Language Learning—a Basic History
Over the course of history, attitudes towards Language Learning have shifted dramatically. From the Classical Era until around WWII, the teaching of foreign languages was reserved for the wealthy and elite of society. Universities used The Grammar-Translation Method, where they hammered on memorization of grammar rules. The goal of this method was literacy in foreign languages, not communication. Learners became skilled in reading and writing, but were never expected to listen to the language and understand, or speak the language and be understood. Though someone who had studied under this method might claim to be accomplished in French, for example, if you dropped this so-called-scholar in the middle of France, he wouldn’t be able to tell his chiens from his chats.
Fast-forward to WWII, and things became very clear that The Grammar-Translation Method was not producing people capable of communicating with speakers of other languages. In the middle of a global war, communication was a necessity. The U.S. government demanded that universities reform their methods and teach their students how to understand and speak foreign languages. This moment marked a shift in the goals of Language Teaching. No longer was mere literacy considered adequate. Communication became the main goal of all language teaching. Of course, some methods and teachers vary in the success of achieving this goal, but we can’t shame them for trying.
As you prepare to enter and lead your very own classroom, keep this in mind. Your end goal should be to help your students not only understand the rules of grammar, but communicate with other English speakers.
Below are a few other important Language Teaching methods that have emerged over the years:
The Audio-Lingual Method: Remember how I mentioned the pressure from the U.S. government on universities to reform their methods? Well, this is what they came up with. This method shifted the focus from writing to speaking. They believed that language was simply a habit we develop with lots of practice, so they designed scripts for the students to repeat and memorize. For example, the teacher might ask the students to repeat over and over the sentence, “I am going to the store to buy___”, and then fill in the blank with various grocery items like “milk” or “honey”. Think Duo-Lingo style. Although this method had good intentions, its limited and repetitive drills were not practical when faced with the real world. It was a little difficult to break from the script so routinely practiced. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on who you ask), the world is not a play where everyone stays on script.
Suggestopedia: This method says that learning is easiest when the students are comfortable. It suggests soft lighting, comfy chairs, fun games and songs, and low pressure on the students. Sounds like the kind of classroom I would want to be in!
The Silent Way: This one is easy to remember, but difficult for most teachers (me included), since it requires that the teacher spend most of the time, well, silent. The idea is that the teacher models once or twice, and then sits back while the students work together to reproduce the model. It’s a little more complicated than that, but for the purpose of this blog, when you think of this method, remember to let the students do some talking!
Total Physical Response: This method is so fun to include in the classroom! It is especially useful in beginning classes where the students cannot yet produce very much language. If they cannot respond verbally, they can respond physically! This may look like the students standing up when the teacher says “Stand Up!”, or acting out with the teacher the steps to brushing your teeth, driving a car, or baking a cake while the teacher verbally walks you through the steps. This helps the students to develop some listening skills, and eventually they can repeat back what the teacher says as they act it out.
Communicative Approach: As the name suggests, the whole focus of this method is to develop the ability to communicate! In this method, everything you do in the classroom is focused on creating opportunities to communicate with one another and to encourage communication even when the students go home! When students are able to understand and produce meaningful language, we say that they have achieved Communicative Competence. Teachers break this down into four areas—the grammar level, the discourse level, the sociocultural level, and the strategic level. On the grammar level, in order for students to communicate effectively, they need to recognize, understand, and use individual sounds, words, and sentence structures within the language. You can’t communicate in a language unless you know the basics! The discourse level means that they are able to recognize, understand and use sentences strung together in paragraphs or conversations. As students become more advanced and produce and understand the language with greater ease, they may begin to develop a competence on the sociocultural level, recognizing social cues, body language, and the need for turn-taking. The final area of communicative competence is strategic competence. This means that, even when they do not understand something or are having a hard time learning something, they have a full tool belt to turn to.
