History of Language
Teaching Methodology
Language
teaching has seen many changes in ideas about syllabus design and methodology
in the last 50 years, and we may group trends in language
teaching in the last 50 years into three phases:
Phase 1: Traditional
Approach (up to
the late 1960s)
Traditional approaches to language teaching
gave priority to grammatical competence as the basis of language proficiency. Grammar could be learned through
direct instruction and through a methodology that made much use of repetitive
practice and drilling. The
approach to the teaching of grammar was a deductive one: students are presented
with grammar rules and then given opportunities to practice using them.
Methodologies which based on these assumptions that students’
errors would quickly become a permanent part of their learners, include Audiolingualism (in North America) (also known
as the Aural-Oral Method), and the Structural-Situational Approach in the
United Kingdom (also known as Situational Language Teaching). Syllabuses during
this period consisted of word lists and grammar lists, graded across levels.
One of a typical lesson according
to the situational approach is
known as the P-P-P cycle which employed:
Presentation :
The students comprehend new structure.
Practice :
Students practice using the new structure in a controlled context.
Production :
Students practice using the new structure in different contexts.
The
underlying theory for a P-P-P approach has now been discredited. The belief
that a precise focus on a particular form leads to learning and automatization no
longer carries much credibility in linguistics or psychology.
Phase 2: Classic Communicative Language Teaching (1970s
to 1990s)
In
the 1970s, Audiolingualism
and Situational Language Teaching fell out of fashion. What was needed in order to use
language communicatively was communicative competence. It consists
of grammatical
competence (sentence-level grammatical forms, ability to recognize the
lexical, morphological, syntactic, and phonological feature of language), discourse
competence (concerned with the interconnectedness of a series of
utterances), sociocultural competence (extend well beyond linguistic forms and
the social rules of language use), and strategic competence (the coping strategies
that is used in unfamiliar context).
New syllabus should identify
the following aspects of language use in order to be able to develop the
learner’s communicative competence:
1. As detailed a consideration as
possible of the purposes for which the learner wishes to acquire the target
language.
2. Some idea of the setting in
which they will want to use the target language.
3. The socially defined role the
learners will assume in the target language.
4. The communicative events in
which the learners will participate: everyday situations, vocational or
professional situations, academic situations, and so on.
5. The language functions involved
in those events, or what the learner will be able to do with or through the
language.
6. The notions or concepts
involved, or what the learner will need to be able to talk about.
7.
The skills involved in the
“knitting together” of discourse: discourse and rhetorical skills.
8. The variety or varieties of the
target language that will be needed.
9.
The grammatical content that
will be needed.
10.The
lexical content, or vocabulary, that will be needed.
Several
new syllabus types were proposed by advocates of CLT. These included:
·
A skills-based syllabus : This
focuses on the four skills of reading, writing, listening, and speaking, and
breaks each skill down into its component microskills.
·
A functional syllabus :
This is organized according to the functions the learner should be able to
carry out in English.
·
A notional syllabus was one
based around the content and notions a learner would need to express, and a
task syllabus specified the tasks and activities students should carry out in
the classroom.
English
for Specific Purposes
Advocates
of CLT also recognized that many learners needed English in order to use it in
specific occupational or educational settings. For them it would be more
efficient to teach them the specific kinds of language and communicative skills
needed for particular roles, (e.g., that of nurse, engineer, flight attendant, pilot,
biologist, etc.) rather than just to concentrate on more general English.
1.
2.
Phase 3: Current Communicative Language Teaching
Since the 1990s, the communicative approach has been widely implemented. There
are Ten Core Assumptions of Current
Communicative Language Teaching
1. Second language learning is facilitated when
learners are engaged in interaction and meaningful communication.
2.
Effective classroom learning tasks and
exercises provide opportunities for students to negotiate meaning, expand their
language resources, notice how language is used, and take part in meaningful interpersonal exchange.
3. Meaningful communication results from students
processing content that is relevant,
purposeful, interesting, and engaging.
4.
Communication is a holistic process that often
calls upon the use of several language skills or modalities.
5.
Language learning is facilitated both by
activities that involve inductive or discovery learning of underlying rules of
language use and organization.
6.
Language learning is a gradual process that
involves creative use of language, and trial and error.
7.
Learners develop their own routes to language
learning, progress at different rates, and have different needs and motivations
for language learning.
8. Successful language learning involves the use
of effective learning and communication strategies.
9. The role of the teacher in the language
classroom is that of a facilitator.
10. The classroom is a community where learners
learn through collaboration and sharing.
Current
approaches to methodology draw on earlier traditions in communicative language
teaching and continue to make reference to some extent to traditional
approaches. Thus classroom activities typically have some of the following
characteristics:
· They seek to develop students’ communicative
competence through linking grammatical development to the ability to communicate.
· They create the need for communication,
interaction, and negotiation of meaning through the use of activities such as problem
solving.
· They provide opportunities for both inductive
as well as deductive learning of grammar.
· They make use of content that connects to
students’ lives and interests.
· They allow students to personalize learning by
applying what they have learned to their own lives.
· Classroom materials typically make use of
authentic texts to create interest and to provide valid models of language.
Jacobs and
Farrell (2003) see the shift toward CLT as marking a paradigm shift in our
thinking about teachers, learning, and teaching. They identify key components of
this shift as follows:
1. Focusing greater attention on the role of
learners rather than the external stimuli learners are receiving from their environment.
2. Focusing greater attention on the learning
process rather than the products that learners produce.
3. Focusing greater attention on the social
nature of learning.
4. Focusing greater attention on diversity among
learners and viewing these differences not as
impediments to learning but as resources to be recognized, catered to, and
appreciated.
5. In research and theory-building, focusing
greater attention on the views of those internal to the classroom.
6. Along with this emphasis on context comes the
idea of connecting the school with the world beyond as means of promoting
holistic learning.
7.
Helping students to understand the purpose of
learning and develop their own purpose
8.
A whole-to-part orientation instead of a
part-to-whole approach.
9. An
emphasis on the importance of meaning rather than drills and other forms of
rote learning.
10. A view of learning as a lifelong process
rather than something done to prepare students for an exam.
References:
• Celce – Murcia, M. 2001. Teaching
English as a Second or Foreign Language Third Edition. Unit 1. Teaching
Methodology, Topic 1 & Topic 2
• Richard, J.C. 2005.
Communicative Language Teaching Today. New York: Cambridge University Press
