International Referred Research Journal, January, 2011. ISSN- 0974-2832 VoL.
II *ISSUE-24
Research Paper
LANGUAGE TEACHING
IN TWENTIETH CENTURY
* Dr. Haridas G. Patil
* Principal ,Arts, Comm. & Science College, Motala Buldana,S.G.B. UniversityAmravati, (M.S.)
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Introduction :-
It has been estimated that some 60 percent of today's
world population is multilingual. From both a contem-
porary and a historical perspective, bilingualism or
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multilingualism is the norm rather than the exception.
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It is fair, then to say that throughout history foreign
language learning has always been an important par-
tial concern. Whereas today English is the world's
most widely studied foreign language, 500 years ago
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it was Latin, for it was the dominant language of edu-
cation, commerce, religion, and government in the
Western world. In the sixteenth century, however,
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French, Italian, and English gained in importance as a
result of political changes in Europe, and Latin gradu-
ally became displaced as a language of spoken and
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written communication.
The decline of Latin also brought with it a
new justification for teaching Latin. Latin was said to
develop intellectual abilities, and the study of Latin
grammar became an end in itself. When once the Latin
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tongue had c eased to be a normal vehicle for commu-
nication, and was replaced as such by the vernacular
languages, then it most speedily became a ' mental
gymnastic', the supremely 'dead' language a disciplined
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and systematic study of which was held to be indis-
pensable as a basis for all forms of higher education.
(V. Mallison, cited in Titone 1968:26)
As "modern" language began to enter the
curriculum of European schools in the eighteenth cen-
tury they were taught using the same basic proce-
dures that were used for teaching Latin. Textbooks
consisted of statements of abstract grammar rules, lists
of vocabulary, And sentences for translation. Speak-
ing the foreign language was snot the goal, and oral
practice was limited to students reading aloud the sen-
tences they had translated. These sentences were con-
structed to illustrate the grammatical system of the
language and consequently bore no relation to the
language of real communication. Students leaguered
over translating sentences such as the following :
SHODH SAM IKS HA AUR MULYANKAN
January, 2011
The Reform Movement :-
Language teaching specialists such as
Marcel, Prendergast, and Gouin had done much to pro-
mote alternative approaches to language teaching, but
their ideas failed to receive widespread support or at-
tention. One of the earliest goals of the association
was to improve the teaching of modern languages. It
advocated
1. the study of the spoken language 2. phonetic train-
ing in order to establish good pronunciation habits 3.
the use of conversation texts and dialogues to intro-
duce conversational phrases and idioms 4. an induc-
tive approach to the teaching of grammar 5. teaching
new meanings through establishing associations
within the target language rather than by establishing
associations with the native language.
Types of learning and teaching activities :-
The objectives of a method, whether defined
primarily in terms of product or process, are attained
through the instructional process, through the orga-
nized and directed interaction of teachers, learners, and
materials in the classroom. Differences among meth-
ods at the level of approach manifest themselves in
the choice of different kinds of learning and teaching
activities in the classroom. Teaching activities that
focus on grammatical accuracy may be quite different
from those that focus on communicative skills. Activi-
ties designed to focus on the development of specific
psycholinguistic processes in language a acquisition
will differ from those directed toward mastery of par-
ticular features of grammar. The activity types that
method analysis - often serve to distinguish methods.
Audiolingualism, for example, uses dialogue and pat-
tern practice extensively. The Silent Way employs prob-
lem-solving activities that involve the use of special
charts and colored rods Communicative language
teaching theoreticians have advocated the use of tasks
that involve an" information gap" and "information
transfer", that is, learners work on the same task, but
each learner has different information needed to com-
39
International Referred Research Journal, January, 2011. ISSN- 0974-2832 VoL.II *ISSUE-24
plete the task.The notion of the "task" as a central
activity type in language teaching has been consider-
ably elaborated and refined since its emergence in early
versions of Communicative Language Teaching. As
well, tasks have become a central focus in both sec-
ond language acquisitions research and second lan-
guage pedagogy. The history and some of the current
interpretations of the nature of language teaching tasks
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are described in detail in Chapter 18 in relation to Task-
Based Language Teaching.
Different philosophies at the level of ap-
proach may be reflected both in the use of different
kinds of activities and in different uses for particular
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activity types. For example, interactive games are of-
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ten used in audio-lingual courses for motivation and
to provide a change of pace from pattern-practice drills.
In communicative language teaching, the same games
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may be used to introduce or provide practice for par-
ticular types of interactive exchanges. Differences in
activity types in methods may also involve different
arrangements and groupings of learners. A method that
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stresses oral chorus drilling will require different 2
groupings of learners in the classroom from a method
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that uses problem-solving information exchange ac-
tivities involving pair work. Activity types in methods
thus include the primary categories of learning and
teaching activity the method advocates, such as dia-
logue, responding to commands, group problem solv-
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ing, information-exchange activities, improvisations,
question and answer, or drills.
Because of the different assumptions they make
about learning processes, syllabuses, and learning ac-
tivities, methods also attribute different roles and func-
sh
tions to learners, teachers, and instructional material
within the instructional process.These constitute the next
three components of design in method analysis.
Learner roles :-
In the initial stages of learning, the learner is required
simply to listen and repeat what the teacher says and
to respond to questions and commands. The learner
has no control over the content of learning and is of-
ten regarded as likely to succumb to undesirable be-
haviors unless skillfully manipulated by the teacher.
For example's, the leaner might lapse into faulty gram-
mar or pronunciation, forget what has been taught, or
fail to respond quickly enough; incorrect habits are to
be avoided at all costs (see Pittman 1963). Later, more
active participation is encouraged. This includes learn-
ers initiating responses and asking each other ques-
40 ‡ÊÊäÊ ‚◊ˡÊÊ •ÊÒ⁄ U ◊Í ÀÿÊ¥ ∑§Ÿ
tions, although teacher-controlled introduction and
practice of new language is stressed throughout (see
Davies, Roberts, and Rossner 1975: 3-4).
Teacher roles :-
The teacher's function is threefold. In the presentation
stage of the lesson, the teacher server as a model, set-
ting up situations in which the need for the target struc-
ture is created and then modeling the new structure for
students of repeat. Then the teacher "becomes more
like the skillful conductor of an orchestra, drawing the
music out of the performers" (Byrne 1976:2). The
teacher is required to be a skillful manipulator, using
questions, commands, and other cues to elicit correct
sentences from the learners. Lessons are hence
teacher-directed, and the teacher sets the pace.
The role of instructional material :-
Instructional material in the Audiolingual
Method assist the teacher to develop language mas-
tery in the learner. They are primarily teacher oriented.
A students textbook is often not used in the elemen-
tary phases of a course where students are primarily
listening, repeating, and responding, At this stage in
learning, exposure to the printed world may not be
considered desirable, because it distract attention from
the aural input. The teacher, however, will have access
to a teacher's book that contains the structured se-
quence of lessons to be 3 followed and the dialogues,
drills, and other practice activities. When textbooks
and printed materials are introduced to the student,
they provide the texts of dialogues and cues needed
for drills exercises.
Tape recorders and audiovisual equipment
often have central roles in an audio-lingual course. If
the teacher is not a native speaker of the target lan-
guage, the tape recorder provides accurate models for
dialogues and drills. A language laboratory may also
be considered essential. It provides the opportunity
for further drill work and to receive controlled error-
free practice of basic structures.
Conclusion :-
Procedures associated with Situational Language
Teaching in the 1950s and 1960s were an extension
and further development of well-established tech-
niques advocated by proponents of the earlier Oral
Approach in the British school of language teaching.
Language teaching came into its own as a profession
in the twentieth century. The whole foundation of
contemporary language teaching was developed dur-
ing the early part of the twentieth century, as applied
 International Referred Research Journal, January, 2011. ISSN- 0974-2832 VoL.II *ISSUE-24
linguists and others sought to develop principles and
procedures for the design of teaching methods and
materials, drawing on the developing fields of linguis-
tics and psychology to support a succession of pro-
posals for what were though to be more effective and
theoretical sound teaching methods. Language teach-
ing in the twentieth century was characterized by fre-
quent change and innovation and by the development
of sometimes competing language teaching ideologies.
Much of the impetus for change in approaches to lan-
guage teaching came about from changes in teaching
methods. The method concept in teaching-the notion
of a systematic set of teaching practices based on at
particular theory of language and language learning-is
a powerful one, and the quest for better methods was
a preoccupation of many teachers and applied linguists
throughout the twentieth century.

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SHODH SAM IKS HA AUR MULYANKAN

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