THEORIES, APPROACHES AND METHODS

Foreign language teaching has undergone many changes in the last century and, above all in the last 30 years. That is why, it is important to have a clear perspective on the development and interrelationship of the different language teaching approaches. Such a perspective is greatly needed for evaluating the many so-called innovations and new methods being described in journals, lectures and workshops.

The aim of this first part of the module is to familiarize you with the leading movements which have determined many of the features of the major teaching methods. This information will allow you to re-examine the appropriateness of certain techniques in their own context and to consider the different ideas advocated in educational philosophy and pedagogical theory which were developed to satisfy both:

- the specific demands or requirements of the period in which they flourished, - the specific context of the people who adopted them.

Thus, we will explore a number of approaches or styles of teaching, not seeking to be definitive, but to be adapted to our needs and contexts. They are grouped into:

The early methods:

I- The Grammar-Translation MethodII- The Direct MethodIII- The Reading ApproachIV- Audiolingualism (US)V- The Audio-visual MethodVI- The Situational Approach (Brit.)VII- The Cognitive Approach

The newly ones

I- Total Physical Response (TPR)II- The Silent Way III- Community Language Learning (CLL)IV- Suggestology or SuggestopediaV- The Natural ApproachVI- Communicative Approaches: (Lexical Approach & Task-based Learning)

Getting familiar with each of them, will give us an awareness of the fact that our discourses about teaching English are different from the things that we actually do in the classroom, and that this gap between talking about and doing can be problematic in our work, and could benefit from being narrowed.

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In search of a professional label

No other discipline seems to be so much concerned about methodology as that of Teaching English as a Foreign or Second Language (TEFL or TESL). The notion of methodology seems to hold a particular fascination for teachers of English. Nowadays, there exist controversies in our profession ranging from the search for a reasonable language teaching methodology to the search for an appropriate professional name.

The following names and acronyms have been suggested as professional labels and have gained relatively permanent acceptance:

TEFL (Teaching/Teachers of English as a Foreign Language): used in educational situations where instruction in other subjects is not normally given in English.

TESL (Teaching/Teachers of English as a Second Language): used in educational situations where English is the partial or universal medium of instruction for other subjects.

TEAL (Teaching/Teachers of English as an Additional Language): used in parts of Canada in lieu of TESL to stress the benefits of first-language maintenance.

TESOL (Teaching/Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages): a cover-term for teachers working in any of the above situations.

A brief look at the ELT literature

What do we mean by the terms approach, method and technique?

Edward Anthony (1963) identified three levels of organization in language teaching, which he termed approach, method, and technique. The arrangement is hierarchical. The organizational key is that techniques carry out a method which is consistent with an approach.

An approach is a set of correlative assumptions dealing with the nature of language teaching and learning. An approach is axiomatic. It describes the nature of the subject matter to be taught.

Method is an overall plan for the orderly presentation of language material, no part of which contradicts, and all of which is based upon, the selected approach. An approach is axiomatic, a method is procedural. Within one approach, there can be many methods.

A technique is implementational - that which actually takes place in a classroom. It is a particular trick, stratagem, or contrivance used to accomplish an immediate objective. Techniques must be consistent with a method, and therefore in harmony with an approach as well.

According to this model:

An approach to language teaching is something that reflects certain theory and beliefs about language and language learning. This term is the broadest of the three.

A method is a set of procedures; a system that spells out exactly how to teach a language (what particular skills and content to teach). Methods are more specific than approaches but less specific than techniques.

A technique is a classroom device or activity and thus represents the narrowest term of the three. Some techniques are widely used and found in many methods (imitation and repetition); others are specific to or characteristic of a given method.

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Anthony's proposal was simple and comprehensive, but failed to give sufficient attention to the nature of a method itself. He neither mentions the roles of teachers and learners assumed in a method nor the role of instructional materials or the form they are expected to take.

For Richards and Rodgers (1986) Anthony's proposal of an analysis of language-teaching practices is a point of departure; however, they prefer to consider method as an umbrella term for the specification and interrelation of theory and practice, and therefore they prefer to use the terms approach, design, and procedure.

The first level in the system, approach refers to theories about the nature of language and language learning that serve as the source of practices and principles in language teaching.

The second level in the system, design, is the level of method analysis that specifies the relationship of theories of language and learning to the selection and organization of language content (syllabus), to the types of tasks and learning activities, and to the roles of learners, teachers and materials within the method.

The third level, procedure, comprises the classroom techniques and practices that are consequences of particular approaches and designs.

Finally, the term method refers to a language-teaching philosophy that contains a standardised set of procedures or principles for teaching a language that are based upon a given set of theoretical premises about the nature of language and language learning. The system is illustrated in the figure below + Appendix 1.1.

Relevant elements of a teaching/learning system (Richards 1985)

In their opinion, the three elements help us understand the differences and similarities between one method and another by showing how these elements are interrelated in language-teaching practices: a method is theoretically related to an approach, is organizationally determined by a design, and is practically realized in procedure.

At the level of approach: Beliefs about the nature of language

In analyzing approaches to language teaching it is evident that an important methodological variable is the attitude to language itself. In some methods, language is treated as a subject that can be approached in the same way as any other subject on the curriculum, perhaps as a body of

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factual information to be digested and memorized. More recently language has come to be viewed as an aspect of human behavior and methods have changed to accommodate this.

Let us briefly focus then on the three main trends in language theory that frame the different methods and approaches already discussed:

A- The first, and the most traditional of the three, is the structural view, the view that language is a system of structurally related elements for the coding and decoding of language. The target of language learning is seen to be the mastery of elements of this system, which are generally defined in terms of phonological units (e.g., phonemes), grammatical units (e.g., morphemes, phrases, sentences), grammatical operations (e.g., adding, shifting, joining, or transforming elements), and lexical items (e.g., function words and structure words). The Audio-lingual Method embodies this particular view of language, as do contemporary methods such as Total Physical Response and the Silent Way.

B- The second view of language is the British functional view, which considers language as a vehicle for the expression of functional meaning. The communicative movement in language teaching subscribes to this view of language. This theory goes beyond the grammatical characteristics of language and emphasizes both the semantic and communicative dimension.

The functional view leads to a specification and organization of language teaching content by categories of meaning and function rather than by elements of structure and grammar. A notional syllabus would include not only elements of grammar and lexis but also specify the topics, notions, and concepts the learner needs to communicate.

The functional view took the first step towards the study of language reflected in the concepts of use, message, verbal behavior, performance and function. These elements would constitute the study core of the so-called "language sciences" (Hymes: 1974). This change of orientation would allow a more fruitful focus in language teaching, which became more concerned with using the language (functionalism) than with knowing the linguistic system (structuralism). The debate between structuralism and functionalism affected methodological proposals in the development of methods and approaches.

As many linguists started to distance themselves from an abstract, structural view of language study, they started to take social and situational contexts, as well as the attitudes of the speakers, into consideration. A series of new disciplines arose, under new labels and with new study techniques, which tried to relate the study of language to the outside world and to the sociological context of the speakers. These new disciplines were syntax, semantics and pragmatics.

A clear definition of each of these fields is provided by Yule (1997):

Syntax is the study of the relationships between linguistic forms, how they are arranged in sequence, and which sequences are well-formed.

Semantics is the study of the relationships between linguistic forms and entities in the world; that is, how words literally connect to things. Semantics analysis also attempts to establish the relationships between verbal descriptions and states of affairs in the world as accurate (true) or not, regardless of who produces that description (ibid.).

Pragmatics is the study of the relationships between linguistic forms and the users of those forms one can talk about people's intended meanings, their assumptions, their

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purposes or goals, and the kinds of actions (for example, requests) that they are performing when they speak (ibid.)

It was not until the 1980s, though, that all these disciplines began to work in the same direction and at the same pace, integrating their contributions and offering a new model that reflects the view of language as communication.

C- The third view of language can be called the interactional view. The view of language as communication is a complex one. A key concept to understand is that of language as action, that is, "we do things with words"; this idea arises from the theory of "speech acts" developed by language philosophers such as J.L. Austin (1962) and J.R. Searle (1969). They advocated that language is much more than the transmission of information or meaning (locutionary act), since it also expresses an intention (illocutionary act) and produces an effect on the listener (perlocutionary act).

This view sees language as a vehicle for the realization of interpersonal relations and for the performance of social transactions between individuals. Language is seen as a tool for the creation and maintenance of social relations. Areas of inquiry being drawn on in the development of interactional approaches to language teaching include interaction analysis, conversation analysis, and ethnomethodology. Interactional theories focus on the patterns of moves, acts, negotiation, and interaction found in conversational exchanges.

The process of language learning/acquisition

As regards language theory, we are concerned with a model of language competence and an account of the basic features of linguistic organization and language use. As regards learning theory, we are concerned with an account of the central processes of learning and an account of the conditions believed to promote successful language learning.

Theories of language learning have influenced decisions as to the optimal location of classroom activities on continua like the following:

- Deductive inductive

The advent of the cognitive approach meant a change of direction from teaching the structures of the language (deductive) towards making the learner aware of how the language works (inductive), thus avoiding the direct study of grammatical rules.

- Analytic experiential

During the last two decades there has been a debate about the convenience of adopting an analytical point of view (focused on the foreign or second language) versus an experiential point of view (focused on communication). From the 1980s communication has become a common strategy in the foreign or second language (L2) classroom.

- Habit formation naturalistic acquisition

The behaviourist theory of learning, so popular in the 1950s and 1960s, was based on repetition and memorization techniques. In contrast, Krashen's Monitor Theory (1981) distinguished between "acquisition" as an unconscious process similar to the process of learning an L1, and "learning" as the conscious knowledge of formal linguistic rules and how these work. The concern

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for knowing how a speaker acquires his/her linguistic competence had already been raised by Chomsky and his psycholinguistic theories: he rejected the behaviourist view of language learning and focused his studies on the discovery of language learning processes, asserting that:

the process of learning an L2 is similar to that of learning an L1. the process of linguistic acquisition responds to a mechanism of contrasting hypotheses

with real language use; mistakes show that rules are being internalised.

At the level of method

The objectives of a method: most methods include some information about the syllabus to be followed and the learning objectives to be achieved. Depending on the goals of language learning, decisions may include whether to:

focus on language-using skills; focus on knowledge about language ; focus on specific situational abilities; focus on general competence; include aspects of the culture and/or literature of the target language community.

THE EARLY METHODS

Like educational systems, methodologies are a product of their times and are equally rooted in the ideas of their time. And in the same way that ideas have the habit of coming and going out of fashion, methodologies also go out of fashion. In fact, it is society that determines the content of education, in the light of the dominant philosophy and (more recently) scientific concepts. Changes in language teaching methods throughout history have reflected changes in the kind of proficiency learners need. They have also reflected changes in theories of the nature of language and of language learning.

Before the 19th century: the need for a method

For many centuries the study of a second language was focused on only two languages, Latin and Greek. In medieval Europe these languages were learned for the written communication among scholars, and from the Renaissance on they were the key to all learning, literature, and philosophy. In the 17th century the European vernacular languages started to gain increasing importance as a result of political changes in Europe, and their diffusion through the new technology of printing meant a gradual separation of functions: Latin was still the key to literature and thought, and the vernacular languages took over their social role as languages of everyday communication. So methods were adapted to roles: the study of Latin and Greek was relegated to an intellectual discipline. Latin was no longer used for communication purposes and its study was focused on learning the grammatical rules and translation (reading and writing). On the other hand, modern languages were taught by oral methods.

There were occasional attempts to promote alternative approaches to education; Roger Ascham and Montaigne in the 16th century, and Comenius and John Locke in the 17th century, for example, had made specific proposals for curriculum reform and for changes in the way Latin was taught. The most famous language teacher and methodologist of this time was the Moravian Jan A. Comenius (1592-1670) and it is significant that his concern was initially with the teaching of Latin

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and his works were written in Latin. He gave great importance to the senses and how these, in combination with the word, helped to understand meaning; physical activity was also important in the classroom. He is best known for the use of pictures to make language learning meaningful, as a substitute for the real thing. One of his works, Orbis sensualium pictus (1654), contains a sequence of numbered picture vocabulary items. Much in Comenius is quite surprisingly modern:

- The exemplar should always come first, the precept should always follow, and imitation should always be insisted on.

- The short before the long, the simple before the complex, the general before the particular, the nearer before the more remote, the regular before the irregular.

He adopted an inductive approach and was obviously more concerned about teaching the use of the language than about analyzing the language. In his opinion grammar was secondary and the language classroom was a place where the senses rather than the mind came first. He preferred to use imitation instead of memorizing grammar rules as learning techniques. Initially he would present his students a limited vocabulary that would become more complex with time. From his point of view, students needed to be given the opportunity to practise reading and speaking in the classroom. And yet by the end of his life Comenius was proposing the derivation of language from a pre-learned set of rules of grammar.

What had in fact happened was the dawn of the Age of Reason. The grammar-translation method was born as a new, insightful way of approaching language learning that was exactly in tune with the times, with their emphasis on the primacy of reason, law, and logic.

I- The Grammar-Translation Method

The Grammar-Translation Method emerged in Prussia at the end of the 18thC and became firmly entrenched in the 19th C. The first known text based on this method dates from 1793 and its author was Johan Christian Fick.

It was rooted in the formal teaching of Latin and Greek. The modern languages were accepted as recognized areas of study, as a key to a great literature and culture and as being of equal value for the training of the mind. The teaching methods of these ancient languages were used to teach modern languages, the same grammatical terminology and techniques were adopted: textbooks consisted of statements of abstract grammar rules, lists of vocabulary, and sentences for translation. Nowadays these techniques are still being used, although they are usually combined with other techniques.

Objectives

The aim of the course was to train students to read literature written in the foreign language and to write the foreign language accurately. There was very little opportunity to practise the language orally by means of listening or speaking activities; there was just occasional reading-aloud practice.

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Main features

Analyzing the grammar system of a language was based on deduction techniques: the rules were first explained, the students learnt them, and afterwards examples were provided. A typical textbook thus consisted of chapters or lessons organized around grammar points. The linguistic unit on which language teaching was based was the sentence. Translation was the technique used to extract meaning from texts and the basic activities developed in the classroom consisted on teaching grammar rules and on regular practice in translating sentences like the following into and out of the target language (L2):

My sons have bought the mirrors.

The cat of my aunt is more treacherous than the dog of your uncle.

The learning process can be summarized as follows: the students try to understand the logic of the grammar. For this they learn the rules and the exceptions by heart and memorize vocabulary lists. The result of their learning was an artificial language which would not be considered natural but literary by a native speaker. The communicative skills were neglected and using the language actively to express their own meanings was not a learning objective, which is why pronunciation and intonation were also neglected.

Teachers were more preoccupied with written exercises and lengthy bilingual lists of vocabulary. The written exercises were repetitive and the language presented was academic and unreal. The most immediate aim of the teacher was the completion of all the exercises in each lesson and covering all the lessons contained in the book. The students' native language (L1) was the medium of instruction and it was used to explain new items and to enable comparisons to be made between the two languages. The foreign language was not used in the class to any extent, the only exception being stereotyped reading comprehension exercises, since students drew the sentences directly from the text in order to answer the questions.

Teacher and learner roles

The teaching activity was focused on the teacher as he becomes the most relevant figure within the classroom. He gives a lot of importance to error correction and always looks for grammatical and lexical accuracy, as the students are expected to attain high standards in translation. However, the teacher's role in the classroom was not very demanding, since he had no need to be imaginative or creative in planning the lessons. On the other hand, the student's role was a passive one: they absorbed the information supplied by the teacher and afterwards they had to reproduce it in order to satisfy the teacher. In the mid- and late 19th C opposition to the Grammar-Translation Method gradually developed in several European countries. This Reform Movement, as it was referred to, laid the foundations for the development of new ways of teaching languages and raised controversies that have continued to the present day.

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Towards a new method

Language teaching innovations in the 19th C: In Germany, England, France, and other parts of Europe, new approaches to language teaching were developed by individual language teaching specialists, each with a specific method for reforming the teaching of modern languages. The work of individual language specialists reflects the changing climate of the times in which they worked. Educators recognized the need for speaking proficiency rather than reading comprehension, grammar, or literary appreciation as the goal for foreign language programmes; there was an interest in how children learn languages, which prompted attempts to develop teaching principles from the observation of child language learning.

But the ideas and methods of many innovators were developed outside the context of established circles of education and hence lacked the means for wider diffusion, acceptance, and implementation. They were writing at a time when there was not sufficient organizational structure in the language teaching profession (i.e. in the form of professional associations, journals, and conferences) to enable new ideas to develop into an educational movement.

This began to change toward the end of the 19th C, however, when more concerted efforts arose in which the interests of reform-minded language teachers, and linguists, coincided. Teachers and linguists began to write about the need for new approaches to language teaching, and through their books, speeches, and articles, the foundation for more widespread pedagogical reforms was laid. This effort became known as the Reform Movement in language teaching.

The Reform Movement: from the 1880s, however, linguists like Henry Sweet in England, Wilhelm Viëtor in Germany, and Paul Passy in France, moving into a more pragmatic and more communicative approach, began to provide the intellectual leadership needed to give reformist ideas greater credibility and acceptance. The discipline of Linguistics was revitalized. Phonetics (the scientific analysis and description of the sound systems of languages) was established, providing new insights into speech processes. The International Phonetic Association was founded in 1886, and its International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) was designed to enable accurate sound transcription for any language. One of the earliest goals of the association was to improve the teaching of modern languages. In order to do so, the members of the association advocated:

the study of the spoken language; phonetic training in order to establish good pronunciation habits; the use of conversation texts and dialogues to introduce conversational phrases and

idioms; an inductive approach to the teaching of grammar

Henry Sweet argued that sound methodological principles should be based on a scientific analysis of language and a study of psychology. Some of the recommendations contained in his book The Practical Study of Languages (1899) include arranging what is to be taught in terms of the four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing, and grading materials from simple to complex. In Germany the scholar Wilhem Viëtor published his views in an influential article Language Teaching Must Start Afresh, which later became the ‘bible’ of the Direct Method. In 1890 Viëtor himself organised the first national conference that gathered together modern language teachers concerned about changing the teaching of foreign languages in the direction of language for "communication". Two years later they formed the Modern Languages Association.

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The influence of Phonetics in foreign language teaching

Most reformers in the late 19th C criticized the grammar-translation method and shared many beliefs about the principles on which a new approach to teaching foreign languages should be based:

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 practised in meaningful

contexts and not be taught as isolated, disconnected elements;5- the rules of grammar should be taught only after the students have practised the grammar

points in context - that is, grammar should be taught inductively;6- translation should be avoided, although the mother tongue could be used in order to

explain new words or to check comprehension. (In Richards & Rodgers 1986)

These tenets provided the theoretical foundations for a principled approach to language teaching and reflected the beginnings of the discipline of Applied Linguistics (that branch of language study concerned with the scientific study of Second and Foreign Language Teaching and Learning).

II- The Direct Method

In the middle of the 19th C the origins of what would become the Direct Method were developed by J.S. Blackie, a Scottish teacher, who in the 1850s was advocating the avoidance of the mother tongue, the direct association of word with object and the relegation of grammar to a subordinate position. At that time, international relation in the fields of Politics and Commerce were gaining increasing relevance. It seems logical then that the interest was in stressing the ability to use the foreign language rather than in analyzing it. Besides, the fact that the grammar-translation method did not have interpersonal communication as one of its main goals, made it unsuitable for students who were not from an academic background.

Its origins as a natural method

The new trends in developing principles for language teaching and learning out of naturalistic principles in first language learning, led to what has been termed natural methods, and ultimately this became known as the direct method. It was believed that a foreign language could be taught without translation or the use of the learner's native tongue (L1) if meaning was conveyed directly through demonstration and action and by encouraging direct, spontaneous and active use of the foreign language in the classroom.

Main features

The Direct Method became widely known in the United States through its use in successful commercial language schools. In these schools oral interaction was promoted and translation exercises and the use of the native language (L1) were disclaimed. The main aim of this method is for students to learn the language of everyday life. Students learn grammar inductively, since they

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learn grammar rules through practice, by means of using the language at the functional level, and not through memorization. From a theoretical point of view, this method was very much based on the linguistic theories of the time, which considered the oral language and Phonetics as important components in the teaching and learning process of a foreign language. The students learn to understand a language by listening to a great deal of it, and they learn to speak it, by speaking it. Oral communication skills are built up in a carefully graded progression organized around question-and-answer exchanges between teachers and students in small, intensive classes.

Unlike the Grammar-Translation Method, the native language is totally avoided in the foreign language classroom and the foreign language is the medium of instruction. The Direct Method advocates learning by the direct association of foreign words and phrases with objects and actions or, in other words, speech is associated to appropriate action. This means that students have to understand meaning without translation and the teacher has to use a series of resources to make meaning clear, using miming, sketches or explanations in order to clarify the meaning of abstract vocabulary. At the early stages, students are encouraged to handle complete meaningful sentences as part of simple discourse. First of all, students learn words and phrases for objects and actions. Then, they learn common situations and settings of everyday life through constructed pictures. The ultimate aim is to develop the ability to think in the foreign language.

Because of the importance given to the oral language, Phonetics also played an important role, correct intonation became a key focus of interest, and pronunciation models from native speakers were promoted. The students are taught the new sound system right from the beginning and are encouraged to do phonetic transcription. Both speech and listening comprehension are taught. Reading is not given as much relevance as speaking, so reading activities always take place after oral/aural activities and are about the topics previously discussed. Reading activities are then used to reinforce new words and situations that are always first presented to the students orally. If there is a word that students do not understand, this is never translated; on the contrary, students are encouraged to infer meaning of unknown words from the context.

The decline of the Direct Method

By the 1920s the Direct Method was becoming less popular in the USA and reading activities are seen as being more effective techniques for foreign-language teaching. In Britain only some of the precepts and techniques were adopted and mixed with the traditional approach, so we could say that the Direct Method was never properly implemented. The fact that schools and universities were moving towards traditional examinations which were less focused on oral communication also contributed to the loss of popularity of the Direct Method which was, however, very successful in Germany.

When evaluating this method, Richards & Rodgers (1986) refer to the Direct Method as the first attempt to turn foreign language learning into a situation of language use. The fact that the native language was avoided in the classroom in favour of the L2 made it possible to develop new techniques that are still being used nowadays, such as dictation, imitation, and answer exercises. In the 1920s and 1930s applied linguists systematized the principles proposed earlier by the Reform Movement and so laid the foundations for what developed into the British approach to Teaching English as a Foreign Language. Subsequent developments led to Audiolingualism in the United States and the Oral Approach, or Situational Language Teaching, in Britain.

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III- The Reading Method

Given the skills and limitations of most language teachers, the Reading Approach to language teaching was seen as a better option. In the 1920s several studies were carried out by West (1926) and Coleman (1929) and in their reports they stated that most American students learnt a foreign language for two years only. During these two years the only attainable objective was the development of the reading ability, as this was the skill that offered fewer difficulties in the context of secondary school teaching.

The Reading Method focused on the systematic teaching of reading comprehension. The students were trained to read the foreign language with direct apprehension of meaning, but without a conscious effort to translate. It was expected that students would use the same techniques they had used when learning to read in their native language. So, if there were any words the students did not understand, they would infer meaning from the context.

Main features:

Reading could either be intensive or extensive. Intensive reading tasks were continuously supervised by the teacher, who would check the degree of comprehension achieved. The intensive reading also provided source material for grammatical study and for the acquisition of vocabulary.Extensive reading activities were also part of the learning process. In this case the students would read on their own texts graded to their language level; these materials contained controlled vocabulary and syntax structures. The extensive reading led the way to undertaking class projects, which were valuable from the pedagogical point of view.

Writing was limited to exercises where the students had the opportunity to use some of the vocabulary and essential structures also necessary to understand the text.

The study of grammar was supposed to be directed to the needs of the reader, so there was no need for active reproduction; the most important thing was the quick recognition of certain verb forms, tenses, negations, and so on. Some importance was also given to correct pronunciation, since there was oral practice related to a text: students had to read the text aloud or to do exercises consisting of questions and answers.

The Reading Method had limited objectives and tended to give a false impression of the level of language and reading skills acquired by the student. As oral communication was secondary, students were usually unable to comprehend and speak the language beyond the very simplest exchanges.

IV- Oral Approach

After fifteen years or so, the Direct Method was not living up to expectations and, as a result of a series of modifications introduced, a new variant emerged. It was the Oral Approach, which focused on the theories developed in England between the 1930s and the 1960s.

Two of the leaders in this movement were Harold Palmer and A. S. Hornby who attempted to develop a more scientific foundation for an oral approach to teaching English than was evidenced

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in the Direct Method. The result was a systematic study of the principles and procedures that could be applied to the selection and organization of the content of a language course. Palmer saw the need to tailor the language course to the aims of the actual students rather than to some abstract goal. He realized that what course book and teacher intend is different from what each individual student learns. Alexander and other leading British textbook writers also developed materials that reflected the principles of Situational Language Teaching. Their principal classroom activity in the teaching of English structure was the oral practice of structures given in situations designed to provide the greatest amount of practice in English speech to the pupil. By situation they mean the use of concrete objects, pictures, and realia, which together with actions and gestures can be used to demonstrate the meanings of new language items. (In Richards & Rodgers 1986: 38)

Main features

1- The first step in the learning process was to become familiar with the new sound system and to understand simple spoken language and the use of simple speech patterns; students carried out listening and speaking activities containing simple phrases.

2- The target language (L2) was the language of instruction and the native language (L1) was to be avoided. However, it was accepted to use of the native language when explaining the meaning of some words or some grammar points of a strictly functional kind.

3- Palmer viewed grammar as the underlying sentence patterns of the spoken language. Palmer, Hornby, and other British applied linguists analysed English and classified its major grammatical structures into sentence patterns (later called "substitution tables"), which could be used to help internalise the rules of English sentence structure. They also considered that it was necessary to add more practice of grammatical structures, and these were introduced gradually from simple forms to complex ones, offering opportunities for practising them in situational contexts.

4- Likewise, vocabulary was graded to ensure that an essential general service vocabulary was covered. The efforts to introduce a scientific and rational basis for choosing the vocabulary content of a language course represented the first attempts to establish principles of syllabus design in language teaching.

5- Reading and writing were introduced once a sufficient lexical and grammatical basis was established. Occasional translation was allowed as a checking method on comprehension of precise details in reading.

The Oral Approach sought a balance between the development of the four linguistic skills at all stages: oral comprehension, writing comprehension, oral production and writing production, although the emphasis remained on oral presentations. The impact of the Oral Approach has been long lasting, and it has shaped the design of many widely used EFL/ESL textbooks and courses, including many still being used today, for example, Streamline English (Harticy and Viney 1979), one of the most successful ESL courses of recent times.

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V- The Audio-Lingual Method

Its basis: The history of the Audiolingual Method is linked to the Institute of English Language at the University of Michigan, created in 1939. One of the linguists from this university, Charles Fries, was trained in structural linguistics, and he applied the principles of structural linguistics to language teaching. The new approach for language learning was first coined as the Oral Approach, the Aural-Oral Method or the Structural Approach; later on the combination of structural linguistic theory, contrastive analysis, aural-oral procedures, and behaviourist psychology led to the Audiolingual Method, a term coined in 1964 by Professor Nelson Brooks. Although many of its aspects may seem similar to those of the British Oral Approach, both traditions developed independently. It was in the 1960s that the Audiolingual Method reached its greatest popularity.

The influence of Structuralism

Structuralists considered language as a system of interrelated elements (phonemes, morphemes, words, structures and sentence types) that encode meaning. Fries, for instance, regarded grammar, or structure, as the starting point. Thus, language learning meant the command of the language components and learning the rules by which these components are combined. An important tenet of structural linguistics was that the primary medium of language is oral: Language is Speech. For this reason, they gave systematic attention to pronunciation and intensive oral repetition or drilling of basic sentence patterns.

The influence of Contrastive Analysis

Although many of the aspects of the Audiolingual Method might seem similar to those of the British Oral Approach, both traditions developed independently; the Audiolingual Method is much more related to the American Structuralist Linguistics and to some theories of Applied Linguistics such as the Contrastive Analysis. This theory has been decisive in the development of the Audiolingual method. Contrastive Analysis consists of the comparison of structures from the student's native language (L1) and those of the foreign language (L2) in order to find out which structures are similar in both languages and to predict which could cause potential problems of interference for being different. In order to avoid errors resulting from differences between the grammatical and phonological patterns of the mother tongue and the target language, teaching materials were carefully prepared and drills were created containing the structures regarded as problematic in learning a foreign language.

The influence of Behaviourist Psychology

A method cannot be based simply on a theory of language; it also needs to refer to the psychology of learning and to learning theory. From a psychological point of view, the Audiolingual method is based on the theory of verbal knowledge that comes from behaviourist theories. Behaviourists thought language was an activity learned in social life, consisting of a set of habits established by stimulus, response, reinforcement and reward. As a result, great importance was given to the practice of repetition and imitation, and reinforcement was an essential element in the learning process, as it increased the likelihood that the behaviour would occur again and eventually become a habit. A representation of this can be seen in the figure below.

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Representation of behaviourism applied to language learning (Richards & Rodgers 1986: 50)

To apply this theory to language learning Richards & Rodgers (1986) identify the stimulus as what is taught or presented of the foreign language, the organism as the foreign language learner, the behaviour as verbal behaviour, the response as the learner's reaction to the stimulus, and the reinforcement as the approval and praise of the teacher or fellow students or the self-satisfaction of target language use. Language mastery is represented then as acquiring a set of appropriate language stimulus-response chains.

Main features

ACTIVITIES:

Audiolingualists based their theories on the observation of a corpus of a particular language in order to describe its sound patterns and the possibilities of word combination. This descriptive approach led them to research what people really say in their mother tongue. The audiolingualists took as a model the way a child acquires these habits. Children learn a language, and all the social rules which are complementary to it, in spoken form. This idea led them to think that students acquire the foreign language more easily if it is in the spoken form. Teaching was therefore based on dialogues that contained commonly-used every-day expressions and basic structures. These dialogues provided a means of contextualising key structures and illustrating situations in which structures might be used as well as some cultural aspects of the target language. Dialogues and pattern drills were learned by a process of mimicry and memorisation: first as a group, then in smaller groups and finally individually. The benefits of these procedures were the relatively high motivation of students, as the drilling protects them from their initial embarrassment and minimises mistakes.

Students were more encouraged to focus on the mastery of the phonological and grammatical structures than on vocabulary: correct pronunciation, stress, rhythm, and intonation were emphasised, as opposed to grammatical explanations. In the end students gained exhaustive training in auditory memory and in discriminating between sounds. And even if at the beginning learners could not understand the meaning of what they were repeating, the teacher believed that by listening, imitating accurately and responding they were also learning. Reading and writing skills were dependent upon previous oral skills. The reading tasks were at first an adaptation or recombination of what students had learned orally. Writing was imitative, consisting of transcriptions of words and dialogue sentences. It was not until much later that students were

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encouraged to express themselves in short compositions, although these were always strictly controlled in terms of content.

The use of the L1 was avoided in the classroom as much as possible, although it was never forbidden, as was the case of the Direct Method. The treatment of error was an important component of the learning process and sometimes students were not encouraged to speak in order to avoid mistakes.

LEARNER AND TEACHER ROLES

According to behaviourist learning theory, learners were believed to be capable of producing correct responses after a period of skilled training. Thus, what really mattered was the results of their learning and not the internal process of learning in itself. Learners played an active role in the classroom by responding to stimuli; however, it was the teacher who decided the contents of a lesson and the pace of learning, and who monitored and corrected the learners' performance. The teacher's role was therefore a central one, and it required inventiveness and resourcefulness so as to encourage the practice of structures by means of different drills and tasks, and by choosing relevant situations.

MATERIALS

Instructional materials were primarily teacher oriented. In the elementary phases of a course a student textbook was often not used as students were primarily listening, repeating, and responding. Tape recorders and audio-visual equipment were often used in an audiolingual course: they provided accurate models for listening practice. A dialogue was presented and students were engaged in drilling exercises, repeating the dialogue sentence by sentence, or in follow-up fluency drills on grammar or pronunciation. Some schools even had language laboratories that provided students with opportunities for further drill work and practice of basic structures.

VI- The Audio-visual Method

This method was developed in the 1950s and was based on structuralist and behaviourist theories, on contrastive analysis and on the emphasis of oral and communicative aspects but it included some novelties in foreign language teaching, for instance, the use of support materials such as films, slides, recordings or music records. This method came from the fact that it assumed the social and situational nature of language. The target language was introduced in the foreign language classroom by means of dialogues directly related to real life through images on a screen or combined with recordings. It was well thought of for placing the learning of the language in a simplified social context and for teaching the language as meaningful communication. Nevertheless, the method has also been criticised for the difficulties implied in transmitting meaning through images and for the strict sequential organisation of the learning process.

The decline of Audiolingualism

Audiolingualism led to widely used courses such as English 900 and the Lado English Series (see Appendix 2.2), as well as to texts for teaching the major European languages. As a method, it

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provided a clear set of procedures, methods and principles for teachers with little experience. The strongest attack against audiolingual beliefs resulted from changes in American linguistic theory in the sixties. The linguist Noam Chomsky (1966) rejected the structuralist approach to language description as well as the behaviourist theory of language learning. In his opinion, language is not a habit structure. Ordinary linguistic behaviour characteristically involves innovation, formation of new sentences and patterns in accordance with rules of great abstractness and intricacy.

He gave more importance to the creative aspects of a language as reflected in first language acquisition, and through his theory of Transformational Grammar he proposed that the fundamental properties of language derive from innate aspects of the mind and from how humans process experience through language. Chomsky argued that much of human language use is not imitated behaviour but is created anew from underlying knowledge of abstract rules. Sentences are not learned by imitation and repetition but generated from the learner's underlying competence.

La gramática generativa ponía de manifiesto la insuficiencia del estructuralismo para reflejar las características fundamentales del lenguaje, así como la del conductismo para explicar su adquisición. El concepto de lenguaje como un sistema `gobernado por reglas' y de adquisición del lenguaje como la internalización de dichas reglas echaba por tierra la noción conductista de formación de un conjunto de hábitos lingüísticos. (Zanón 1988).

VII- Cognitive Approach

As a result of the critiques of the audiolingual method, some linguists such as J.B. Carroll, K. Chastain and K. Diller proposed a set of guidelines for language teaching. They looked for the support of current disciplines such as transformational grammar and cognitive psychology. The changes affected the procedures of language learning. From the very beginning, the objective of language teaching was to give the same importance to the four skills and the contents were focused on the grammatical component, with special relevance granted to morphology and syntax within the sentence.

Main features:

Conscious learning of the language system is promoted: learners need to have control of the language rules in order to be able to generate their own language in new situations (the principle of creativity). In other words, learners need to understand the system of rules; thus grammar is explained openly and is often contrasted with the first language. Making mistakes is viewed as part of the process of achieving an understanding of rules. Conscious focus on grammar acknowledges the role of abstract mental processes in learning rather than defining learning simply in terms of habit formation.

Learning must go from the known to the unknown, so that the learners can familiarise themselves with the rules first (knowledge) and apply them afterwards (performance). This means that learners first deal with controlled comprehension and manipulation of linguistic forms for later use in real communication situations. It is believed that if the students have a cognitive control over the language structures, they will automatically develop the ability to use them in meaningful situations. Learning must be meaningful (in contrast to the routine repetition of `drills'), it must be

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related to the new materials and adapted to the learners needs. Thus learning is under the learner's control.

Its first main goal is the development of `competence' (as the term is used in T-G linguistics) in the second language learner. The means employed to achieve this goal are based on mentalistic interpretations of learning. A cognitive teacher accepts the fact that the native speaker does not have to think about language as such during the communicative process, but she does not agree that the language was learned in the same fashion.

The second goal is to give students opportunities to develop functional, not necessarily perfect, performance skills. The students need to be placed in situations in which they can activate their interim learner language and compare the product with native language. They need to be given many and continued opportunities to convert their thoughts into the second language, both in writing and in speech, independently and in conversational interchanges.

Cognitive presentations of material and cognitive exercises are outgrowths of the belief that new material must be presented in such a manner that the students are learning meaningfully. Exercises are designed to give the students a chance to demonstrate comprehension as they consciously select correct forms. The latter portion of any learning sequence contains materials and activities in which the students are given the opportunity to communicate using what they have learned. During the entire sequence, learning is viewed as primarily an internal process assisted by the text and the teacher.

All these principles were strongly argued and gave rise to new critiques and research in the area of language teaching. Although many have considered the changes implemented by the Cognitive Approach as superficial, particularly those concerning techniques and classroom dynamics, it was widely accepted in the United States, and many of the activities carried out in the classroom context consisted of the combination of a structural `syllabus' with a cognitive approach and a variety of communicative and personalised activities and strategies. The lack of an alternative to Audiolingualism in language teaching in the United States led to a period of adaptation, innovation, experimentation, and some confusion. On the one hand, new methods were developed under the influence of humanistic or holistic psychology, independently of current linguistic and second language acquisition theory, (e.g., Total Physical Response, Silent Way, Counselling-Learning); on the other, competing approaches were derived from contemporary theories of language and second language acquisition (e.g., The Natural Approach, Communicative Language Teaching).

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MOST RECENT METHODS

In the decade of the 70s, there was the boom of new approaches. New research was looking for new methodological principles and new points of view among professionals in the field of language teaching. During this period, the tendencies in the United States and in Europe followed separate paths. The former were more under the influence of Psychology and Psycholinguistics and the latter were more concerned with a new vision of language. It will not be until the decade of the 80s that the tendencies from the United States and from Europe meet again in a general consensus under the communicative approach. In the United States, there were several alternative methods that had a great impact (some of them appeared in the 60s) and despite the differences between them, they all tried to offer new and remarkably innovative solutions to the problem of how to learn a second language. Each of the innovative approaches emerged as a reaction to conventional assumptions about the structure of language, about how language is processed, about parameters such as memory, emotion, motivation, etc., and also about teaching procedures.

Five approaches will be discussed below. The first two have been pigeon-holed as Comprehension-based Approaches, and the last three are considered Humanistic Approaches as they include the affective component in language teaching.

1- Total Physical Response (James Asher)2- Silent Way (Caleb Gateggno)3- Community Language Learning (Charles Curran)4- Suggestology or Suggestopedia (Georgi Lozanov)5- The Natural Approach (T. Terrel & S. Krashen)

The Comprehension-based approach is based on receptive skills (listening comprehension in particular) and it does not attempt to train oral production specifically -oral fluency is expected to emerge naturally and gradually. Learning to talk is not therefore the immediate and primary aim in language learning, as it is expected that by improving receptive skills the learner will ultimately acquire fluency and accuracy in talking.

The Humanistic approach is based on theories applied to ‘learner-centered teaching’. Communication is seen as an element of motivation that fosters meaningful learning and as a factor that determines personal growth. Humanistic techniques engage the whole person, including the emotions and feelings (the affective realm) as well as linguistic knowledge and behavioural skills. These methods meant a qualitative change in the field of language teaching: the learner became the centre as an active person in the process of second language acquisition and as a determining factor in teaching practice (individual differences, affective conditions, etc.).

I- Total Physical Response (TPR)

Since the turn of the 1960s many were the applied linguists who reacted against the formal and highly artificial foreign language curricula and methods typical of that period. TPR emerged in the 1960s and lasted until the late 80s; it was developed by James J. Asher, a talented young research psychologist at San Jose State University, California, who has based his theory of language learning on three rather influential hypotheses:

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- the influence of the first language acquisition process,- the influence of brain lateralisation on language functions,- the importance of stress.

Asher saw a parallel between the process of adult second language learning and that of first language acquisition. He observed that children develop listening competence before they develop the ability to speak. Their understanding is revealed by their meaningful response to a particular type of input. Initially this is an action response, rather than a verbal response, in context-clear situations. He pointed out that their early social interaction is through a physical response to invitations for movement, such as ‘Hey, come on’, ‘Let's run’, ‘Throw the ball’. Asher speculated that during this period, the learner may be making a mental ‘blueprint’ of the language, and speech will evolve naturally and effortlessly later on. Asher believed in ‘learning language through doing’ and this basic idea was applied to second or foreign language learning by asking the learner(s) to act out a command, or a series of commands. Orchestrating language production and comprehension with body movement and physical actions was thought to provide the conditions for success in language learning.

The mechanism of communication is short and simple:

- the directive,- the hearing and interpretation of the directive,- the action, and then immediately- the visible confirmation or not of comprehension.

Asher believed that a stimulus-response view could provide learning. In this way, learning the second language gradually becomes as spontaneous, correct and appropriate as learning the first language. However, these simple stimulus-response models of language acquisition and development have been rejected and abandoned for not catering to the fundamental features of language learning and use.

The influence of brain lateralisation on language functions: under the influence of work by Jean Piaget, Asher held that the child language learner acquires language through motor movement - a right-hemisphere activity. Right-hemisphere activities must occur before the left hemisphere can process language for production. Similarly, the adult should acquire language mastery through right-hemisphere motor activities, while the left hemisphere watches and learns. When a sufficient amount of right-hemisphere learning has taken place, the left hemisphere will be triggered to produce language and to initiate other, more abstract language processes. Asher asserted that physical response, rather than merely cognitive response, was decisive in order to interpret language input and contribute to rapid language acquisition in children.

The importance of stress (and the affective filter): by comparing the way a child learns his/her first language with the way an adult learns a second language, Asher was able to defend that adults usually have to go through a learning process that brings them into a state of stress and anxiety. In his opinion, focusing on meaning interpreted through movement, rather than on language forms studied in the abstract, would liberate the learner from self-consciousness and stress, and enable the learner to devote all his/her energy to learning.

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Objectives

The general objectives of Total Physical Response are to teach oral proficiency at a beginning level. Asher emphasised the development of comprehension skills in order to achieve a state of ‘inner readiness’ that fostered the natural acquisition of language and led to spontaneous development of speech as soon as the learner felt ready for it. Ultimately, comprehension was a means to an end, and the final aim was to teach basic speaking skills.

Main features

Classroom activities

Initially, teaching activity was based on commands that the students heard first. Imperative drills such as "Sit down" or "Stand up" were the major classroom activity in Total Physical Response. They were typically used to elicit physical actions by the learners. The figure below will show you a sample exercise that may be used in the TPR classroom.

Example of a Problem -Solving Task "Identify the box".

Conversational dialogues were delayed until after about 120 hours of instruction. Asher was of the opinion that: everyday conversations are highly abstract and disconnected; therefore to understand them requires a rather advanced internalisation of the target language. Role plays and slide presentations were also introduced. The role plays provided a context for all sorts of everyday situations that were familiar to the learners: the teacher acted as a narrator and the students performed the actions. The slide presentations provided a visual support for teacher narration, which was followed by commands and for questions to students, such as "What is the dog doing?" or "Where is the supermarket?" Reading and writing activities were considered as complementary activities that helped consolidate structures and vocabulary, and as follow-up activities to oral imperative drills.

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The role of grammar and language

The exercises employed in TPR classes were hardly ever focused on specific grammatical or lexical items. The emphasis was on meaning, and grammar, therefore, was learnt inductively. Grammatical features and vocabulary items were selected not according to their frequency of need or use in target language situations, but according to the situations in which they could be used in the classroom and the ease with which they could be learned. Occasionally, the instructor would draw attention to certain grammatical features and their meaning. The central linguistic item was the verb, and particularly the imperative, as most of the drills or repetition exercises used the imperative form.

Gradual learning came:

- through experiencing the language as an integral part of the action,- through recognising the meaning of the command,- by feeling ready to issue such a command,- through noticing the separate words of which this and other commands were built up, as

well as their grammatical features; and then starting to use these in different combinations.

Mistake correction was not a primary concern. In the early stages teachers avoided too much correction, since this would inhibit learners. However, as time went on, the learner would be corrected more often, if he/ she failed to communicate, was not understood, or might be misunderstood. One of the key principles was to provide immediate feedback on the choice made by the student, but without letting affective (emotional) factors have a negative effect on the language learning process. The absence of worry, anxiety and stress allowed for students' confidence to develop, as they felt a high sense of achievement resulting from:

- successfully doing what they were told to do, time and time again;- making very rapid progress in understanding the spoken language.

Learner and Teacher roles

TPR was a teacher-centred approach. Learners had little influence over the course or the lesson contents, since these were determined by the teacher. However, learners could monitor and evaluate their own progress and they were encouraged to speak when they felt ready to do so, that is, when a sufficient basis in the language had been internalised. The teacher played an active and direct role in TPR. He/She was encouraged to be well prepared and well organised so that the lesson flew smoothly and predictably. Classroom interaction and turn taking was directed by the teacher. Asher stressed, however, that the teacher's role was not so much to teach as to provide opportunities for learning. Thus the teacher controlled the language input the learners received. The teacher also needed to allow speaking abilities to develop in learners at the learners' own natural pace.

Materials

For absolute beginners, lessons did not require the use of materials, since the teacher's voice, actions, and gestures were a sufficient basis for classroom activities. Later the teacher might use

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common classroom objects, such as books, pens, cups, furniture. As the course developed, the teacher needed to make or collect supporting materials to support teaching points. These included pictures, realia, slides, and word charts. Asher developed TPR student kits that focused on specific situations, such as the home, the supermarket, the beach, and students used the kits to construct scenes.

II- Silent Way Learning (SWL)

The Silent Way is a method that is not restricted to language teaching. It was developed by Caleb Gattegno, an educational consultant who headed a commercial organisation called Educational Solutions, Inc. in New York City. Caleb Gattegno's innovative method proposed some unusual procedures in the teaching of a foreign language. From its name one might assume that a typical class began with the students sitting silently while the teacher speaks. What really happened was that the teacher stood silent or provided minimum input while eliciting or subtly reinforcing verbal output from the learners. Gattegno emphasised the primacy of learning over teaching, meaning that the teaching activity should be focused on the learners. The Silent Way is concerned with promoting language awareness among the students and it tries to foster learners' self-monitoring and self-correction of their own language learning process.

Objectives

The general objective of the Silent Way is to give beginning level students oral and aural facility in basic elements of the target language. An immediate objective is to provide the learner with a basic practical knowledge of the grammar of the language. The principle underlying this method is "Subordinate teaching to learning". The teacher analyses what kind of additional input the learners need and provides specific language input for each learner.

Main features

The innovations in Gattegno's method derive primarily from the manner in which classroom activities are organised, the indirect role the teacher is required to assume in directing and monitoring learner performance, the responsibility placed upon learners to figure out and test their hypotheses about how the language works, and the materials used to elicit and practise language.

The role of grammar and language

Looking at the materials chosen and the sequence in which it is presented in a Silent Way classroom, the Silent Way adopts a basically structural syllabus, with lessons planned around grammatical items and related vocabulary. Language is seen as groups of sounds arbitrarily associated with specific meanings and organised into sentences or strings of meaningful units by grammar rules. Language items are introduced according to their grammatical complexity, their relationship to what has been taught previously, and the ease with which items can be presented visually. Language is separated from its social context and taught through artificial situations, usually represented by rods. Students are thus presented with the structural patterns of the target language and learn the grammar rules of the language through largely inductive processes.

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Gattegno saw vocabulary as a central dimension of language learning. The most important vocabulary for the learner deals with the most functional words. This "functional vocabulary" provides a key, said Gattegno, to comprehending the "spirit" of the language.

Types of teaching and learning activities

Gattegno was against the TPR techniques of repetition and drilling and argued that language learning depends on the learner's creativeness and his/her ability to discover the "spirit" of the language. Silence, as avoidance of repetition, is thus an aid to attention, concentration, and mental organisation. The SW views learning as a problem-solving, creative, discovering activity, in which the learner is a principal actor rather than a mere listener. Similarly, the learner's grappling with the problem of forming an appropriate and meaningful utterance in a new language leads the learner to test their hypotheses of meaning, form and function. The Silent Way student is expected to become independent, autonomous and responsible - in other words, a good problem solver in language.

Basic to the method are simple linguistic tasks in which the teacher models a word, phrase, or sentence and then elicits learner responses. Teacher modelling is minimal, although much of the activity may be teacher directed. Learners then go on to create their own utterances by putting together old and new information. In this method the use of the native language is avoided as much as possible. Error correction and accuracy, however, are not one of the main concerns, since that can have a negative effect on the learning process of some students.

The role of materials

Charts, rods, and other aids may be used to elicit learner responses. Colour-coded charts are used to teach, visually illustrate, and correct pronunciation. In order to introduce the syntactic and phonological structure of the language within a restricted vocabulary, a set of wooden (or plastic) sticks called "Cuisenaire rods" of varying length and colour is also used. The coloured Cuisenaire rods are used to directly link words and structures with their meanings in the target language, thereby avoiding translation into the native language. The use of the rods is intended to promote inventiveness, creativity, and interest in forming communicative utterances on the part of the students, as they move from simple to more complex structures.

The general content of the vocabulary charts is paraphrased below:

- Chart 1: the word "rod", colours of the rods, plural markers, simple imperative verbs, personal pronouns, some adjectives and words.

- Charts 2, 3: remaining pronouns, words for "here" and "there," of, for, and name.- Chart 4: numbers.- Charts 5, 6: words illustrating size, space, and temporal relationships, as well as some

concepts difficult to illustrate with rods, such as order, causality, condition, similarity and difference.

- Chart 7: words that qualify, such as adverbs.- Charts 8, 9: verbs, with cultural references where possible.- Chart 10: family relationships.- Charts 11, 12: words expressing time, calendar elements, seasons, days, week, month,

year, etc.

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Much of the time the teacher merely points to the chart instead of speaking. Learning is also facilitated by accompanying (mediating) physical objects that help students recall. Later many different kinds of materials such as worksheets, readers and films are used to take students beyond the elementary level.

Learner and Teacher roles

In the SW Approach teaching is subordinated to learning, thus the teacher is responsible for the creation of a classroom environment that facilitates learning. The teacher presents an item that conveys some meaning in as silent a way as possible, using rods and charts, and tries to elicit utterances from the students. Finally, the teacher silently monitors learners' interactions with each other. As the teacher hardly corrects students, the learners are required to make their own generalisations, come to their own conclusions, and formulate whatever rules they themselves feel they need. Learners are expected to develop independence, autonomy, and responsibility. Language learning, therefore, becomes a process of personal growth resulting from growing student awareness and self-challenge.

III- Community Language Learning (CLL)

Charles A. Curran (1976) was a Jesuit priest and a professor of clinical psychology at Loyola University (Chicago) where he wrote and conducted research on the application of principles of clinical psychology to education. Curran saw in traditional educational philosophy and practice the cause of many learner discomforts and learning pathologies. He felt that teachers are unaware that depersonalised ways of teaching may cause negative feelings and behaviours in resistant learners. He took as his main concern the deep-level interpersonal dynamics of the teacher-learner relationship and the teaching-learning process; he concluded that the kind of healthy growth which learning can represent must involve the whole integrated person of the learner: intellect, emotions, values, and personality - all related to the same integrated features in the teacher and in any other person integrated in the community of learners.

Through his philosophy of holistic learning, he added a profound new dimension to the learning and teaching process, a dimension that cannot be reduced to a set of classroom procedures or techniques, but which requires a teacher to use effective ways of deeply understanding learners in their struggle to learn. Curran considered that some psychological needs had to be met in order to achieve successful learning. As genuine understanding and support is given, the learner finds that he or she can talk honestly and openly within the group about the learning experience, feeling confident of being understood, and through receiving and sensing this understanding, can dissipate negative factors that block learning. On the whole, Curran's theories were not so much focused on the psycholinguistic and cognitive processes involved in second language learning, but on the personal commitments learners need to make before language acquisition can take place.

Objectives

CLL is most often used in introductory conversation courses in a foreign language with the objective of achieving oral proficiency, focusing on fluency rather than on accuracy; nevertheless, CLL could also be used in the teaching of writing. Its major goal is to achieve linguistic or communicative competence in social situations.

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Main features

Materials and activities

CLL combines innovative learning tasks and activities with conventional ones. A class starts with the students (or "clients" in Curran's terminology) sitting in a circle with the teacher (or "counsellor") outside the circle. The clients-learners themselves initiate conversation (in the native or the target language) and the teacher-counsellor translates these utterances into the target language. Thus the clients themselves decide what they want to learn and, as a result, a massive amount of unrestricted, self-motivated target-language data is generated. A post-session debriefing may involve instruction dealing with the form and substance of the material generated in the session. These reflection sessions are one of the vital functions of CLL.

Other complementary tasks or activities include:

- Group Work. Learners may engage in various group tasks, such as small group discussion of a topic, preparing a conversation, preparing a summary of a topic for presentation to another group, preparing a story that will be presented to the teacher and the rest of the class.

- Analysis. Students analyse and study transcriptions of target language sentences in order to focus on particular lexical usage or on the application of grammar roles.

- Listening. Students listen to a monologue by the teacher involving elements they might have elicited or overheard in class interactions.

- Free conversation. Students engage in free conversation with the teacher or with other learners.

There is no visible textbook, prepared lesson plan, or even defined objectives. The textbook restricts language content and, therefore, impedes interaction in the community. Most of the materials used by the teacher are notes on the blackboard or recordings of students' conversations. From the material just recorded the teacher might choose sentences to write on the blackboard that highlight elements of grammar, spelling, or whatever. Students are encouraged to ask about any of the above and to copy sentences from the board with notes on meaning and usage. This becomes their "textbook" for home study. Errors are corrected by the teacher merely repeating without error any faulty utterance that a learner has produced in the target language.

Learner and Teacher roles

As in Counselling-Learning theory, in the teaching-learning process students are viewed as "clients", and teachers are considered as "counsellors" and "knowers". Therefore, human relationships are a priority and there is not much concern for technique. Language-learning is viewed as a maturation process consisting of five stages that go from the dependent stage (equivalent to childhood) to the fully independent stage (equivalent to adulthood). At each stage the learner is involved not just in the accomplishment of cognitive (language learning) tasks but in the solution of affective conflicts. After several weeks the learners have acquired quickness, confidence, and communicative ability.

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Learning is not viewed as an individual accomplishment but as something that is achieved collaboratively. Consequently, the role of the learner also implies giving support to fellow learners and acting as counsellors for the other learners. According to the developmental stages referred to previously, the role of the teacher changes gradually from being very supportive to intervening less and less. Thus the role of the teacher is very important for classroom dynamics. His/hers is a very demanding job that requires previous experience. The teacher must operate without conventional materials, depending on student topics to shape and motivate the class.

IV- Suggestopedia

Giorgi Lozanov (a Bulgarian physician and psychotherapist) encouraged an experimental approach which included the investigation of learning resistance and the search for more effective means to increase learning. He began his research in the 1960s, with music therapy, relaxation, and other suggestological means of enhancing learning readiness. This is a method used to teach all academic subjects, not just languages Lozanov first used the rapid memorisation of foreign vocabulary as the test vehicle of his experimentation with Suggestology, concluding that the experimental techniques used aimed at relaxing and fostering trust to make possible a phenomenal rate of learning. He believed that fear of incompetence or mistakes, and apprehension regarding the new and unfamiliar, are the factors that constrain learning rather than one's native intelligence. Therefore, Suggestopedia aims at neutralising learning inhibitions and de-suggesting the false limitations that cultural norms impose on learning. He would demonstrate that by artfully enhancing learner receptivity he would enable learners to process massive input into intake with no forgetting.

Objectives

The aim of Suggestopedia is that students should reach an advanced level in oral skills quickly. Learning is based on student mastery of long lists of vocabulary pairs. The main aim of teaching is not memorisation, but the understanding and creative solution of problems . Thus, as learner goals he cited increased access to understanding and creative solutions of problems.

Main features

The role of language

Lozanov was not very concerned with the elements of language and their organisation. Vocabulary was a central issue and Suggestopedia stressed memorisation of vocabulary pairs and lexical translation rather than contextualisation. However, Lozanov did occasionally refer to the importance of experiencing language material in "whole meaningful texts" and noted that the suggestopedic course directs the student not to vocabulary memorisation and acquiring habits of speech, but to acts of communication.

Types of activities

A Suggestopedia course lasts thirty days and classes are four hours a day, six days a week. Each course consists of ten units, each of them being focused on a lengthy dialogue with an accompanying vocabulary list and grammatical comments, and graded by lexis and grammar.

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These dialogues are read, translated, and reread by the teacher at different speeds and with different intonation.

At the beginning of a course the students are given a new identity and a new name to encourage loss of inhibitions. Each group consists of twelve students; ideally they should be socially homogeneous, and divided equally between men and women. Learners sit in a circle, which encourages face-to-face exchange and participation in the activities. There is a pattern of work within each unit and a pattern of work for the whole course. Unit study is organised around three days: on the first day the teacher discusses the general content (not structure) of the unit dialogue.

The following is an example of a session as described by Lozanov (1978):

At the beginning of the session, all conversation stops for a minute or two, and the teacher listens to the music coming from a tape-recorder. He waits and listens to several passages in order to enter into the mood of the music and then begins to read or recite the new text, his voice modulated in harmony with the musical phrases. The students follow the text in their textbooks where each lesson is translated into the mother tongue. Between the first and second part of the concert, there are several minutes of solemn silence. In some cases, even longer pauses can be given to permit the students to stir a little. Before the beginning of the second part of the concert, there are again several minutes of silence and some phrases of the music are heard again before the teacher begins to read the text. Now the students close their textbooks and listen to the teacher's reading. At the end, the students silently leave the room. They are not told to do any homework on the lesson they have just had except for reading it cursorily once before going to bed and again before getting up in the morning.

This is the point at which Lozanov believed the unconscious learning system takes over.

Days 2 and 3 are spent in doing grammar and vocabulary exercises or questions and answers, together with other activities such as role plays, games, and songs, designed to help learners regain self-confidence, spontaneity, and receptivity. In the middle of the course students are encouraged to practise the target language in a setting where it might be used, such as hotels or restaurants. The last day of the course is devoted to a performance in which every student participates.

Learner and Teacher roles

Students who volunteer for a suggestopedic course are expected to be committed to the class and its activities. The mental state of the learners is critical to success, which is why learners must forgo mind-altering substances and other distractions and immerse themselves in the procedures of the method.

In this method a child-like trust in the teacher (infantilisation) is fostered in each student. The teacher, by contrast, should behave authoritatively as it is believed that people remember best and are most influenced by information coming from an 'authoritative' source. Thus the teacher is seen as a source of knowledge and understanding in his field of instruction. The primary role of the teacher is to create situations in which the learner is most suggestible and then to present linguistic material in a way most likely to encourage positive reception and retention by the

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learner. Teachers are also expected to be skilled in acting, singing, and psychotherapeutic techniques after several months of training.

The classroom: a learning environment

The learner learns not only from the effect of direct instruction but also from the environment in which the instruction takes place. The setting must be comfortable and relaxing (soft carpets, easy chairs, pleasant colours). The arts - music, painting, theatre - are aesthetic reinforcements of this physical comfort and pleasure. The musical background helps to induce a relaxed attitude, which Lozanov refers to as pseudo-passiveness. This state is felt to be optimal for learning, in that anxieties and tension are relieved and the power of concentration for new material is raised. According to East German researchers of Suggestopedia, slow movements from string instruments playing Baroque instrumental music gave the best results.

Lozanov's writings may lack clarity of exposition and they contain lots of jargon associated with medical science and psychotherapy; nevertheless, in many countries of eastern and western Europe, in South Africa and North America and elsewhere, some experimentalists began to seriously explore ideas and techniques associated initially with Suggestopedia. The most important product of Lozanov's research, though, was not a new model for language teaching, but rather an increased realization that:

- language instruction research must look beyond manipulating the external dimensions of the learning environment,

- psychological and cultural variables in the learning environment had not previously been addressed to experimentation, and

- Suggestopedia provides fresh ideas and tools.

V- The Natural Approach

In the United States there was an increasing interest towards a more communicative orientation in the field of language teaching under the influence of the humanist theories applied to learner-centred teaching. The Natural Approach acted as a bridge between psycholinguistic theories and the communicative approach, between North-American and European tendencies, that continually try to balance the role of the learner-individual and the learner-social-being. The Natural Approach, published in 1983 by Tracy Terrell and Stephen Krashen, gave a new direction to foreign or second language teaching. Tracy Terrell was a teacher of Spanish in California and Stephen Krashen was an applied linguist at the University of Southern California. In their book they combined Terrell's classroom procedures and Krashen's influential theory of second language acquisition.

The emphasis is not on teacher monologues, direct repetition, formal questions and answers, or accurate production of target language sentences but on:

- input rather than practice;- optimising emotional preparedness for learning;- a prolonged period of attention to what the language learners hear before they try to

produce language;- a willingness to use written and other materials as a source of comprehensible input;

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Objectives

The specific objectives depend upon the learners’ needs, the skills development and the level being taught so that the students can deal with a particular set of topics in a given situation.

Main features

The role of language and grammar

Krashen and Terrell see communication as the primary function of language, and since their approach focuses on teaching communicative abilities, they refer to the Natural Approach as an example of a communicative approach. The Natural Approach is similar to other communicative approaches being developed today. Yet despite their avowed communicative approach to language, they view language learning, as do audiolingualists, as consisting of the mastery of structures by stages.

Psycholinguistic theory: the principal tenets on which the Natural Approach is based are the five famous hypotheses of Krashen's Monitor Theory:

1- The Acquisition / Learning Hypothesis: the distinction between acquisition and learning implies two different and independent ways of developing proficiency in a second language. Whereas acquisition refers to the natural assimilation of language rules through using language or communication and it is an unconscious process, learning refers to the formal study of language rules and it is a conscious process. Formal teaching is necessary for "learning" to occur, and correction of errors helps with the development of learned rules. Learning, according to the theory, cannot lead to acquisition. Language acquisition is very similar to the process children use in acquiring first and second languages. It requires meaningful interaction in the target language -natural communication- in which speakers are concerned not with the form of the utterances but with the messages they are conveying and understanding... Conscious learning is available to the performer only as a Monitor (Krashen 1981)

2- The Monitor Hypothesis: this formal knowledge is managed by the "Monitor" (one's ability to monitor his/her own output), who is responsible for `editing' the output, checking and repairing the learner's production, and this is the only link between acquired knowledge and the learned knowledge. The three necessary conditions for assuring successful use of the monitor are:

- Time. There must be sufficient time for a learner to choose and apply a learned rule.- Focus on form. The language user must be focused on correctness or on the form of the

output.- Knowledge of rules. The performer must know the rules. The monitor does best with rules

that are simple to describe.

In general, utterances are initiated by the acquired system - our fluency in production is based on what we have 'picked up' through active communication. Our 'formal' knowledge of the second language, our conscious learning, may be used to alter the output of the acquired

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system, sometimes before and sometimes after the utterance is produced. we make these changes to improve accuracy, and the use of the Monitor has this effect.(ibid)

3- The Natural Order Hypothesis: the acquisition of grammatical structures follows a universal pattern, the `natural order', inherent in every language and independent of the learner's native language. Research has shown that certain grammatical structures or morphemes are acquired before others in first language acquisition of English, and a similar natural order is found in second language acquisition. Likewise, during acquisition (not during learning), similar developmental errors occur in learners.

4- The Input Hypothesis: this hypothesis relates to acquisition, and not to learning. The acquisition process is activated and it depends on `input' (i.e. language to which the learner is exposed in the form of listening and reading). The learner should receive a sufficient quantity of `comprehensible input', i.e., input slightly beyond their current level of competence or of a level `i+1', `i' being the real level of the learner. The situation and context, and also the extralinguistic information will help the learner understand this input. The ability to speak fluently, however, cannot be taught directly; rather, it will "emerge" once the learner has built up linguistic competence by understanding input.

5- The Affective Filter Hypothesis: the acquisition process of the L2 is constrained by an `affective filter', a set of variables (see below) that allow or block the acquisition process.

- Motivation. Learners with high motivation generally do better.- Self-confidence. Learners with self-confidence and a good self-image tend to be more

successful.- Anxiety. Low personal anxiety and low classroom anxiety are more conducive to second

language acquisition.

Types of activities

Classroom activities are not based on a grammatical syllabus since they are determined by the students according to their needs and interests. Many of the techniques used are often borrowed from other methods and adapted to meet the requirements of Natural Approach theory. For instance, they include command-based activities from Total Physical Response; mime, gesture, and context are used to elicit questions and answers, similar to the Direct Method; and even situation-based practice of structures and patterns are used. Communicative Language Teaching activities, such as group-work activities are often used as well. The difference lies in the emphasis given to comprehensible and meaningful communication, rather than production of grammatically perfect utterances and sentences.

In the early stages: charts, magazine pictures, advertisements, and other realia are used to elicit simple responses from the learner (i.e., the student has to answer the name of the student that matches the description the teacher gives). Obviously, the students’ responses are simpler and gradually they lead to more coherent discourse at intermediate levels. Production is never forced, it must be spontaneous. After continuous exposure to authentic language use (pre-production period), the learners are expected to produce some meaningful output. Then, they are involved in

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a variety of activities that focus either on meaningful communication (acquisition activities) or on grammar study (learning activities). There is a difference then between acquisition and learning activities. To minimise stress, learners are not required to say anything before they feel ready for it. The negative affective factors are reduced to the minimum: grammatical appropriateness and error correction, for instance, are not considered as important, and thus errors are never corrected directly.

Learner and Teacher roles

Both learners and teachers play an important role in the Natural Approach classroom, have their own responsibilities and should be committed to these. Learners should provide information about their specific goals so that acquisition activities can focus on the topics and situations most relevant to their needs. They also decide (negotiate) with the teacher the relative amount of time to be devoted to learning exercises (i.e., grammar study). It is up to them to decide when they are ready to start producing speech and when to upgrade it. The Natural Approach requires them to participate in communication activities with other learners. The teacher is a key figure in the because she/he is the primary source of comprehensible input in the target language; she/he should create a classroom atmosphere that is interesting, friendly and in which there is a low affective filter for learning and she/he must choose and combine a rich variety of classroom activities, involving different group sizes, content, and contexts.

The role of materials

Most of the comprehensible input the student receives comes from materials. One of the roles of materials is thus to make classroom activities as meaningful as possible by supplying the extra-linguistic context that helps the acquirer to understand and thereby to acquire, by relating classroom activities to the real world, and by fostering real communication among the learners. A great variety of materials help learners discover how language really works without having it broken down into chunks. Pictures and other visual aids supply the content for communication and facilitate the acquisition of a large vocabulary within the classroom. Other recommended materials include schedules, brochures, advertisements, maps, and books at levels appropriate to the students, if a reading component is included in the course. Games, in general, are seen as useful classroom materials, since games by their very nature, focus the student on what it is they are doing and use the language as a tool for reaching the goal rather than as a goal in itself.

Conclusion

All five methods - to a degree - ignore the fact that there are individual differences among learners in terms of cognitive style and social preferences. There are people who have said they couldn't take the pressure or lack of teacher support in the SW and dropped out. Others decried the lack of "structure" in CLL classes or were annoyed by the psycho-therapy group atmosphere. Others said that Suggestopedia was not for them and they claimed that they would not submit to such subliminal techniques. The appearance of new methods always gives rise to comments and criticism, but it is interesting to see how through the years these new proposals have become compatible with new tendencies, and how many of their techniques have been included in communicative approaches. It cannot be denied, though, that the work of innovators constitutes a challenge to conventional thinking about language teaching.

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COMMUNICATIVE APPROACHES: A DOMINANT PARADIGM IN ELT

Where has CLT come from? Communicative approaches in language teaching appeared in the 1970s, influenced by the breakaway from the concept of method and the so-called humanistic new methods (Silent Way, CLL, Suggestopedia). The influence of the humanistic methods, which included a concern for whole person learning:

The learner is an individual who has a cognitive facet and a physical and affective (emotional) facet.

The learner is a participant in interactive communication and an individual with different needs which the teacher has to be aware of.

The learner brings varying degrees of motivation to the classroom through past learning experiences, which color his emotional attitude to the language.

The humanistic methods reflected a process view of learning as opposed to a product view. The learning itself (the process) was where teachers needed to focus attention, rather than exclusively on the learners producing perfectly formed utterances (the product). There was an acceptance of errors as part of the learning process and as a necessary stage on the road to linguistic competence. The humanistic methods defined a new role for the teacher: a facilitator rather than a transmitter of knowledge. The other concept that started to gain prominence was that of learner autonomy or independence (encouraging learners to take responsibility for their own learning).

What is CLT? CLT concentrates on getting learners to do things with language, to express concepts and

to carry out communicative acts of various kinds. (Widdowson, 1990) One of the most characteristic features of communicative language teaching is that it pays

systematic attention to functional as well as structural aspects of language.(Littlewood 1981).

Some of the theoretical underpinnings of CLT:

language is a system for the expression of meaning; the primary function of language is for interaction and communication; the structure of language reflects its functional and communicative uses; the primary units of language are not merely its grammatical and structural features, but

categories of functional and communicative meaning as exemplified in discourse.

CLT approaches prioritize the communicative nature of language, although the linguistic or structural aspect of language is still accepted as an integral part of it.

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Theories of language and CLT

Chomsky's linguistic competence (1965) is knowledge and mastery of the underlying system of rules which make up language. For Chomsky, language is basically rule-based creativity: ordinary linguistic behavior involves formation of new sentences and new patterns in accordance with rules of great abstractness and intricacy. In Chomsky's view, linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-listener in a homogeneous speech-community who knows its language perfectly. This view of language came under question in the 1960s when new fields of enquiry such as Pragmatics, Sociolinguistics, Ethnomethodology and the Ethnography of communication showed that it was the active and creative use of language what paved the way on the learning process.

Hymes' communicative competence (1972) is an extension of Chomsky's linguistic competence because it takes into account new developments in related fields and it reflects the belief that language is always used in a social context or situation.

Halliday (1970) proposed a functional view of language and elaborated a theory of language which complements Hymes' view of communicative competence by identifying 7 functions that language performs:

- the instrumental function: using language to get things;- the regulatory function: using language to control the behaviour of others;- the interactional function: using language to create interaction with others;- the personal function: using language to express personal feelings and meanings;- the heuristic function: using language to learn and discover;- the imaginative function: using language to create a world of the imagination;- the representational function: using language to communicate information.

Canale and Swain (1980) identify 4 subgroups of competences, which together make up communicative competence:

grammatical competence, which is the ability to use grammar and lexis accurately. It is what Chomsky calls "linguistic competence".

sociolinguistic competence, which is the ability to understand the social context in which communication takes place: for example, role relationships, the shared knowledge of the speakers, and the communicative purpose of the interaction.

discourse competence, which is the ability to interpret individual elements in a message through their coherence and cohesion.

strategic competence, which is the ability to start, finish, maintain, repair or redirect communication.

ACTIVITY TYPES & MATERIALS

Three main trends in CLT activity types:

Communicativeness. Activities that promote real communication of meaning between participants will promote learning

Tasks. Activities that create the need for meaningful language use, by carrying out tasks, will promote learning

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Meaningfulness. If the language used in an activity is meaningful to the learner, the learning process will be more effective

Littlewood (1981) makes a distinction between functional communication activities and social interaction activities.

- The former include activities in which learners compare pictures for similarities and differences, or work out the likely sequence of events in a set of pictures, or give instructions to each other for the completion of a drawing, or solve a problem from shared clues, etc.

- The latter include conversation, discussion, dialogues, role plays, simulations and so on. Littlewood's model for the sequencing of communicative activities reflects a step by step approach in which learners are to gain control over individual skills (such as grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary) before applying them in communicative tasks.

In terms of text book materials, the kinds of activities which became common practice in early coursebooks with a communicative focus often identify the learner in a specific role of language use (for example as tourists, students, customer - waiter, doctor- patient and so on). Detailed scenarios are established for situations of language use (for example, arriving at a hotel, enrolling on a language course, ordering a meal, visiting the doctor etc.). Learners then embark on tasks which may include simulation or role playing, or problem solving.

The use of authentic materials: e.g. newspaper articles, extracts from books, native speaker dialogues or monologues, etc.). The rationale behind this is that students should be exposed to language that is actually used by native speakers, and should be encouraged to develop strategies for understanding this language.

TEACHERS AND LEARNERS ROLES

The teacher became more multi-dimensional: facilitator, manager, advisor, co-communicator (while working alongside students in a communicative activity, for example), monitor, organiser of resources, guide, researcher and learner. Richards and Rodgers (1986) add those of needs analyst, counsellor, and group process manager. Learners are more motivated because they are learning to do something useful with the language they study. Also, they are encouraged to express their individuality by sharing ideas and opinions, and last but not least student security is enhanced because of cooperative communication with the teacher and other students.

Learner autonomy: learners should have control over their own learning. If students are to be encouraged to take greater responsibility for their own learning, it is the teacher's job to help them realise that autonomy, through making them aware of various learning strategies and their individual learning styles, so as to be able to make informed choices as regards their own learning.

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Learner error and evaluation: Error in CLT is seen as a natural part of the learning process, and as such, is tolerated in the communicative classroom. There is acceptance of the fact that despite having a limited linguistic knowledge, students can still be successful communicators. Errors can be seen as positive signs of successful learning since they show the learner employing procedures for using whatever linguistic resources they have to hand to mediate meaning.

Collaborative learning is seen as fundamental in the development of competence in a language. Thus, although learners may create meanings individually - in their heads, if you like - these meanings only take on a communicative significance when they are presented in social interaction - that is, when they are said (or written) to other people. In this view, language learning is seen as a social process of meaning construction, a view which is obviously at the root of communicative approaches to language teaching.

THE ROLES OF GRAMMAR IN CLT: Strong versus Weak versions

- The "weak" version stresses the importance of providing learners with opportunities to use their English for communicative purposes and, characteristically, attempts to integrate such activities into a wider program of language teaching.

- The "strong" version advances the claim that language is acquired through communication so that it is not merely a question of activating an existing and inert knowledge of the language, but of stimulating the development of the language system itself.

If the former could be described as "learning to use" English, the latter entails "using English to learn it". In other words, typically the "weak" version allows for a focus on structure, while the "strong" version underplays this aspect.

The return to a focus on form

A major criticism of CLT has been the view that doing (that is, taking part in communicative tasks) does not automatically lead to knowing (that is, linguistic competence). Critiques of CLT have from the beginning identified its lack of overt focus on grammar as a major weakness. Many researchers now see a need for a focus on structure as well as communication in language teaching.

A general theme in the communicative approach is that new language is focused on in a comprehensible context, and attention is first paid to meaning and function, before turning to an analysis of grammatical form. The learner is encouraged to work out and discuss the structures, with the teacher as guide rather than transmitter of knowledge. By postponing the focus on grammar, and then allowing learners to explicitly discuss and think about it, the process of acquiring new knowledge is one which is initiated by the learner him/herself, and as such is more relevant, memorable and meaningful. The learner also has some control over the learning process. It has been argued that while examining grammar may not lead to immediate internalisation of forms, it can facilitate learning at a later stage, when the learner's own interlanguage has developed to the point where that specific piece of language can be internalised.

CLT: rhetoric and reality

CLT, despite being the accepted dominant paradigm in current English language teaching, has come in for its fair share of criticism. This is a predictable state of affairs, as Celce-Murcia (1997)

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points out: L2 teaching methods and approaches tend to undergo a natural process of cyclical development. A method or approach is first proposed, then accepted, applied, and eventually criticized. The criticism may involve either the reform and revision or the complete rejection of the method or approach and perhaps its replacement with another. CLT is no exception to this cyclical process. After its appearance in the 1970s and spread in the 1980s, the early 1990s witnessed a growing dissatisfaction with several aspects of CLT, with some language professionals calling for certain reforms and suggesting changes.

The implications of setting and scene in CLT:

- Hymes (1972) identifies the importance of both the physical context (setting) and socio-psychological context (scene) in speech acts.

- Widdowson (1990) carries this distinction to the classroom itself. The setting represents the physical features of a classroom (group work, distribution of chairs, amount of learners) while the scene characterizes the roles played by teacher and learner in the communicative classroom.

RECENT CLT APPROACHES

I- The Lexical Approach: Dave Willis (1990) and Michael Lewis (1993)

The lexical approach: Lexis, rather than grammar, plays a primary role in the acquisition of language (Lewis, 1993). Lexis does not just mean any old vocabulary but multi-word prefabricated chunks that speakers have in their memories and draw on when creating output, either written or spoken. The essential idea is that fluency is based on the acquisition of fixed and semi-fixed prefabricated items, which are available as the foundation for any linguistic novelty or creativity.

It is important to note that these items or chunks are both fixed or semi-fixed. Fixed chunks might correspond to set expressions such as How do you do? as a formal greeting: there is no variation in structure or lexis possible in this phrase. Semi-fixed chunks will allow some variation within the phrase, such as an expression like: According to the authors/writers/publicists, the main advantage is that...

Lewis himself divides the main sorts of `multi-word items' (as he calls these chunks) into the following four categories that categories overlap somewhat:

1. Words e.g. push; fruit; exit. These are not particularly frequent in use, but they have a high information content. / Polywords e.g. by the way; on the other hand. Because these are used to generate patterns, they are very frequent, but they have a low information content on their own.

2. Collocations or word partenrships e.g. an initial reaction; to assess the situation; do a job. These consist of two word combinations that can (and must) go together.

3. Fixed expressions or institutionalised utterances e.g. I'll see what I can do; It's not the sort of thing you think will ever happen to you; Certainly not! These are expressions with a strong pragmatic meaning (i.e. they have a clear function).

4. Sentence frames or heads e.g. Considerable research has been done in recent years on the question of...; At present, however, expert opinion remains divided; some experts believe that...; That's all very well but...

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Evaluation of the lexical approach: The lexical approach made some useful contributions to EFL methodology. For one thing, it has put lexis firmly back into the syllabus, and an enriched view of lexis at that. No self-respecting modern-day coursebook would ignore the importance of lexis in its syllabus. However, one major criticism of Lewis' views has been that he offers no clear blueprint for organising a syllabus exclusively on the lexical approach. Even if the learning of chunks is vital for successful language learning, how are students to achieve this massive task? Nevertheless, the lexical approach is still very much alive and its effect on current practices can be felt. However, a far more influential paradigm in CLT has emerged in the past few years; that of task-based learning.

II- Task-Based Learning

Prabhu believes that language, including both communicative and linguistic competence, is acquired through engagement with meaning, not through focusing learners on structure. The mental act of reasoning is what sets the process of acquisition in motion, and tasks are seen as an effective medium through which to do this in the language classroom. Learners focus on the task, not on language, and if there is any focus on language it is only so as to complete the task. No rules of grammar are offered. Correction is "incidental", in that the correct form is given by the teacher (or elicited from the learners) with no subsequent focus on the rules of language lying behind it. A selection of Prabhu's tasks types include:

diagrams and formations (e.g. naming parts of a diagram with numbers and letters of the alphabet, as instructed).

maps (e.g. deciding on the best route from one place to another). calculating (e.g. discovering errors in bills; inferring when an underpayment or an

overpayment has been made). stories and dialogues (e.g. identifying factual inconsistencies in a given narrative of

descriptive accounts). personal details (e.g. constructing a curriculum vitae from personal information).

Prabhu classified tasks into three categories:

information-gap activities: these involve the transfer of given information from one person to another, one form to another, or one place to another.

reasoning-gap activities: these involve the discovery of new information through inference, deduction, practical reasoning, or a perception of relationships or patterns.(THE MOST EFFECTIVE ONES)

opinion-gap activities: these involve the identification and expression of personal preference or attitude in response to a given situation.

In Prabhu's (1987) task-based or "procedural" approach each lesson consists of two stages: a pre-task and a task. In the pre-task stage, there is a 'public', teacher-directed practice of a very similar task to the task in the next stage: this allows the teacher to judge the learners' difficulties, and, if necessary, to break the task down into smaller, and more easily handled, units. The main task stage is 'private', with the learners completing tasks individually, although they can confer with peers and the teacher.

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Conclusion

Although CLT is the dominant paradigm in language teaching today, it is by no means the end of the road. The idea of developing theory and continual growth in CLT is one accepted by most theorists. But whatever innovations may emerge in the future, and whatever researchers in fields related to linguistics may discover, any new developments in language teaching will take place against the background of the changes brought about by CLT. The concern with the learner as an individual, the view of language as including a communicative and social facet as well as a purely linguistic one, the concern with language as related to real life, all these developments will have to profoundly influence whatever is to come in language teaching.

How languages are learned

As a teacher, you may:

a- ask your students to repeat vocabulary or to memorize phrases. b- explain grammar and write rules on the board and give your students grammar exercises

to do at home or you might believe grammar rules shouldn't be explained.c- ask your students to discuss different topics or to interview each other.

Behind each of these choices of what to do in class, there is a fundamental idea of how language is learned. Each idea comes from a specific theory of how we learn languages. Understanding some of these theories can help teachers be more effective in the classroom.

VIEWS OF LANGUAGE

A- The first is the structural view - language is a system of structurally related elements for the coding and decoding of

language. - learning is the mastery of elements of this system, which are generally defined in

terms of phonological units, grammatical units and operations, and lexical items. - Eg: the Audio-lingual Method, the Total Physical Response and the Silent Way.

B- The second view the functional view- language is a vehicle for the expression of functional meaning.- The CLT - This theory goes beyond the grammatical characteristics of language and emphasizes

both the semantic and communicative dimension. - leads to a specification and organization of language teaching content by categories of

meaning and function rather than by elements of structure and grammar. - The functional view took the first step towards the study of language reflected in the

concepts of use, message, verbal behavior, performance and function. - Many linguists started to take social and situational contexts, as well as the attitudes

of the speakers, into consideration. - New disciplines arose,

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Syntax is the study of the relationships between linguistic forms, how they are arranged in sequence, and which sequences are well-formed.

Semantics is the study of the relationships between linguistic forms and entities in the world; that is, how words literally connect to things.

Pragmatics is the study of the relationships between linguistic forms and the users of those forms one can talk about people's intended meanings, their assumptions, their purposes or goals, and the kinds of actions (for example, requests) that they are performing when they speak.

C- The third view is the interactional view. - This view sees language as a vehicle for the realization of interpersonal relations and

for the performance of social transactions between individuals. - Language is seen as a tool for the creation and maintenance of social relations.- Interactional theories focus on the patterns of moves, acts, negotiation, and

interaction found in conversational exchanges.

SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT

While there is no general agreement on how languages are learned, experts have suggested certain theories. Learning theories are attempts to understand how we learn and describe the process of learning. We will discuss three basic schools of thought (a way of thinking that is based on a particular theory)

1- BEHAVIOURAL PSYCHOLOGY (a branch of psychology that focuses on observable actions, particularly stimulus-response methods).

2- COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY (a branch of psychology that focuses on human perception and learning, in contrast with behavioral psychology which focuses on observable behavior)

3- CONSTRUCTIVISM (a school of thought which integrates psychological and linguistic principles and emphasizes social interaction and the discovery, or construction, of meaning)

Each school of thought is unique and was created as a reaction to the previous school. We will look at how each has been the base for building theories of language learning.

1- BEHAVIOURAL PSYCHOLOGY led to STRUCTURAL LINGUISTICS [1900s – 1950s] a school of thought popular in the 1940s and 1950s that focused on structural characteristics of human language.

2- COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY led to GENERATIVE LINGUISTICS [1960s – 1980s] (n.) a school of thought that views language as a set of fixed rules that can be used to create an unlimited number of sentences.

3- CONSTRUCTIVISM led to SOCIOLINGUISTICS (a school of thought that focuses on the relationship between language and cultura) and a focus on social interactions [1980s – today]

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1- BEHAVIOURAL PSYCHOLOGY & STRUCTURAL LINGUISTICS

According to behavioral psychology, human learning is the acquisition of new habits through a stimulus-response process. In other words, when people do something the same way many times, they form habit that become part of their behavior and their lives.

LANGUAGE & LANGUAGE LEARNING: According to the STRUCTURALIST THEORY (a school of thought popular in the 1940s and 1950s that focused on structural characteristics of human language) language consists of small units that are arranged into a system according to certain rules. Sounds, words, and sentences are the units that form a language system. They are learned by practice and repetition. STRUCTURALISTS see language production as one type of human behavior. They believe that repeating behaviors such as using correct grammatical forms, help create language habits. Language learning, therefore, is seen as the process of developing correct habits. They favor activities such as drills and pattern practice to help develop habits like using the correctly learned form or structure.

BEHAVIORUSMA & STRUCTURALISM IN THE CLASSROOM: In the structuralist classroom, students learn to use correct forms and vocabulary through repetition and reinforcement. Teachers reinforce the use of correct language forms by: giving positive feedback for correct usage and responding negatively to incorrect forms.This is done to eliminate errors and help students learn the structures correctly. Encouraging positive language behavior and discouraging negative language behavior is central to behaviorism and structuralist linguistics. In these theories, grammar rules are not taught explicitly; correct grammar is reinforced through teacher responses.

2- COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY & GENERATIVE LINGUISTICS

According to COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY (a branch of psychology that focuses on human perception and learning, in contrast with behavioral psychology which focuses on observable behavior), learning is a rational activity based on understanding rules that we cannot immediately observe. Cognitivists try to answer the question why something happens or is formed in a particular way. For them, learning is a complex mental process.

GENERATIVE LINGUISTICS (a school of thought that views language as a set of fixed rules that can be used to create an unlimited number of sentences). Language isn't simply learned through habit-forming processes; it is a mental process that involves perception, motivation, and experience.

Some learning tools that COGNITIVISTS favor:

- Logic: Recognize logical relationships between things to see how they are connected - Reason: Use thinking processes, not repetition of behavior, to understand how language

structures work - Exploration: Discover connections between forms and rules

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- Inference: Understand rules through looking at examples first

COGNITIVISM & GENERATIVE LINGUISTICS in the classroom: In the classroom, teachers give detailed explanations of grammar points and structures because they believe this will help learning. Then the students engage in meaningful practice of that point and structure.

3- CONSTRUCTIVISM

CONSTRUCTIVISM (a school of thought which integrates psychological and linguistic principles and emphasizes social interaction and the discovery, or construction, of meaning)

According to constructivist theory, we build knowledge by sharing and communicating with each other. Learning is as an active process in which learners discover new meaning by interacting with the environment and one another. When we work or talk with other people, we exchange knowledge, experiences, and ideas; we learn from one another. So, knowledge is socially constructed. Constructivism is a multidisciplinary approach to language learning because it combines linguistic, psychological, and sociological ideas about learning. It is most closely associated with sociolinguistics.

Language and language learning: Constructivists see language is a system for expressing meaning. It is used for social interactions when we talk with one another or do activities together. Language learning, therefore, involves communication, exchange of ideas, and participation in meaningful tasks. In other words, language learning happens when people are engaged in social interaction.

COSNTRUCTIVISM IN THE CLASSROOM: In the constructist classroom, cooperative learning is the center of class activities. Cooperative learning is a process where learners work together in groups and each group member has specific responsibilities. Typical classroom activities involve group and pair work, discussions, information sharing, and classroom student talk. In most cases, there is very little need for explanations of grammar and structures by the teacher because interaction and communication with peers is believed to help learning.

The process of language learning/acquisition:

As regards language theory, we are concerned with a model of language competence and an account of the basic features of linguistic organization and language use. As regards learning theory, we are concerned with an account of the central processes of learning and an account of the conditions believed to promote successful language learning. Theories of language learning have influenced decisions as to the optimal location of classroom activities on continua like the following:

- Deductive inductive

The advent of the cognitive approach meant a change of direction from teaching the structures of the language (deductive) towards making the learner aware of how the language works (inductive), thus avoiding the direct study of grammatical rules.

- Analytic experiential

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During the last two decades there has been a debate about the convenience of adopting an analytical point of view (focused on the foreign or second language) versus an experiential point of view (focused on communication). From the 1980s communication has become a common strategy in the foreign or second language (L2) classroom.

- Habit formation naturalistic acquisition

The behaviourist theory of learning, so popular in the 1950s and 1960s, was based on repetition and memorization techniques. In contrast, Krashen's Monitor Theory (1981) distinguished between "acquisition" as an unconscious process similar to the process of learning an L1, and "learning" as the conscious knowledge of formal linguistic rules and how these work. The concern for knowing how a speaker acquires his/her linguistic competence had already been raised by Chomsky and his psycholinguistic theories: he rejected the behaviourist view of language learning and focused his studies on the discovery of language learning processes, asserting that:

the process of learning an L2 is similar to that of learning an L1. the process of linguistic acquisition responds to a mechanism of contrasting hypotheses

with real language use; mistakes show that rules are being internalised.

Practical uses of theories

We have already discussed the three main schools of thought related to language learning: • behavioral psychology / structural linguistics • cognitive psychology / generative linguistics • constructivism / sociolinguistics and social interactions

There is no general agreement on how languages are learned. Historically, there have been different trends in the theory development. Each trend has influenced classroom teaching practices. The teaching of vocabulary, grammar, and structures can change from one decade to another as the theories about how language is learned change and develop.

Well-informed teachers are aware of the many theories and their applications in the classroom, so that they can help their students be successful in their language studies.

Knowing the theories can help the teachers to:• better plan lessons by focusing on problem areas in learning • develop methods and techniques that best suit their students' needs • realize that only one type of learning, such as memorization, may not be sufficient

What is a method?

A method (or methodology) is a consistent ordered set of activities and techniques for language teaching that are united by a set of principles or theories. A method consists of three elements: its approach, its design, and its procedure.

Many methods have been used to teach language throughout the years. They have borrowed from and contributed to theoretical trends in linguistics, psychology, education, and other fields. A method may become popular; it may be abandoned, or combined with other methods. Such

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changes in teaching methodology have often been motivated by new research, new theories, and of course, teaching experience.

1- The Grammar-translation method:

It is a centuries-old method. It was very popular in the 19th century. Students are given explanations of grammar points and example sentences that contain the grammar. Students use dictionaries to translate the sentences into the first language. Grammar-translation may still be used for very specific teaching purposes, such as teaching classical Latin or other ancient languages, and to read (not speak) a foreign language.

Main characteristics:

classes are taught in the first language and there is little active use of the target language there are long explanations of grammar students read difficult and/or long texts there is little or no attention to pronunciation students translate disconnected phrases or sentences from one language to another. students gain reading knowledge of a second language, but not communicative

competence

2- The Direct Method

It was believed that a foreign language could be taught without translation or the use of the learner's native tongue (L1) if meaning was conveyed directly through demonstration and action and by encouraging direct, spontaneous and active use of the foreign language in the classroom.

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Main features

oral interaction was promoted and translation exercises and the use of the native language (L1) were disclaimed.

learn the language of everyday life. Students learn grammar inductively, since they learn grammar rules through practice, by

means of using the language at the functional level, and not through memorization. Phonetics as important components in the teaching and learning process of a foreign

language. understand a language by listening to a great deal of it, and they learn to speak it, by

speaking it. Oral communication skills are built up around question-and-answer exchanges between

teachers and students in small, intensive classes. the native language is totally avoided in the foreign language classroom and the foreign

language is the medium of instruction. advocates learning by the direct association of foreign words and phrases with objects and

actions students have to understand meaning without translation and the teacher has to use a series of resources to make meaning clear, using miming,

sketches or explanations in order to clarify the meaning of abstract vocabulary. Reading is not given as much relevance as speaking students are encouraged to infer meaning of unknown words from the context.

3- The Reading Method

The Reading Method focused on the systematic teaching of reading comprehension. The students were trained to read the foreign language with direct apprehension of meaning, but without a conscious effort to translate. It was expected that students would use the same techniques they had used when learning to read in their native language. So, if there were any words the students did not understand, they would infer meaning from the context.

Main features:

Reading could either be intensive or extensive. Intensive reading tasks were continuously supervised by the teacher and provided source material for grammatical study and for the acquisition of vocabulary.

In the Extensive reading activities the students would read on their own texts graded to their language level; these materials contained controlled vocabulary and syntax structures.

Writing was limited to exercises where the students had the opportunity to use some of the vocabulary and essential structures.

The study of grammar was supposed to be directed to the needs of the reader, so there was no need for active reproduction; the most important thing was the quick recognition of certain verb forms, tenses, negations, and so on.

Some importance was also given to correct pronunciation, since there was oral practice related to a text: students had to read the text aloud or to do exercises consisting of questions and answers.

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4- Oral Approach

Their principal classroom activity in the teaching of English structure was the oral practice of structures given in situations designed to provide the greatest amount of practice in English speech to the pupil. By situation they mean the use of concrete objects, pictures, and realia, which together with actions and gestures can be used to demonstrate the meanings of new language items. (In Richards & Rodgers 1986: 38)

Main features become familiar with the new sound system and understand simple spoken language in

listening and speaking activities containing simple phrases. (L2) for instruction and (L1) avoided. However, it was accepted to use L1 when explaining

the meaning of some words or some grammar points of a strictly functional kind. grammar is viewed as the underlying sentence patterns of the spoken language. vocabulary was graded to ensure that an essential general service vocabulary was

covered. Reading and writing were introduced once a sufficient lexical and grammatical basis was

established. Occasional translation was allowed as a checking method on comprehension of precise

details in reading.

5- The audiolingual method

It is based in structural linguistics and behavioral psychology. It relies on repetition and substitution drills. It became popular in the 1950's and is still used today in language programs that focus on speaking skills.

Main characteristics

new material is presented in dialogue form there is imitation and memorization of set phrases structural patterns are taught using repetitive drills there is little or no grammatical explanation there is limited vocabulary learning done in context audio, videos, visual aids, and language labs are used extensively great importance is attached to pronunciation successful responses are immediately reinforced a lot of repetition may bore students there is a strong focus on accuracy not much opportunity for students to develop their communication skills focus mainly on oral production – reading and writing are neglected

Although ALM was very popular for a long time, it didn't teach communicative ability. Students were able to produce dialogues and sentences automatically and fluently, but could not always use them in real-life communication. However, some aspects of ALM can still be used to help students with specific language learning goals such as improving their pronunciation and developing vocabulary such as phrasal verbs and idioms.

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6- The Audio-Visual Method

Developed in the 1950s, was based on structuralist and behaviourist theories, on contrastive analysis and on the emphasis of oral and communicative aspects but it included some novelties in foreign language teaching, for instance, the use of support materials such as films, slides, recordings or music records.

Main Characteristics

it assumed the social and situational nature of language. The target language was introduced in the foreign language classroom by means of

dialogues directly related to real life through images on a screen or combined with recordings.

learning a language was through a simplified social context and for teaching the language as meaningful communication.

Nevertheless, the method has also been criticised for the difficulties implied in transmitting meaning through images and for the strict sequential organisation of the learning process.

7- Cognitive code learning

Cognitive code learning became popular in the 1960s. It is grounded in generative linguistics and cognitive psychology. It focuses on the rule-goverened nature of language and language learning. This method was a reaction to the Audiolingual method's focus on the surface forms, imitation, and repetition. Here are some of its main characteristics and limitations.

Main characteristics

• activities that focus on rule explanation • an emphasis on deductive learning • sequencing material by grammar • drilling of grammar forms and structures • grammar explanation precedes practice activitiesLimitations

• lack of communicative proficiency in learners • excessive explanation of grammatical rules may frustrate student

New Methods

Certain "designer" methods brought a lot of innovation and creativity to language teaching. They were developed to free teachers from the pressures of grammar rule explanations and repetitive drills and imitation. Most of these methods of the 1970s are no longer used on their own, but some aspects of designer methods may be used in today's classrooms to meet specific student needs.

Method Main characteristics Limitations Applications today

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Community Language Learning (CLL)

counseling and guidance in learning

non-threatening environment

translation independence

not enough teacher direction

too much inductive reasoning

impractical

student-centered learning

development of student independence

Suggestopedia rich sensory input from music, dramatizations, and games

relaxed setting, students listen to and use language

impractical not

communicative enough

relaxation and non-threatening environment

The Silent Way learners discover what they need to focus on

teacher silently guides with colored rods and charts

not enough direction

not communicative enough

student-centered learning

development of student independence

Total Physical Response (TPR)

simple actions with commands

students listen, only speaking when ready

loses effectiveness at higher levels

limited language not

communicative enough

vocabulary and grammar-building tool

The Natural Approach

rich in language "silent period" games, role plays,

and discussions focus is on meaning,

not form

managing classes in which students' speech naturally "emerges" at different times

allowing students to use their "silent period" to build confidence

CLT = COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING

Like the previous methods, Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) developed in reaction to other theories and approaches, in this case cognitivist and structuralist theories. CLT sees language as a system for interaction and communication. It draws on the constructivist idea that knowledge is constructed through social interaction with others. Communicative Language Teaching emphasizes communication between students, and students and the teacher. It became popular

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in the late 1980s and is still used widely today. Here are some of its main characteristics and limitations.

Main characteristics

• interactive and meaningful language use • activities include tasks, information sharing, negotiation of meaning, and interaction • use of task-based and authentic materials • syllabus is guided by learner needs • focus is on fluency and clear communication • focus is on grammatical, functional, and social components of the languageLimitations

• accuracy is not always achieved • there is a lot of focus on fluency not accuracy • communication is stressed over reading and writing What makes this method highly popular is its use of real life communication that prepares students to use their new language outside the environment of the classroom.

SUMMARY:

H. Douglas Brown: Both research and classroom experiences have shown that there is no one best and most successful method for teaching English. We do not learn a new language by simply repeating and practicing forms (Audiolingual Method) or by translating sentences from one language to another (Grammar-translation method). Nor do we learn by just communicating (Communicative Language Teaching). We learn by being exposed to the new language, by interacting with others, and by studying forms of the language. Well-informed teachers often use a number of different methods – eclectic methods - to help their students learn a new language more successfully. Eclectic methods are combinations of different aspects of individual methods that teachers use to tailor their classes. Your eclectic method choices will depend on several factors; including the type of course you're teaching and the structure and size of your class.

Students need to: interact with other students and experiment with the new language; be exposed to the new language both inside and outside the classroom; focus on forms of the language and receive sufficient explanation of forms they are learning; and have sufficient time to learn the new language. Some students pick up a new language quickly and are ready to communicate right away. Other students need a silent period before they are comfortable using their new language. Your views and method choices will change based on your teaching experience and the students you have. Bear in mind that different teachers and institutions will have different views on what methods should be used and how. You need to find a balance between your own views, the program's views, and your students' needs.

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