Summary: Approaches

Summary

The Audiolingual Method

The Second World War broke out and the Americans needed to speak different languages . Not only their enemies’ languages but also their allies. In this way a new method arose  known as the Army Method.

The success of the Army Method and the interests that people had in the USA to learn languages enables its use in the education institutions. The method had variations and adaptations  and changed its name to Audiolingual Method. The most important characteristics of the method were  very little use of mother tongue and explanations of grammatical aspects; language is taught with the use of repetition and is presented in forms of dialogues and the learners were supposed to memorize and create error free responses, among others.

Designer Methods

Community Language Method

Some linguists and psychologists recognized the importance of the affective domain  in the nature of all learning.. The learner of the language is seen as a client ant the teacher as his counselor . Whenever the clients needs to say something he uses his mother tongue and the counselor gives him the translation of the word he needs to use in the foreign language. The learner repeats the word or utterance another client responds  and the counselor translates this new utterance and the conversation continues in this way. Language is learnt in the community and the learners asks, listens and repeats until he is able to create his own utterances. In this way after months or years  he becomes an independent learner of the foreign language.

Suggestopedia

This new method acknowledges the capacity of the human brain to learn languages when the right conditions to learn are given. Baroque music was important when using this method to learn the new language in a relaxed way and the music enables the learner to be relaxed enough to act as a child if the situations required him to do so.

Although Suggestopedia  received some criticisms, it is important to mention that the method recognized and empowered the importance and benefits of being relaxed while learning a foreign language.

The Silent Way

Gattegno, the founder of the Silent Way believed that the learner needed to be responsible, independent and autonomous in his learning process. On the other hand, learners should be able to learn in a collaborative way and helping others. The teacher who was a stimulator of the process remained in silence most of the times encouraging his students to find the solutions. Rods were used to teach vocabulary  and syntax.

Total Physical Response

Asher, the developer of Total Physical Response, noted that children  before speaking their mother tongue  did a lot of listening and that they  were also  able to perform certain tasks  following some given instructions. The method  proved to be highly efficient at the children’s primary stages of learning and lost its effectiveness when children became advanced learners of the language.

Natural Approach

To develop basic communication skills  was the main objective of this method developed by Tracy Terrell who was a colleague of Stephen Krashen .

Languages are learned in a natural, relaxed  atmosphere and they emerge naturally .

In the natural approach learners were supposed to move from a preproduction stage to an early production stage  finishing  with an extended production stage. Fluency is encouraged in all stages so errors do not interfere  in the production of natural language.