The Direct Method

In this method the teaching is done entirely in the target language. The learner is not allowed to use his or her mother tongue.
Grammar rules are avoided and there is emphasis on good pronunciation.

1- Grammar-translation

Learning is largely by translation to and from the target language. Grammar rules are to be memorized and long lists of vocabulary
learned by heart. There is little or no emphasis placed on developing oral ability.

Audio-lingual

The theory behind this method is that learning a language means acquiring habits. There is much practice of dialogues of every
situations. New language is first heard and extensively drilled before being seen in its written form.

The structural approach

This method sees language as a complex of grammatical rules which are to be learned one at a time in a set order. So for example
the verb "to be" is introduced and practised before the present continuous tense which uses "to be" as an auxiliary.

Suggestopedia

The theory underlying this method is that a language can be acquired only when the learner is receptive and has no mental blocks.
By various methods it is suggested to the student that the language is easy - and in this way the mental blocks to learning are
removed.

Total Physical Response (TPR)

TPR works by having the learner respond to simple commands such as "Stand up", "Close your book", "Go to the window and open
it." The method stresses the importance of aural comprehension.
Communicative language teaching (CLT)

The focus of this method is to enable the learner to communicate effectively and appropriately in the various situations she would
be likely to find herself in. The content of CLT courses are functions such as inviting, suggesting, complaining or notions such as the
expression of time, quantity, location.

The Silent Way

This is so called because the aim of the teacher is to say as little as possible in order that the learner can be in control of what he
wants to say. No use is made of the mother tongue.

Community Language Learning

In this method attempts are made to build strong personal links between the teacher and student so that there are no blocks to
learning. There is much talk in the mother tongue which is translated by the teacher for repetition by the student.

Immersion

This corresponds to a great extent to the situation we have at our school. ESL students are immersed in the English language for
the whole of the school day and expected to learn math, science, humanities etc. through the medium of the target language,
English.

Immigrant students who attend local schools find themselves in an immersion situation; for example refugee children from Bosnia
attending German schools, or Puerto Ricans in American schools. .

Task-based language learning

 The focus of the teaching is on the completion of a task which in itself is interesting to the learners. Learners use the language they
already have to complete the task and there is little correction of errors.

(This is the predominant method in middle school ESL teaching at Frankfurt International School. The tasks are subsumed in a
major topic that is studied for a number of weeks. In the topic of ecology, for example, students are engaged in a number of tasks
culminating in a poster presentation to the rest of the class. The tasks include reading, searching the internet, listening to taped
material, selecting important vocabulary to teach other students etc.)

The Natural Approach

This approach, propounded by Professor S. Krashen, stresses the similarities between learning the first and second languages.
There is no correction of mistakes. Learning takes place by the students being exposed to language that is comprehensible or
made comprehensible to them.

The Lexical Syllabus

This approach is based on a computer analysis of language which identifies the most common (and hence most useful) words in
the language and their various uses. The syllabus teaches these words in broadly the order of their frequency, and great emphasis
is placed on the use of authentic materials.

The difference between approach, method, procedure, and technique

English Language Teaching (ELT) terminology can be sometimes confusing. In this section you will read
about the difference between approach, method, procedure, and technique. It is important to be
informed about what exactly each of these terms means.
Methodological organization of teaching practices

Methodology informs teachers about different ways to organize teaching practices. Harmer (2001), for
example, suggests that there are four levels of organization at the level of methodology, namely,
approach, method, procedure, and techniques. The following description is inspired by this framework.
Many elements of this framework are also discussed by Anthony (1963) and Richards and Rodgers (1986).

Before, describing our framework of the organization of teaching practices, let’s first review briefly
Anthony’s and Richards & Rodgers’ models.

The following table shows how approach, method, procedure, and technique have been viewed by
Anthony (1963) and Richards & Rodgers (1986):
For the sake of the simplification of the above models, approach, method, procedure, and technique are
viewed in the following description as flowing in a hierarchical model. First, an approach, which provides
theoretical assumptions about language and learning, informs methods. Each method shouldn’t contradict
the approach on which it is based. Similarly, procedures are ordered sequences of techniques that have
to be aligned with the theoretical assumption a method aspires to put into practice.

Approach

An approach refers to the general assumptions about what language is and about how learning a language
occurs (Richards and Rodgers, 1986). It represents the sum of our philosophy about both the theory of
language and the theory of learning. In other words, an approach to language teaching describes:

1. The nature of language,

2. How knowledge of a language is acquired,
3. And the conditions that promote language acquisition.

Method

A method is a practical implementation of an approach. A theory is put into practice at the level a
method. It includes decisions about:

 The particular skills to be taught,

 The roles of the teacher and the learner in language teaching and learning,
 The appropriate procedures and techniques,
 The content to be taught,
 And the order in which the content will be presented.
It also involves a specific syllabus organization, choices of the materials that will boost learning, and the
means to assess learners and evaluate teaching and learning. It is a sort of an organizing plan that relies
on the philosophical premises of an approach.

Procedures

Jeremy Harmer (2001) describes ‘procedures’ as “an ordered set of techniques.” They are the step-by-step
measures to execute a method. A common procedure in the grammar-translation method, for example, is
to start by explaining the grammar rules and exemplifying these rules through sentences that the
students then had to translate into their mother tongue. According to Harmer, a procedure is “smaller
than a method and larger than a technique.”

Technique

Implementing a procedure necessitates certain practices and behaviors that operate in teaching a
language according to a particular method. These practices and behaviors are the techniques that every
procedure relies on. Techniques, in this sense, are part and parcel of procedures. They are the actual
moment-to-moment classroom steps that lead to a specified outcome. Every procedure is realized
through a series of techniques. They could take the form of an exercise or just any activity that you have
to do to complete a task. For instance, when using videos, teachers often use a technique called “silent
viewing” which consists of playing the video without sound and asking students to figure out what the
characters were saying.
Conclusion

In a nutshell, according to this framework, an approach informs methods with both the theory of language and the theory of
learning. Methods are actual implementations of approaches. They are theories put into practice. Procedures, in turn, are informed
by methods. They are ordered step-by-step events that have specified outcomes. Procedures rely on techniques to achieve desired
results.

References

Anthony, Edward M. 1963. Approach, Method, and Technique. English Learning. 17: 63-67. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press.

Brown H. Douglas (1987). Principles of language learning and teaching. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, Prentice Hall
Harmer, J. (2001). The practice of English language teaching. Essex, England: Longman.

Richards, Jack C. and Theodore S. Rodgers (1986). Approaches and methods in language teaching: A description and
analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

The goal of many language teachers is to find the right method. As Richards points out “the history of our profesión in the last
hundred of years has done much to support the impresión that improvements in language teaching Will come about as a result of
improvements in the quality of methods, and that ultimatelyan effective language teaching method will be developed (1987).

Despite the diversity, all methods have one thing in common. They all asume that there is a single set of principles which will
determine whether or not learning will take place. Thus they all propose a set of precepts for teacher and learner classroom
behaviour, and assert that if these principles are faithfully followed, they will result in learning for all. Unfortunately, little evidence
has been forthcoming to support one approach rather than another, or to suggest that it is the method rather than some other
variable which caused learning to occur.

In this lesson we will attempt to depict, organize, and analyze major and minor approaches and methods in language teaching, and
to describe their underlying nature. The objective is to provide a detailed account of major twentieth-century trends in
language teaching and to highlight the similarities and differences among them. Limitations of method claims will also be discussed
and the need for evaluation and research will be emphasized. I hope that the analysis of all the different perspectives presented
here will enable you all to become better informed about the nature, strengths, and weaknesses of methods and
approaches so you can better arrive at your own judgments and decisions.

Richards, T. (1987) Beyond Methods: Alternative approaches to instructional design in language teaching. Prospect.

Nunan, D. (1991) Language Teaching Methodology. A handbook for teachers. Prentice Hall.
Project Based Learning (PBL)

The PBL approach takes learner-centredness to a higher level. It shares many aspects with TBL, but if anything, it is even more
ambitious. Whereas TBL makes a task the central focus of a lesson, PBL often makes a task the focus of a whole term or academic
year.

Again, as with TBL, different teachers approach project work in different ways. Some use it as the basis for a whole year’s work;
others dedicate a certain amount of time alongside the syllabus. Some use projects only on short courses or ‘intensives’. Others try
to get their schools to base their whole curriculums on it. But there are generally considered to be four elements which are common
to all project-based activities/classes/courses:

1. A central topic from which all the activities derive and which drives the project towards a final objective.

2. Access to means of investigation (the Internet has made this part of project work much easier) to collect, analyse and use
information.
3. Plenty of opportunities for sharing ideas, collaborating and communicating. Interaction with other learners is fundamental to
PBL.

4. A final product (often produced using new technologies available to us) in the form of posters, presentations, reports, videos,
webpages, blogs and so on.

|Teacher and Students' roles

The role of the teacher and the learner in the PBL approach is very similar to the TBL approach. Learners are given freedom to go
about solving problems or sharing information in the way they see fit. The teacher’s role is monitor and facilitator, setting up
frameworks for communication, providing access to information and helping with language where necessary, and giving students
opportunities to produce a final product or presentation. As with TBL, the teacher monitors interaction but doesn’t interrupt, dealing
with language problems at another moment.

The advantages and disadvantages of PBL are similar to those of TBL, but the obvious attraction of project-based learning is the
motivating element, especially for younger learners. Projects bring real life into the classroom; instead of learning about how
plants grow (and all the language that goes with it), you actually grow the plant and see for yourself. It brings facts to life. The
American educational theorist John Dewey wrote “education is not a preparation for life; education is life itself”. Project work allows
‘life itself’ to form part of the classroom and provides hundreds of opportunities for learning. Apart from the fun element, project work
involves real life communicative situations, (analyzing, deciding, editing, rejecting, organizing, delegating …) and often involves
multi- disciplinary skills which can be brought from other subjects. All in all, it promotes a higher level of thinking than just learning
vocabulary and structures.