TOPIC 1

Juan Carlos Guerrero Fernández OPOSICIONES SECUNDARIA INGLÉS TOPIC 1 1

EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE TEACHING
CURRENT TRENDS IN EFL
COMMUNICATIVE APPROACHES

Otto Jespersen, Language: Its Nature, Development and Origin

David Crystal, Linguistics
Baugh & Cable, A History of the English Language
T. S. Rodgers, Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching
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INTRODUCTION
Learning is important because it boosts confidence, is enjoyable and provides happiness, leads to a
better quality of life and helps boost personal development.
Learning is the key to achieving a person's full potential. Human beings are uniquely adapted to learn
and can learn throughout their lifespan. For people, learning does not stop after high school, college or
graduate school. People who continue to learn are able to transform their lives and become more
successful at home, more successful with their families, more successful at work and more successful
within their local community.
But though learning is always supposed to be fruitful, when it comes to language learning it may turn
into a hard and tough process which not always has the expected results and for which everyone is not
good at.
On many occasions a lot has to do with the methodology used, and that is what I am going to do in
this topic, to explain the evolution of language teaching at different times. For that purpose in this topic
I am going to deal first with some general considerations, then, in section two, I’ll deal with older
methods on language teaching, followed by more modern trends and communicative approaches in
section 3. Section 4 will treat current trends and I will put an end to the topic with a conclusion.

1. GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
It was around the fifth century B.C that in ancient India the early states of language were written down
as a set of rules. It was a grammar of Sanskrit whose effects went far beyond the original intentions of
the authors, as it consisted not only of the acquisition of knowledge, but the physical, mental,
emotional, moral, and social development of the individual. Hence, the early Greek aim was to prepare
intellectually young people, and Romans considered the teaching of rhetoric and oratory important.
In the seventeenth century, Jan Amos Komensky, known as Comenius, is often said to be the founder of
the Didactics of Language. Language study was to be promoted in the following centuries through
philosophy, logic, rhetoric, sociology, and religion. This was basically to study and understand the
general principles of languages and teach them better.
Throughout history many changes in language teaching methods have occurred as well as changes in
the kind of learners’ need. Developments in other fields such as linguistics, psychology, anthropology,
and sociology have been the source of many methods which searched continuously the most effective
way to learn a new language. The study of these theories is called today applied linguistics.
And before going on any further, let me tell you the difference that exists between three concept that
usually cause great confusion to what language teaching is concerned, they are approach, method and
technique.
What can we say about what an approach is? According to Edward Anthony, an approach is a set of
assumptions, theoretical positions and beliefs about the nature of a language. I mean an approach
consists on what we belief about language and how language is learned, it shows or specifies the
nature of the subject to be taught.
A method, on the other hand, is the systematic plan, that is, it is the orderly procedures based on the
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approach. The method is the planning that is built based on our approach and this planning is focus on
our goals of the teaching and learning.
And finally a technique or techniques are the strategies like exercises, tasks, activities like didactic
games, role playing among others, that can be applied in a classroom to students so that a teacher can
reach pedagogical goals.

Knowing now about these general considerations, let’s move on to

2 OLDER METHODS OF LANGUAGE TEACHING

As we have stated previously, language teaching traces back to ancient civilizations.
During the Middle Ages (15th-16th century), teaching centred on grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic,
geometry, astronomy, and music, and the main learning centres were the monasteries. As a rule,
education was the privilege of the upper classes, and most members of the lower classes had no
opportunity for formal learning.
During the Renaissance, Montaigne, in the sixteenth century, and Comenius and John Locke, in the
seventeenth century, made proposals in the way Latin was taught, but since Latin had for so long been
regarded as the most ideal form of language, the role of language study reflected the status of Latin.
Beginning around the 16th century, French, Italian, and English gained in importance as a result of
political changes in Europe, and Latin gradually became displaced, a situation that did not change in the
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17 and 18 centuries, though the role of Latin was still important.
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That way of teaching was different in the coming 19 century, which were reflected with the following
teaching methods:

2.1 The Grammar-Translation Method.

As modern languages began to enter the curriculum of European schools, they were taught using the
same basic procedures that were used for teaching Latin. Emphasis was on learning grammar rules, lists
of vocabulary, and sentences for translation which usually had little relationship to the real world.
Speaking the foreign language was not the goal, and oral practice was limited to students reading
aloud the sentences they had translated. This method came to be known as the grammar-translation
method, and was the dominant method in Europe from the 1840s to the 1940s, and a version of it
continues to be widely used in some parts of the world.
The main failures of the method are that it does not sound natural to a native speaker, it produces
difficult mistakes to eradicate, tedious experience of memorizing lists of grammar rules and vocabulary,
and little stress on accurate pronunciation.

2.2 Marcel, Prendergast and Gouin.

In the mid-late nineteenth century, the increasing opportunities for communication among Europeans
created a demand for oral proficiency in foreign languages. The Grammar Translation method was
challenged by new approaches to language teaching developed by individual specialists in several
countries. They were not very successful, but their theories were to be very important in the future.
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The Frenchman Claude Marcel emphasized the importance of meaning in learning and referred to child
language learning as a model for language teaching.
The Englishman Thomas Prendergast created a system based on a structural syllabus to work basic
structural patterns occurring in the language.
The Frenchman François Gouin is perhaps the best known of these reformers. Gouin’s approach to
teaching was based on his observations of children’s use of language. They recognized the need for
speaking proficiency rather than reading or writing, and there was an interest in how children learn
languages. Attempts to develop these teaching principles were made but these new ideas did not
develop into an educational movement as there was not sufficient organizational structure in the
language teaching profession.

2.3 The Reform Movement

Towards the end of the nineteenth century. This Reform Movement laid the foundations for the
development of new ways of teaching languages within the Direct Method.
Within this Reform Movement we find Henry Sweet in England, Wilhelm Viëtor in Germany, and Paul
Passy in France. In general they believed that grammar had to be taught inductively, translation avoided,
and that language learning should be based on hearing the language first.
As it happened with previous foundations, they were not very successful, but gave way to the Direct
Method.

2.4 The Direct Method

If we trace back to the sixteenth century, we find out that the Frenchman Montaigne described his own
experience on learning Latin as a process where he was exclusively addressed in Latin by his tutor.
These ideas spread, and these natural language learning principles consolidated in what became known
as the Direct Method. It was quite successful in private language schools, and difficult to implement in
public secondary school education. Among those who tried to apply natural principles we find L.
Sauveur and Maximiliam Berlitz, who promoted the use of intensive oral interaction in the target
language. Saveur’s method became known as the Natural Method. Berlitz, however, never used the term
natural and named his method the Berlitz method, and it was known for being used in private language
schools, high-motivated clients, the use of native-speaking teachers, and no translation.
In Europe, one of the best known representatives was Gouin.

Now we have known the older methods in language teaching, it is time to move to

3 MORE RECENT METHODS. THE COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH

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From the beginning of the 20 century we find a relationship between linguistics and other fields of
study in language teaching. Different methods have resulted from different approaches on which the
influence of fields such as sociology and psychology have been of utmost importance. Let us examine
the major approaches, teaching methods and theories that are in use today.

3.1 The Communicative Language Teaching Approach

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Communicative Language Teaching has its origins in the British and American linguistic theories from
the sixties and the changes in the educational realities in Europe. Therefore teaching traditions started
to be questioned by applied linguists who saw the need to focus on communicative proficiency.
In 1971 a system in which learning tasks are broken down into “units” is launched by a British linguist,
D.A. Wilkins. It attempts to demonstrate the systems of meanings that a language learner needs to
understand and express within two types: notional categories (time, sequence, quantity or frequency)
and categories of communicative function (requests, offers, complaints). This was to be known as the
Communicative Approach or simply Communicative Language Teaching.
In the mid 60s, Scholars such as Halliday, Hymes, Labov and Chomsky challenged previous assumptions,
and stated that language is creative and governed by rules. For Hymes, the goal of language teaching is
to develop communicative competence. Halliday elaborated a theory of the functions of language, and
Canale and Swain identified four dimensions of communicative competence: grammatical,
sociolinguistic, discourse and strategic competence.
British applied linguists, as well as institutions, such as the British Council, adopted and implemented
these theories, what made much faster its spread.

3.2 Influence of sociology and psychology

Since language is not an isolated phenomenon it has to be related to other disciplines. Among all the
disciplines, two of them have contributed to the development of the study of language teaching:
sociology and psychology.
Sociolinguistics studies the ways in which language interacts with society in relation to race, nationality,
regional, social and political groups, and psycholinguistics focuses on how language is influenced by
memory, attention, recall and constraints on perception.
Main researchers on the field of sociolinguistics are the American linguists Edwar Sapir and Leonard
Bloomfield. These grammarians claimed that every language consists of a series of structures and that
the construction of sentences follows certain regular patterns. However, Sapir points out how linguistics
and anthropology reflects the social aspect of language when dealing with race, culture and language,
whereas Bloomfield’s contribution is more scientific, influenced by psychology theories.
In the field of psychology, behaviourism has had a great effect on language teaching. Theorists as Ivan
Pavlov and Skinner believed that languages were made up of a series of habits, and that if learners
could develop all these habits, they would speak the language well.
Another discipline is psycholinguistics. Most of its researchers have been influenced by the development
of generative theory and the investigation of the acquisition of language by children. Linguists such as
Ellis or Krashen’s contribution show an approach focusing on teaching communicative abilities and
emphasizing the importance of meaning.

3.3 Approaches of learning

Within a theory of language, three views provide approaches and methods in language teaching.
The first, the structural view, is the most traditional. Within its theory, language is a system of
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structurally related elements for the coding of meaning, and is defined in terms of phonological and
grammatical units, grammatical operations and lexical items. Some methods that follow it are
audiolingualism, Total Physical Response and the Silent Way, among others.
According to the functional view, language is a vehicle for the expression of functional meaning. It
emphasizes the semantic and communicative dimension rather than just the grammatical characteristics
of language. Content is organized by meaning and function rather than by elements of grammar.
The third, the interactional view, sees language as a vehicle for the realization of interpersonal relations
and for the performance of social transactions between individuals. Its main purpose is the creation and
maintenance of social relations in conversational exchanges.
Whatever view we follow, any teacher has to be eclectic, imaginative, energetic and willing to
experiment.

And now let’s move on to different

3.4 Language teaching methods

Throughout history many have been the teaching methods used. I will try to analyse in this paper the
most important and representative ones:

The Oral Approach and Situational Language teaching method. This approach dates back to the
1920s and 1930s. The terms Oral Approach or Situational Language Teaching are not commonly used
today, but the impact of the Oral Approach has been long lasting, and it has shaped the design of
many widely used textbooks and courses, including many still being used today.
The role of vocabulary was seen as an essential component of reading proficiency, and parallel to this
syllabus design was a focus on the grammatical content, viewed by Palmer as the underlying sentence
patterns of the spoken language.
The Oral Approach was the accepted British approach to English language teaching by the 1950s, but in
the sixties, another active proposal from Australia and termed situational, entered this approach
developing a set of teaching materials based on the notion of “situation”, linking structures to situations.
Its main characteristics were as follows: material is taught orally before it is presented in written form;
introduced and practised in context; and reading and writing are introduced only when sufficient lexical
and grammatical basis is established. The skills are approached through structure.

The Audiolingual method. The origins of this method goes back to the entry of the United States into
World War II. The National Defence Education Act provided funds for the study and analysis of modern
languages based on the earlier experience of the army programs such as the so-called ASTP (Army
Specialized Training Program). This program was established for military personnel in 1942 in American
universities, and its main objective was for students to attain conversational proficiency.
This fact had a significant effect on language teaching in America, and in fact, new approaches on
language teaching were soon developed, and toward the end of the 1950s a new approach emerged
under the name of Audiolingualism.
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It is primarily an oral approach to language teaching and there is little provision for grammatical
explanation or talking about the language.
The audio-lingual method aims at teaching the language skills in the order of listening, speaking,
reading, and writing, and is based on using drills for the formation of good language habits.
It was a methodological innovation which combined structural linguistic theory, contrastive analysis, oral
procedures, and behaviourist psychology. Therefore linguists such as Leonard Bloomfield, developed
training programs within an anthropological and linguistic tradition.

Total Physical Response. Total Physical Response emphases on comprehension and the use of physical
actions to teach a foreign language.
This method owes much to structuralist or grammar-based views of language as most of vocabulary
items and grammatical structures are learned through an instructor. According to Asher, the founder, the
main goal is to teach oral proficiency at beginner level through the use of action-based drills.
This method is updated with references to more recent psychological theories and supported by
prominent theorists as Krashen because of its emphasis on the role of comprehension in second
language acquisition. However, Asher himself, points out the need for this method to be used in
association with other methods to be fully successful.

The Silent Way. Caleb Gattegno introduced this classroom technique in which the teacher remains silent
while pupils produce language through simulated experiences using tokens and picture charts as central
elements.
Brightly coloured rods are integrated into this method for pupils to learn spatial relationships,
prepositions, colours, gender and number concepts, and to create multiple artificial settings through
their physical placement.
This method works effectively to promote small group discussion. Students are encouraged to produce
as much language as possible and to self-correct their pronunciation errors through manual
gesticulation on the part of the instructor. The greatest strength of this method lies in its ability to draw
students out orally, while the teacher listens.

Community Language Learning. This method follows a humanistic approach which was supported by
Charles A. Curran, a specialist in counseling and a professor of psychology at Chicago University.
His method is known as Counseling-Learning, and it redefines the roles of the teacher (counselor) and
learners (the clients) in the language classroom.
He developed a holistic approach to language learning, since human learning is both cognitive and
affective. For him, learning takes place in a communicative situation where teachers and learners are
involved in an interaction.
Through the technique of counseling students engage the whole person, including the emotions and
feelings as well as linguistic knowledge and behavioural skills. This method has been linked to bilingual
and adult education programs.
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Suggestopedia. In the 1980s and 1990s, a method was developed by the Bulgarian Georgi Lozanov. The
most outstanding features of this method are its terminology and neologisms, and the arrangement of
the classroom to create an optimal atmosphere to learning, by means of decoration, furniture, the
authoritative behavior of the teacher and specially, through the use of music. Therapy theories are the
reason of using music in the classroom as Lozanov calls upon in his use to relax learners as well as to
structure, pace, and punctuate the presentation of linguistic material.
Lozanov also claims that his method works equally well whether or not students spend time on outside
study and promises success to the academically gifted and ungifted alike.
Suggestopedia prepares students for success by means of yoga, hypnosis, biofeeback or experimental
science. However, Suggestopedia is acknowledged to appear effective and harmonize with other
successful techniques in language teaching methodology.

4. NEW DIRECTIONS ON LANGUAGE TEACHING

What’s now, what’s next? The future is always uncertain when anticipating methodological directions in
second language teaching, although applied linguistic journals assume the carrying on and refinement
of current trends within a communicative approach. They are linked to present concerns on education,
and they reflect current trends of language curriculum development at the level of cognitive strategies,
literature, grammar, phonetics or technological innovative methods.
The Internet Age anticipates the development of teaching and learning in instructional settings by
means of an on-line collaboration system, perhaps via on-line computer networks or other resources.
A critical question for language educators is about "what content" and "how much content" best
supports language learning. The goal is to best match learner needs and interests and to promote
optimal development of second language competence.
Also, learning to learn is the key theme in an instructional focus on language learning strategies. Such
strategies include, at the most basic level, memory tricks, and at higher levels, cognitive and
metacognitive strategies for learning, thinking, planning, and self-monitoring.
Research findings suggest that strategies can indeed be taught to language learners, that learners will
apply these strategies in language learning tasks. Simple and highly effective strategies, such as those
that help learners remember and access new second language vocabulary items, will attract
considerable instructional interest.
Extremadura cannot be left aside from current tendencies, mainly when it has been proved that
communicative approaches are the most efficient when talking about foreign language learning. That is
why the Junta de Extremadura has strongly supported this kind of methodology suggested in recent
education laws and whose main aim is that our students become as communicatively efficient as
possible.
Besides this proposals, our Government also remarks the fact that we teachers should not only and
exclusively teach using communicative approaches, but employ an eclectic overview that allows us to
encourage and foster communication among students in real-like situations. This means that we can
take what we consider best of any of the methodologies available so that the final purpose is achieved:
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that our students understand and are understood.

CONCLUSION
To sum up, I would like to say that the theories of learning and teaching languages I have mentioned
here must lead us to the conclusion that a sensible methodological approach to the teaching of
languages should take into account both input practice and communicative output. While students need
a lot of input, and while there must be an emphasis on communicative activities which improve the
students’ ability to communicate, there is also place for controlled presentation of input and semi-
controlled practice. What is required in the classroom is a balanced approach of input and output. This
balance is the essential ingredient of the methodology, both for pedagogical reasons and for our
student’s continuing interests in foreign language learning.
I hope that what I have presented in this subject has given you some light about how languages have
been taught throughout history, from the grammar-translation method to the most modern trends, that
is, the communicative approaches, or, as we know it in a more familiar way, language for
communication.