching is the sentence.
8) The student's native language is the médium of instruction and used
as well to compare with the language studied.
b) The main techniques used by the Grammar-Transiation iVIethod.
The Grammar-Transiation Method focuses on the teaching of the
foreign language grammar through the presentation of rules together with
some exceptions and lists of vocabulary translated into the mother
tongue. Translation is considered its most important classroom activity.
The main procedure of an ordinary lesson followed this plan: a
presentation of a grammatical rule, followed by a list of vocabulary and,
finally, translation exercises from selected texts
Other activities and procedures can be the following:
-reading comprehension questions about the text;
-students find antonyms and synonyms from words in the text;
-vocabulary is selected from the reading texts and it is memorised;
sentences are formed with the new words;
-students recognise and memorise cognates and false cognates;
-fill-in-the-blank exercises;
-writing compositions from a given topic.
c) The major dísadvantages of the Grammar-Translation Method.
Retrospectively, there are some very obvious disadvantages of this
method, which are summarised next
1 No account of present-day language usage is presented. Norms are
imposed from the great literaiy authors.
2 Secondary grammatical points, lists of forms and examples receive a lot of
attention; some definitions and explanations are often incoherent because of
their heterogeneous críteria. As a result facts about the language are
confusing for the students.
3 It gives a predominant place to morphology but neglects syntax. Therefore,
rules enabling the leamers to c»nstruct systematically correct complex
sentences are not presented.
4 It gives an exaggerated importance to faults to be avoided by the leamer and
to exceptions, emphasising the prescriptive and mechanical aspect of
language.
5 Translations are often unsatisfactory as they are done word by word.
6 Students have to leam a lot of grammatical tenns and too much weight falls
on their memories. Frustration on the part of students and lack of demands
on teachers are effects of this method.
1 Disadvantages of the grammar method
3.3. The structuralist methods
The different methods analysed in this section share a common
conception of how to learn a foreign language as a process of acquiring
the structures or patterns of it through habit formation. We will examine
the approach as well as the origins and the subsequent development of
these methods: the Oral or Situational Approach and the Audiolingual
Method.
a) Approach: theory of language and learning
The theory of language underiying these methods is structural linguistics,
and though there are some differences between British and American
structuralism, both movements saw language as "a system of structurally
related elements for the encoding of meaning, the elements being phonemes,
morphemes, words, structures, and sentence types"
Grammar no longer consists of a collection of rules, but a list of
structures. Consequently, learning a language means mastering all these
building blocks of the language and the rules to combine them.
One of its main features is the importance given to the oral aspects of
language, breaking wíth the relevance of the written language. In fact,
these conceptions appeared to offer a scientific basis for FLT, which
claimed to have transformed teaching from an art into a science. They are
summarised in the following five ideas.
1. Language is speech.
2. A language is what its native speakers say, not what someone thinks they
ought to say.
3. Languages are different.
4. A language is a set of habits.
5. Teach the language, not about the language.
Both schoois based their theory of learning in behaviouristic habit-forming
conceptions. Behaviourism, an American school of psychology represented by
Skinner, had an antimentalist and empirical approach to aspects of social life,
like structuralism with regard to language. Behaviour can be conditioned by
three elements: a stimulus -which elicits a behaviour-, a consequent response
and a final reinforcement.
b) The Oral Approach.
The Oral Approach was the first move in what can be called structuralist
direction and has its origin in the British applied linguistics of the 1920s and
1930s, represented by Palmer and Hornby. It was the first attempt to apply a
scientific foundation to FLT and was dominant from the 1930s to the 1960$. In the
1960s this approach was referred to as the Situationa! Approach, due to a bigger
emphasis on the presentation and practice of language situationally. The main
difference with the American structuralism lies in the British notion of "situation"
and purpose (rooted in Firth and Halliday's notions of meaning, context and
situation), clarified by Pittman (cited by Richards and Rodgers 1986:35):
Our principal classroom activity in the teaching of English structure will be
the oral practice of structures. This oral practice of controlled sentence
patterns should be given in situations designed to give the greatest
amount of practice in English speech to the pupil.
Situations that always have an underiying purpose from the part of the
speaker and give more attention to meaning.
The characteristics of the Oral Approach are the following:
a) its syllabus is organised structurally ín sentence patterns, gradually
sequenced;
b) vocabulary is considered a very important aspect of FLT;
c) the teacher is the model, creates the situation and teaches through
questioning and eliciting the learners' answers;
d) students are expected to deduce word meaning from context, without
translations or explanations in the mother tongue;
e) grammatical structures are learnt with oral procedures: repetitions,
substitutions, drllls, reading aloud...;
f) grammar is learnt by an inductive process, as in the Direct Method,
graded fromsimple to more complex forms;
g) correct pronunciation and grammar are considered crucial, so students
must avoid errors;
h) oral language comes first, then wrítten language:
i) the textbook and the visual materials are very important.
The Audiolingual Method corresponds with the USA structuralist tradition of
FLT, which became the dominant orthodoxy after World War II. Its origin can
go back to the seminal work of Bloomfield, who set up the bases of structural
linguistics segmenting and classifying utterances into their phonological and
grammatical constituents. Fries, Brooks, Rivers, and Lado went on appiying
these principies up to the 1970s with a cióse relationship with behaviourism.
Bloomfield became a basic source for the Army Method, which was a
response to the need of army personnel after the USA entry into the Second
World War. Its main procedure was imitation and repetition.
a) Some background
The crisis of the structuralist methods had begun with Chomsky's criticisms,
particularly in his book Syntactic Stnictures, where he dearly explained the
incapability of structuralism to tal
language. The Situational Method was criticised by the British applied linguists
because it lacked the functional and communicative potential of language. Applied
linguists made use of the British functional linguistics (Firth, Halliday...), American
sociolinguistics (Hymes, Gumperz, Labov), as well as philosophy (Austin and
Searle).
This wave of criticism and new conceptions was parallel to a growing
dissatisfaction among the FLT profession with the emphasis laid on the mastery of
language structures and the manipulation of grammatical forms. FLT along these
lines tended to produce structurally competent but communicatively incompetent
students, unable to transfer outside the classroom the amount of classroom work on
repetitive habit-fomriing exercises. Dissatisfaction showed as well from the new
educational realities created by the development of the European Union and a great
mobility.
The Coundl of Europe decided to face the new reality and asked some experts to
study the needs of the European students. A valuable contribution came from a
document by Wiikins which "takes the desired communicative capacity as the
starting-point... We are able to organize language teaching in tenns of the content
rather than on the fomi of the language. For this reason the resulting syilabus is
called a notionai syllabué' (1976:18). Instead of starting from the grammatical forms
or the language structures as the preceding methods did, Wiikins developed an
analysis of the functional meaning which underlies the communicative uses of
language. He described two types of meaning: one referred to notional categories
(concepts such as time, quantity, iocation, frequency...) and the other to categories of
communicative functions (approval, prediction...).
This work culminated in the document called Threshold Leve! of the Ckjuncil of
Europe. This document includes lists of situations, functions, topics, general and
specific notions and adequate language forms, as well as some methodological
structures plus functions
functional spiral around
a structural core
functional
notional
interactional
task-based
learner generated
impiications. The Threshold Level, together with the contributions of some applied
linguists text-book wríters, educationists, etc., led to the consolidation of the new approach
known as Communicative.
However, this process does not imply a coherent community based on the
Communicative Approach, as there is no single text, ñor any single model. The
understanding of the approach differs from some authors to others and several
models for syllabus design with different central elements have developed .
The differences between the models are so important that some authors (Breen
1987) consider that a new FLT paradigm is emerging -the procedural (process and
task-based) approaches-, as an altemative to propositional (fomnal and functional)
approaches. We will refer to this aspect further on. There are, however, some
distinctive features of the Communicative Approach that distinguish it from
Audiolingualism and give a better understanding of it, as Finnochiaro and Brumfit
suggest .
b) Approach: theory of language and leaming
The Communicative Approach draws upon some changes and innovations
coming mainly from applied linguistics, so I am going to give a summary of changes
about language nature and its knowledge. Language is considered a social
phenomenon by this approach, as it is a means of communicatbn and interaction
between members of a community. The goal, then, of FLT is to develop students'
communicative competence term coined in opposition to the
Chomskian concept of competence that refers to the abstract grammatical
knowledge speakers have for producing con'ect sentences in a language.
Communicative competence, on the other hand, extends Chomsky's concept to
the ability to understand and produce messages appropriate to a
socjo/psycho/cultural situatíon, so that language users can relate their linguistic
knowledge to evetyday conventtons. Later on this knowledge of language use was
extended to the capacity to particípate in discourse and to the knowledge of
pragmatic conventions governing that participation. It was also added the
conipetence to be creative with these rules and conventions, and to negotlate them
during communication. This is then a set of language knowledge competencies
which interact during real communicatton.
Audiolingual Communicative Approach
1. Attends to structure and form more than
meaning.
2. Demands memorization of structure based
dialogs.
3. Language ítems are not contextualized.
4. Leaming language is leaming stnjctures,
soundsorwords.
5. Mastery is sought.
6. Driliing is a central technique
7. Native-speaker-like pronunciation is sought.
8. Grammatical explanatton is avoided.
9. Communicative activities only come after a
long driliing.
10. Use of L1 is fortjidden.
11. Translation is fortidden at early levéis.
12. Reading and writing till speech is
mastered.
13. Linguistic competence is the desired goal.
14. The squence of units is determined solely
by principies of complexity.
15. "Language is habif so errors must be
prevented.
16. Accuracy, in terms of formal corredness,
is a prímary goal.
17. Students are expected to interact with the
language system.
Meaning is paramount.
Dialogs, if used, center around
communicative functions and are not normally
memorized.
Contextualization is a basic premise.
Language leaming is leaming to
communicate.
Communication is sought.
Driliing may occur, but perípherally.
Corrprehensible pronunciation is sought.
Any device that helps the leamer is accepted.
Communication may be encouraged from the
beginning.
Judicious use of L1 is accepted.
Translation may be used.
Reading and writing can start from first day.
Communicative competence is the desired goal.
Sequencing is determined by any
consideration of content, function or meaning
that maintain interest.
Language created through trial and error.
Fluency and acceptable language is the
prímary goal: accuracy is judged not in the
abstract but in context.
Students are expected to interact with other
people.
Changes in ELT
These innovations mean a change of emphasis from the subject to be
learnt to the learning process and imply interesting consequences of
negotiation, evaluation and retrospective planning. If we contrast some
aspects of the alternative models, we can have the following list .
What is to be learnt? How is it to be learnt?
Subject emphasis
External to the learner
Determined by authority
Teacher as decision-maker
Content= what subject is to the expert
Objectives defined in advance
Process emphasis
Infernal to the learner
Negotiated between learners and
teachers
Learners and teachers as decisionmakers
Content= what the subject is to the
learner
Objectives described aften/vards
Assessment by achievement or mastery Achievement in relation to learner's
criteria of succes
Doing things to the learner Doing things for or with the learner
Procedural models exemplify this altemative drawn on these innovations and
represent how something is done. They consider linguistic forms and functions as
partial aspects of what is to be leamt and regard the task as the central element of
leaming. The use of tasks tríes to achieve some objectives in the target language
through a procesa which will give a result or will solve a probiem, as it is usually
done in real life. These models have a flexible way of curriculum design, as they
take account of a set of goals and plan content and tasks simultaneously, so that
content can suggest tasks and vice versa; the results of the evaluation are
introduced back into the planning process.
Contrary to propositional models, procedural ones find rather dífficult to establish
a long term planning for content and results. Therefore, their planning is more
retrospective than prospective, emphasising evaluation and the classroom process.
Retrospection is presented as reports referring to learning objectives, nature of
content and way of wori
interaction, time planned and spent... All this is based on classroom research -
observation, diaríes, etc-, which is a reflection on all the process, advantages and
disadvantages for the participants, difficulties... This model of planning and
evaluating promotes not only teacher development and leaming but curriculum
development.
Task-Based models, on the one hand, organise leaming in terms of how a
leamer applies his or her communicative competence to undertake a selection of
tasks. A Task-Based syllabus may be organised in terms of two syllabuses:
communication tasks (the actual tasks a person undertakes when communicating)
and related enabling tasks that facilítate a leamer's participation in the former (tasks
which explicitly focus upon the rules and conventions of the language system, the
interpersonal knowledge and meaning). Tasks are cyclic and sequenced from those
which are familiar in terms of leamers' competence to the less familiar and more
complex ones.
The roots of Task-Based models can be found in several sources: the
Situational Approach, the use of project-based materíals, and the use of problemsolving
activities. Practical contributions come specially from the Bangatore Project,
developed by Prabhu (1987) and his coleagues in India. There has also been an
increase of project work, which involves the achievement of a range of tasks, and a
great concem with the development of tasks for ESP.
Process models go further than Task-Based ones and focus on three
processes: communicating, leaming and the classroom social activity. How things
are done in the clasroom are the means through which communicating and
leaming can be achieved. The Prcx^ss model is a plan for classroom work which
provides 1) the major decisions that teacher and leamers need to make jointly in an
on-going and negotiated way, and 2) a bank of classroom activities and tasks, as a
Task-Based plan but not sequenced.
Classroom decisions appear in the plan as related questions referring to three
important aspects of classroom work:
* participation ("Who works with whom?": individual, pair, group or whole class work
and the teacher's role);
* procedure ("Which particular activity or task will be undertaken?", "How will it be
worked upon and for how long?", "What resources should be used?", "How shall we
share and evalúate the outcomes of the activity?
The roots of the Process plans are found in educational thought and practice
coming from humanistic approaches (Dewey 1974, Holt 1976, Freiré 1970), the
importance given to leaming in groups, leamer reinterpretation of new knowledge,
as well as arguments against the need to plan a syllabus of content. These plans
are variously impiemented, though the main known are Allwright's (1982)
programme with adult leamers and in-service training by Breen et al. (1989). Finally,
we can say that procedural approaches represent a good response to the new
trames of reference within the teaching profession and an interesting means of
developing classroom research by teachers.
CONCLUSION
We have considered the main approaches and methods of FLT as models or
paradigms of theory, research and school practice. Some of them may be
considered obsolete from a scientific point of view, some others seem to be more
current, but in fact all of them have introduced innovations at a given moment,
superimposing on the fomier ones in an eclectic way. However, all methods have at
least two things in common: 1) thier belief to be the best one, and 2) a set of
prescriptions that teachers have to follow necessarily.
We do not suggest then -from the assumptions in this article- that teaching should
be approached following a particular method as a set of prescriptions, but on the
contrary as a dynamic and reflective process, which means a pemnanent interaction
among the curriculum, teachers, students, activities, methcxJology, and instructional
materials. What actually happens in the classrcwm, alongside careful planning and
evaluation, becomes the most important thing teachers have to reflect on and then
relate to theory or to other experíencies. I propose, therefore, an active role for
teachers, who design her or his own content and tasks, classroom interaction,
materials, methodology, evaluation, etc., instead of a passive role which means
dependence on other people's designs and methods. The expression classroom
researcher cieariy represents the new role considered above. Then, instead of an
uncritical and eclectic way of teaching, teachers should introduce a constant
analysis and interpretation of what is happening in the classroom. Certainly it is the
best way of curriculum, teacher and leamer development.
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