Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction to the third edition
- I Major trends in twentieth-century language teaching
- II Current approaches and methods
- III Alternative twentieth-century approaches and methods
- IV The teaching and learning environment
- Appendix: Comparison of approaches and methods
- Author index
- Subject index
2 - The nature of approaches and methods in language teaching
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 April 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction to the third edition
- I Major trends in twentieth-century language teaching
- II Current approaches and methods
- III Alternative twentieth-century approaches and methods
- IV The teaching and learning environment
- Appendix: Comparison of approaches and methods
- Author index
- Subject index
Summary
Introduction
We saw in the preceding chapter that the changing rationale for foreign language study and the classroom techniques and procedures used to teach languages have reflected responses to a variety of historical issues and circumstances. Tradition was for many years the guid-ing principle. The Grammar-Translation Method reflected a time-honored and scholarly view of language and language study. At times, the practical realities of the classroom determined both goals and procedures, as with the determination of reading as the goal in US schools and colleges in the late 1920s. At other times, theories derived from linguistics, psychology, or a mixture of both were used to develop a philosophical and practical basis for language teaching, as with the various reformist proposals of the nineteenth century. As the study of teaching methods and procedures in language teaching assumed a more central role within applied linguistics in the latter part of the twentieth century, various attempts have been made to conceptualize the nature of methods and to explore more sys-tematically the relationship between theory and practice within a method. In this chapter we will clarify the relationship between approach and method and present a model for the description, analysis, and comparison of methods.
Approach and method
When linguists and language specialists sought to improve the quality of language teaching in the late nineteenth century, they often did so by referring to general principles and theories concerning how languages are learned, how knowledge of lan-guage is represented and organized in memory, or how language itself is structured. The early applied linguists, such as Henry Sweet (1845–1912), Otto Jespersen (1860–1943), and Harold Palmer (1877–1949) (see Chapters 1 and 3), elaborated principles and theoretically accountable approaches to the design of language teaching programs, courses, and materials, though many of the specific practical details were left to be worked out by others. They sought a rational answer to questions such as those regard-ing principles for the selection and sequencing of vocabulary and grammar, though none of these applied linguists saw in any existing method the ideal embodiment of their ideas.
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- Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching , pp. 20 - 43Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014
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