Republic of the Philippines

Leyte Normal University

Graduate School
Tacloban City

Strategies and
Methods in
Language
Teaching
(LT 503)

Princess Noreen May Ngoho

DR. LUIS LUIGI VALENCIA

A.Y. 2022-2023, 2nd Semester
A brief history of early developments in Language Teaching
History of Language Teaching:
• The Influence of the Greeks, “Plato and Aristotle
• The influence of Latin
• MODERN Language – 18th Century
• 19th Century- “Grammar Translation Method”
• 19th Century- Innovations in Language Teaching
• Reform Movement
• Direct Method
• Methods Era
• 1600-1900s – Language learning was scholarly pursuit.
• 1970s- 1980’s – Language teaching started moving towards our modern communicative
methods.
• 20th century- More humanistic approaches to learning started.
• 1800s- Grammar Translation Method
• 1900s- Direct Method
• 1920’s The Oral Approach
• 1940’s- The Audio-lingual method
• 1960’s – Situational Language Teaching
• Total Physical Response
• 1963- The Silent way
• 1970’s – Suggestopedia
• Community Language Learning
• 1980’s- Communicative Language Teaching
• The Natural Approach
• 1987- Task Based learning
• 1990’s- The Lexical Approach
• 1994- Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)
 Language teaching today reflects the changed status of English as an international language,
which has accelerated the demand for more effective approaches to language teaching.
Innovations in technology, the growing trend to begin teaching English at primary level as well
as the use of English as a medium of instruction in many university programs prompt an ongoing
review of past and present practices as teachers and teacher educators search for effective activities
and resources for their classrooms.
English Language Teaching (ELT) includes various. approaches, techniques and methods that
are involved in teaching English, to people with English as First Language and also those who use
it as a second and a foreign language.
ANCIENT TIME - Influence of the Greeks, “Plato and Aristotle
By the beginning of the twentieth century, language teaching was emerging as an active area
of educational debate and innovation.
Although language teaching has a very long history, the foundations of contemporary
approaches to language teaching were developed during the early part of the twentieth century, as
applied linguists and others sought to develop principles and procedures for the design of teaching
methods and materials, drawing on the developing fields of linguistics and psychology. The history
of the consideration of foreign teaching goes back at least to the Ancient Greeks.
They were interested in what they could learn about the mind and the will through language
learning. The Romans were probably the first to study a foreign language formally.
Early history Interest in languages and language teaching has a long history, and we can trace
this back at least as far as the ancient Greeks, where both ‘Plato and Aristotle contributed to the
design of a curriculum beginning with good writing (grammar), then moving on to effective
discourse (rhetoric) and culminating in the development of dialectic to promote a philosophical
approach to life’ (Howatt, 1999: 618).
Major attempts at linguistic description began to occur in the second half of the eighteenth
century. In 1755, Samuel Johnson published his Dictionary of the English Language, which
quickly became the unquestioned authority on the meanings of English words.About the same
time, Robert Lowth published an influential grammar book, Short Introduction to English
Grammar (1762), but whereas Johnson sought to describe English vocabulary by collecting
thousands of examples of how English words were actually used.
• The result was that English, which is a Germanic language, was described by a linguistic
system (parts of speech) which was borrowed from Latin, which had previously borrowed
the system from Greek.
• The process of prescribing, rather than describing, has left us with English grammar rules
which are much too rigid to describe actual language usage:
 No multiple negatives (I don’t need no help from nobody!)
 No split infinitives (So we need to really think about all this from scratch.)
  No ending a sentence with a preposition (I don’t know what it is made of.
These rules made little sense even when Lowth wrote them, but through the ages both teachers
and students have generally disliked ambiguity, and so Lowth’s notions of grammar were quickly
adopted once in print as the rules of ‘correct English’.
THE INFLUENCE OF LATIN- 16TH CENTURY
Today English is the world’s most widely studied foreign or second language, 500 years ago it
was Latin, for it was the dominant language of education, commerce, religion, and government in
the Western world.
In the 16th century, however, French, Italian, and English gained in importance as a result of
political changes in Europe, and Latin gradually became displaced as a language of spoken and
written communication. In the sixteenth century, however, French, Italian, and English gained
in importance as a result of Political changes in Europe, and Latin gradually became displaced as
a language of spoken and written communication. The study of classical Latin (the Latin in which
the works of Virgil, Ovid, and Cicero were written) and an analysis of its grammar and rhetoric
became the model for foreign language study from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries.
Children entering “grammar school” in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries
in England were initially given a rigorous introduction to Latin grammar, which was taught
through rote learning of grammar rules,
There were occasional attempts to promote alternative approaches to education; Roger
Ascham and Montaigne in the sixteenth century and Comenius and John Locke in the
seventeenth century, for example, had made specific proposals for curriculum reform and for
changes in the way Latin was taught (Kelly 1969; Howatt 1984) but since Latin (and, to a lesser
extent, Greek) had for so long been regarded as the classical and therefore most ideal form of
language, it was not surprising that ideas about the role of language study in the curriculum
reflected the long-established status of Latin. 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.
Why did Latin die?
Latin essentially, “died out” with the fall of Roman Empire, but in reality, it transformed –
first into a simplified version of itself called Vulgar Latin, and then gradually into the Romance
languages: Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese and Romanian. Thus, Classical Latin fell out of
use. Historians have since stated that Latin really became a dead language around 600-750AD.
This is in line with the diminishing Roman Empire where few people could actually read, and the
Italian, French and Spanish spoken language was rapidly evolving.
- JAN AMOS COMENIUS – 17th century
Most famous language methodologist of 17th century was J A Comenius (1592-1670). Languages
at this time were being taught by oral methods for communicative purposes.
The works of Comenius stress the importance of the senses rather than the mind, the importance
of physical activity in the classroom. He is best known for his use of pictures in language teaching.
Overview of the Century:
• 20th Century- The real acceleration of change in linguistic description and pedagogy
occurred.
• 18th Century- ‘Grammar-translation method
• 19th Century – Codified by Karl Plotz (1819-1881)
• The approach was originally reformist in nature, attempting to make language learning
easier through the use of example sentences instead of whole texts (Howatt, 1984: 136).
However, the method grew into a very controlled system, with a heavy emphasis on
accuracy and explicit grammar rules, many of which were quite obscure. The content
focused on reading and writing literary materials, which highlighted the archaic vocabulary
found in the classics.
CRITICISMS OF GRAMMAR- TRANSLATION: One of the main problems with
Grammar-translation was that it focused on the ability to ‘analyse’ language, and not the ability
to ‘use it,
• Beginning of 20th century - ‘Direct method’
• This emphasized exposure to oral language, with listening and speaking as the primary
skills. Meaning was related directly to the target language, without the step of translation,
while explicit grammar teaching was also downplayed.
• The Direct method had its own problems, however. It required teachers to be highly
proficient in the target language, which was not always possible. Also, it mimicked L1
learning, but did not take into account the differences between L1 and L2 acquisition. One
key difference is that L1 learners have abundant exposure to the target language, which the
Direct method could not hope to match.
In the UK, Michael West was interested in increasing learners’ exposure to language through
reading. His ‘Reading method’ attempted to make this possible by promoting reading skills
through vocabulary management. To improve the readability of his textbooks, he ‘substituted
low-frequency “literary” words such as isle, nought, and ere with more frequent items such as
island, nothing, and before’ (Schmitt and 2000: 17). He also controlled the number of new
words which could appear in any text. These steps had the effect of significantly reducing the
lexical load for readers.
The three methods, Grammar-translation, the Direct method and the Reading method,
continued to hold sway until World War II. During the war, the weaknesses of all of the above
approaches became obvious, as the American military found itself short of people who were
conversationally fluent in foreign languages. It needed a way of training soldiers in oral and aural
skills quickly. Students were expected to learn through drills rather than through an analysis of the
target language. The students who went through this ‘Army method’ were mostly mature and
highly motivated, and their success was dramatic. This success meant that the method naturally
continued on after the war, and it came to be known as ‘Audiolingualism.
Chomsky’s (1959) attack on the behaviourist underpinnings of structural linguistics in the late
1950s proved decisive, and its associated pedagogical approach – Audiolingualism – began to fall
out of favour. Chomsky (1959) suggested that children form hypotheses about their language that
they tested out in practice. Some would naturally be incorrect, but Chomsky and his followers
argued that children do not receive enough negative feedback from other people about these
inappropriate language forms (negative evidence) to be able to discard them.
In the early 1970s, Hymes (1972) added the concept of ‘communicative competence’, which
emphasized that language competence consists of more than just being able to ‘form grammatically
correct sentences but also to know when and where to use these sentences and to whom’ (Richards,
Platt and Weber, 1985: 49).
At the same time, Halliday’s (1973) systemic-functional grammar was offering an alternative
to Chomsky’s approach, in which language was seen not as something exclusively internal to a
learner, but rather as a means of functioning in society.
Halliday (1973) identified three types of function: ideational (telling people facts or
experiences) interpersonal (maintaining personal relationships with people) textual (expressing
the connections and organization within a text, for example, clarifying, summarizing, signalling
the beginning and end of an argument). In the early 1980s, a theory of acquisition promoted by
Krashen (1982) focused attention on the role of input. Krashen’s ‘Monitor theory’ posited that a
second language was mainly unconsciously acquired through exposure to ‘comprehensible input’
rather than being learnt through explicit exercises, that it required a focus on meaning rather than
form, and that a learner’s emotional state can affect this acquisition (‘affective filter’)
The methodology which developed from these factors emphasized the use of language for
meaningful communication – communicative language teaching (CLT) (Littlewood, 1981). The
focus was on learners’ message and fluency rather than their grammatical accuracy. It was often
taught through problem-solving activities and tasks which required students to transact
information, such as information gap exercises.
The focus was on learners’ message and fluency rather than their grammatical accuracy. Just
as language pedagogy developed and advanced during this time, so did the field of language
assessment. Until the 1980s, tests were evaluated according to three principal criteria: ‘Validity’
(did the test really measure what it was supposed to measure?) ‘Reliability’ (did the test perform
consistently from one administration to the next?) ‘Practicality’ (was the test practical to give and
mark in a particular setting?)
Technology was advancing throughout the century, but the advent of powerful and affordable
personal computers probably has had the greatest impact on applied linguistics.
 MODERN LANGUAGE
As “modern” languages began to enter the curriculum of European schools in the eighteenth
century, they were taught using the same basic procedures that were used for teaching Latin.
Textbooks consisted of statements of abstract grammar rules, lists of vocabulary, and sentences
for translation. Speaking the foreign language was not the goal, and oral practice was limited to
students reading aloud the sentences they had translated.
19Th CENTURY
By the nineteenth century, this approach based on the study of Latin had become the standard
way of studying foreign languages in schools. A typical textbook in the mid-nineteenth century
thus consisted of chapters or lessons organized around grammar points. Each grammar point was
listed, rules on its use were explained, and it was illustrated by sample sentences.
At the beginning of the century, second languages were usually taught by the ‘Grammar-
translation method’, which had been in use since the late eighteenth century, but was fully codified
in the nineteenth century by Karl Plötz (1819–1881), (cited in Kelly, 1969: 53, 220).
KARL JULIUS PLOTZ (1819-1881
• A German author of scholarly works, most notably his Epitome of History published n the
English language in 1883. He is credited with the idea of arranging historic data by dates,
geographic location, and other factors.
• As later used in English Language, Encyclopedia of World History credited with being one
of the most complete and comprehensive academic tools available before the electronic
evolution.
Grammar-translation Method:
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 ” (W. II. D. Rouse, quoted in Kelly 1969: 53)
• A lesson would typically have one or two new grammar rules, a list of vocabulary items
and some practice examples to translate from L1 into L2 or vice versa.
• The approach was originally reformist in nature, attempting to make language learning
easier through the use of example sentences instead of whole texts (Howatt, 1984: 136).
• However, the method grew into a very controlled system, with a heavy emphasis on
accuracy and explicit grammar rules, many of which were quite obscure. The content
focused on reading and writing literary materials, which highlighted the archaic vocabulary
found in the classics.
The Principal characteristics of the Grammar-Translation Method were these:
1. 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.
Grammar Translation is a way of studying a language that approaches the language first
through detailed analysis of its grammar rules, followed by application of this knowledge to the
task of translating sentences and texts into and out of the target language. It hence views language
learning as consisting of little more than memorizing rules and facts in order to understand and
manipulate the morphology and syntax of the foreign language. “ The first language is maintained
as the reference system in the acquisition of the second language” (Stern 1983: 455).
2. Reading and writing are the major focus; little or no systematic attention is paid to speaking
or listening.
3. Vocabulary selection is based solely on the reading texts used, and words are taught through
bilingual word lists, dictionary study, and memorization.
4. The sentence is the basic unit of teaching and language practice.
5. Accuracy is emphasized. Students are expected to attain high standards in translation,
because of “ the high priority attached to meticulous standards of accuracy which, as well as having
an intrinsic moral value, was a prerequisite for passing the increasing number of formal written
examinations that grew up during the century” (Howatt 1984: 132)
6. Grammar is taught deductively - that is, by presentation and study of grammar rules, which
arc then practiced through translation exercises.
7. The students native language is the medium of instruction. It is used to explain new items
and to enable comparisons to be made between the foreign language and the students native
language.

Language teaching innovations in the nineteenth century:

Toward the middle of the nineteenth century, several factors contributed to a questioning
and rejection of the Grammar-Translation Method. Increasingly, the public education system was
seen to be failing in its responsibilities. In Germany, England, France, and other parts of Europe,
new approaches to language teaching were developed by individual language teaching specialists.
• The Frenchman C. Marcel (1793-1896) referred to child language learning as a model
for language teaching, emphasized the importance of meaning in learning, proposed that
reading be taught before other skills, and tried to locate language teaching within a broader
educational framework.
• 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. He proposed the first “structural
 syllabus,” advocating that learners be taught the most basic structural patterns occurring in
the language.
• The Frenchman F. Gouin (1831-1896) is perhaps the best known of these mid-nineteenth-
century reformers. Gouin developed an approach to teaching a foreign language based on
his observations of childrens use of language.
His method used situations and themes as ways of organizing and presenting oral language -the
famous Gouin “series,” which include sequences of sentences related to such activities as chopping
wood and opening the door. Gouin established schools to teach according to his method, and it
was quite popular for a time.
REFORM MOVEMENT:
The discipline of linguistics was revitalized. Phonetics - the scientific analysis and description
of the sound systems of languages - was established, giving new insights of Major trends in
twentieth-century language teaching 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.
• The International Phonetic Association was founded in 1886, and its International
Phonetic Alphabet (IPA):
 1. the study of the spoken language;
 2. phonetic training in order to establish good pronunciation habits;
 3. the use of conversation texts and dialogues to introduce conversational phrases and
idioms;
 4. an inductive 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.
Wilhelm Vietor (1850-1918) used linguistic theory to justify his views on language teaching.
(German Scholar)
-He argued that training in phonetics would enable teachers to pronounce the language
accurately. Speech patterns, rather than grammar, were the fundamental elements of language.
-In 1882 he published his views in an influential pamphlet, Language Teaching Must Start
Afresh, in which he strongly criticized the inadequacies of Grammar Translation and stressed the
value of training teachers in the new science of phonetics.
Vietor, Sweet, and other reformers in the late nineteenth century shared many beliefs about the
principles on which a new approach to teaching foreign languages should be based, although they
often differed considerably in the specific procedures they advocated for teaching a language.
 • In general the reformers believed that :
 1. the spoken language is primary and that this should be reflected in an oral-based
methodology;
 2. the findings of phonetics should be applied to teaching and to teacher training;
 3. learners should hear the language first, before seeing it in written form;
 4. words should be presented in sentences, and sentences should be practiced in
meaningful contexts and not be taught as isolated, disconnected elements;
 5. the rules of grammar should be taught only after the students have practiced the grammar
points in context - that is, grammar should be taught inductively;
 6. translation should be avoided, although the native language could be used in order to
explain new words or to check comprehension.
These principles provided the theoretical foundations for a principled approach to language
teaching, one based on a scientific approach to the study of language and of language learning.
They reflect the beginnings of the discipline of applied linguistics - that branch of language
study and research concerned with the scientific study of second and foreign language teaching
and learning.
METHODS ERA:
One of the lasting legacies of the Direct Method was the notion of method” itself. 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 and into the twenty-first century saw the rise and fall of a variety of language teaching
approaches and methods.
The different teaching approaches and methods that have emerged since the 1950s and
1960s, while often having very different characteristics in terms of goals, assumptions about how
a second language is learned, and preferred teaching techniques, have in common the belief that if
language learning is to be improved, it will come about through changes and improvements in
teaching methodology.
Approaches and methods in teacher preparation programs:
Despite the changing status of approaches and methods in language teaching, the study of
past and present teaching methods continues to form a component of many teacher preparation
programs. There are several reasons why methods are a component of many teacher-education
programs. The study of approaches and methods • provides teachers with a view of how the field
of language teaching has evolved and forms part of the disciplinary knowledge expected of
language teachers today;
 Introduces teachers to the issues and options that are involved in planning and developing a
language course; Introduces a variety of principles and procedures that teachers can review and
evaluate in relation to their own knowledge, beliefs, and practice.

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE HISTORY OF LANGUAGE TEACHING

Learning the History of language teaching will help us appreciate its development and help
students as well learn similarities and differences between languages in the same families.It might
even motivate them to start learning another language in a more effective way.
Learning the history of a language will help students learn similarities and difference between
languages in the same families. It might even motivate them to start learning another language
now that they have great head start.

REFERENCES:
Richards, J.C,,& Rodgers, T.S (2014). Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching (3 rd ed.)
Cambridge University
Norbert Schmitt & Marianne Celce- Murcia (2020). An Introduction to Applied Linguistics (3rd
ed.) Routledge London and New York