Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
A Brief History of Language Teaching :star: - Coggle Diagram
A Brief History of Language Teaching
:star:
The Grammar-Translation Method
As the names of some of its leading exponents suggest, Grammar Translation was the offspring of German scholarship, the object of which, according to one of its less charitable critics, was "to know everything about something rather than the thing itself. Grammar Translation was in fact first known in the United States as the Prussian Method. The principal characteristics of the Grammar Translation Method were these:
The sentence is the basic unit of teaching and language practice.
Accuracy is emphasized
Vocabulary selection is based solely on the reading texts used, and words are taught through bilingual word lists, dictionary study, and memorization.
Grammar is taught deductively that is, by presentation and study of grammar rules, which are then practiced through translation exercises.
Reading and writing are the major focus; little or no systematic attention is paid to speaking or listening.
The student's native language is the medium of instruction.
The goal of foreign language study is to learn a language in order to read its literature or in order to benefit from the mental discipline and intellectual development that result from foreign language study.
The Direct Method
Gouin had been one of the first of the nineteenth-century reformers to attempt to build a methodology around the observation of child language learning.
Other reformers toward the end of the century likewise turned their attention to naturalistic principles of language learning, and for this reason, they are sometimes referred to as advocates of a "natural" method.
In practice it stood for the following principles and procedures:
Classroom instruction was conducted exclusively in the target language.
Only everyday vocabulary and sentences were taught.
Oral communication skills were built up in a carefully graded progression organized around question-and-answer exchanges between teachers and students in small, intensive classes.
Grammar was taught inductively.
New teaching points were introduced orally.
Concrete vocabulary was taught through demonstration, objects, and pictures; abstract vocabulary was taught by association of ideas.
At various times throughout the history of language teaching, attempts have been made to make second language learning more like first language learning.
In the sixteenth century, Montaigne described how he was entrusted to a guardian who addressed him exclusively in Latin for the first years of his life since Montaigne's father wanted his son to speak Latin well.
Among those who tried to apply natural principles to language classes in the nineteenth century was L.Sauveur (1826-1907), who used intensive oral interaction in the target language, employing questions as a way of presenting and eliciting language.
Language Teaching Innovation in the 19th Century
Toward the mid-nineteenth century, several factors contributed to questioning and rejection of the Grammar-Translation Method.
Increased opportunities for communication among Europeans created a demand for oral proficiency in foreign languages.
In Germany, England, France, and other parts of Europe, new approaches to language teaching were developed by individual language teaching specialists, each with a specific method for reforming the teaching of modern languages.
The Englishman T. Prendergast (1806-1886) was one of the first to record the observation that children use contextual and situational cues to interpret utterances and that they use memorized phrases and "routines" in speaking.
The Frenchman F. Gouin developed an approach to teaching a foreign language based on his observations of children's use of language.
Approaches and Methods in Teacher Preparation Programs
The study of past and present teaching methods continues to form a significant component of teacher preparation programs. The reasons for this are the following:
The study of approaches and methods provides teachers with a view of how the field of language teaching has evolved.
-Approaches and methods can be studied not as prescriptions for how to teach but as a source of well-used practices, which teachers can adopt or implement based on their own needs.
-Experience in using different teaching approaches and methods can provide teachers with basic teaching skills that they can later add to or supplement as they develop teaching experience.
The Reform Movement
Language teaching specialists such as Marcel, Prendergast, and Gouin did much to promote alternative approaches to language teaching.
The discipline of linguistics was revitalized. Phonetics - the scientific analysis and description of the sound systems of languages - was established, giving new insights into speech processes.
Linguists emphasized that speech, rather than the written word, was the primary form of language.
The International Phonetic Association was founded in 1886, and its International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) was designed to enable the sounds of any language to be accurately transcribed.
One of the earliest goals of the association was to improve the teaching of modern languages. It advocated:
the study of the spoken language
phonetic training in order to establish good pronunciation habits
the use of conversation texts and dialogues to introduce conversational phrases and idioms
an inductive approach to the teaching of grammar
teaching new meanings through establishing associations within the target language rather than by establishing associations with the native language.
The Methods Era
The controversy over the Direct Method was the first of many debates over how second and foreign languages should be taught.
The history of language teaching throughout much of the twentieth century saw the rise and fall of a variety of language teaching approaches and applied linguists and language teachers moved away from a belief that newer and better approaches and methods are the solutions to problems in language teaching.
Alternative ways of understanding the nature of language teaching have emerged that are sometimes viewed as characterizing the "post-methods era.