1. Natural Approach by Tracy D. Terrell
Terrell′s Natural Approach (NA) is an attempt to build a more generalizable teaching method on the foundation of Total Physical Response (TPR) and communicative competency (Terrell, 1986). Terrell adopted Asher′s TPR techniques because he found them effective, particularly in the early stages of language learning. NA describes three stages of language acquisition:
comprehension (preproduction),
early speech (one-word responses)
and speech emergence (sentence production).
Thus, NA, like TPR recognizes the need for a "silent period" of delayed oral practice, where students absorb language without the stress of audio-lingual-type listen and repeat drills. The proposed merit of a silent period is supported by other researchers (Mangubhai, 1991; Atherton, 1993; Gary, 1975; Winitz & Reeds, 1973).
Terrell′s approach is a comprehensive curriculum of communicative games, such as role plays or solving puzzles, which inspire students to communicate in the new language. Speech is motivated by the task and the environment, as opposed to the listen-repeat drills of audio-lingual teaching. Communicative activities in NA are designed to help students develop concrete associations between experience-based meaning and linguistic forms (Terrell, 1986). Terrell explicitly intended that NA should reduce the psychological tension and anxiety experienced by beginning language learners. He stressed the need to make language learning enjoyable in order to diminish the stress.
Approaches which emphasize communicative competency such as TPR and the NA have attracted significant criticism for their dismissal of explicit grammar instruction. Higgs and Clifford′s (1982) article warning about the danger of "fossilized language" among students in competency programs is still widely cited. Higgs and Clifford claim that programs which overly stress communication do so at the cost of linguistic proficiency. The result is that many students emerge with large vocabularies but poor grammar execution. They assert that after about four semesters of instruction these grammatical errors fossilize and actually become incurable, no matter how much subsequent instruction the student receives. Higgs and Clifford refer to this as the "2/2+ syndrome", because the students will never surpass level 2 competency. It is important to remember, however, that Higgs and Clifford present absolutely no data to substantiate their claims.
In summary, communicative competency approaches, such as TPR and the NA, seem to be effective alternatives to the grammar-translation method. TPR and NA derive both their strengths and limitations from a common reliance on physical activity and demonstration. While the physical rehearsal does seem to help students both understand and recall language, the severe restrictions on what can be demonstrated and experienced within a typical language classroom have greatly limited the proliferation of these methods, particularly TPR. The restrictions of what can be demonstrated, experienced and responded to in the confines of the typical language classroom seem to limit the applicability of communicative methods such as TPR and NA.
Reference
Rose, Howard (n.d): Alternative Methods of Language Instruction. In: Review of the Literature on Language Learning (http://www.imprintit.com/Publications/HRPubs/hrthesis/ch2.html)
2. The Direct Approach
This approach was developed initially as a reaction to the grammar-translation approach in an attempt to integrate more use of the target language in instruction.
Lessons begin with a dialogue using a modern conversational style in the target language. Material is first presented orally with actions or pictures. The mother tongue is NEVER, NEVER used. There is no translation. The preferred type of exercise is a series of questions in the target language based on the dialogue or an anecdotal narrative. Questions are answered in the target language. Grammar is taught inductively -- rules are generalized from the practice and experience with the target language. Verbs are used first and systematically conjugated only much later after some oral mastery of the target language. Advanced students read literature for comprehension and pleasure. Literary texts are not analyzed grammatically. The culture associated with the target language is also taught inductively. Culture is considered an important aspect of learning the language.
2.1 The Audiolingual Method
This method is based on the principles of behaviour psychology. It adapted many of the principles and procedures of the Direct Method, in part as a reaction to the lack of speaking skills of the Reading Approach.
New material is presented in the form of a dialogue. Based on the principle that language learning is habit formation, the method fosters dependence on mimicry, memorization of set phrases and over-learning. Structures are sequenced and taught one at a time. Structural patterns are taught using repetitive drills. Little or no grammatical explanations are provided; grammar is taught inductively. Skills are sequenced: Listening, speaking, reading and writing are developed in order. Vocabulary is strictly limited and learned in context. Teaching points are determined by contrastive analysis between L1 and L2. There is abundant use of language laboratories, tapes and visual aids. There is an extended pre-reading period at the beginning of the course. Great importance is given to precise native-like pronunciation. Use of the mother tongue by the teacher is permitted, but discouraged among and by the students. Successful responses are reinforced; great care is taken to prevent learner errors. There is a tendency to focus on manipulation of the target language and to disregard content and meaning.
Hints for Using Audio-lingual Drills in L2 Teaching
1. The teacher must be careful to insure that all of the utterances which students will make are actually within the practiced pattern. For example, the use of the AUX verb have should not suddenly switch to have as a main verb.
2. Drills should be conducted as rapidly as possibly so as to insure automaticity and to establish a system.
3. Ignore all but gross errors of pronunciation when drilling for grammar practice.
4. Use of shortcuts to keep the pace o drills at a maximum. Use hand motions, signal cards, notes, etc. to cue response. You are a choir director.
5. Use normal English stress, intonation, and juncture patterns conscientiously.
6. Drill material should always be meaningful. If the content words are not known, teach their meanings.
7. Intersperse short periods of drill (about 10 minutes) with very brief alternative activities to avoid fatigue and boredom.
8. Introduce the drill in this way:
a. Focus (by writing on the board, for example)
b. Exemplify (by speaking model sentences)
c. Explain (if a simple grammatical explanation is needed)
d. Drill
9. Don′t stand in one place; move about the room standing next to as many different students as possible to spot check their production. Thus you will know who to give more practice to during individual drilling.
10. Use the "backward buildup" technique for long and/or difficult patterns.
-- tomorrow
-- in the cafeteria tomorrow
-- will be eating in the cafeteria tomorrow
-- Those boys will be eating in the cafeteria tomorrow.
11. Arrange to present drills in the order of increasing complexity of student response. The question is: How much internal organization or decision making must the student do in order to make a response in this drill. Thus: imitation first, single-slot substitution next, then free response last.
2.2 The Berlitz Method by Maximilian D. Berlitz
The organization now known as Berlitz International, Inc. was founded in 1878 by Maximilian D. Berlitz in Providence, Rhode Island. Descended from a long line of teachers and mathematicians, Maximilian Berlitz grew up in the Black Forest region of Germany. He emigrated to the United States in 1872 and arrived prepared to teach Greek, Latin, and six other European languages according to the strict traditionalist grammar-translation approach. After building a successful career as a private teacher, Berlitz joined the Warner Polytechnic College as a professor of French and German language instruction. The college, however, was less imposing than its name, and Berlitz found himself at once owner, dean, principal, and only faculty member.
Needing an assistant to teach French, Berlitz hired a young Frenchman who appeared to be the most promising candidate, possibly because of the impeccable French in his letter of application. Invited to Providence, Nicholas Joly arrived to find his new employer ill and feverish from overwork, a condition that was not improved when Berlitz learned his new assistant spoke no English. Casting about desperately for a way of using Joly, Berlitz told him to try pointing at objects and naming them and to act out verbs as best he could. He thereupon took to his bed, emerging anxiously six weeks later prepared to face the wrath of his neglected students.
Instead, Berlitz found the students engaging in lively question and answer exchanges with their teacher, in elegantly accented French. The characteristic solemnity of the formal classroom had vanished. More important, the students had progressed further than any ever had under six weeks of his own tutelage.
Berlitz quickly concluded that his emergency measure held the seed of an innovative teaching technique. By replacing rote learning with a discovery process that kept students active and interested, it solved many of the problems that had plagued language instruction in the past.
After experimenting with the new technique and finding it consistently effective, Berlitz developed a system of language teaching which today is still the basis for the world-famous Berlitz courses.
The principles he laid down were deceptively simple. Only the target language would be spoken in class, starting with the first greeting by the teacher. Emphasis would be on the spoken word, with students learning to read and write only what they had already learned to say and understand. There would be no formal grammar instruction; instead, students would absorb a grammatical system naturally, by using it. Above all, to develop fluency, students would have to learn to think in the new language, not translate - to associate new words with objects and ideas, rather than with the distractingly familiar words of their mother tongue. Teachers would have to constantly encourage students to speak the language being taught, employing a barrage of questions to be answered and a quickly expanding vocabulary. And, most importantly, each Berlitz teacher would have to have a native command of the language being taught.
Reference
Ronald Hilton: http://www.stanford.edu/group/wais/language_berlitz.html
3. Community Language Learning by Charles A. Curran
This methodology is not based on the usual methods by which languages are taught. Rather the approach is patterned upon counseling techniques and adapted to the peculiar anxiety and threat as well as the personal and language problems a person encounters in the learning of foreign languages. Consequently, the learner is not thought of as a student but as a client. The native instructors of the language are not considered teachers but, rather are trained in counseling skills adapted to their roles as language counselors.
The language-counseling relationship begins with the client′s linguistic confusion and conflict. The aim of the language counselor′s skill is first to communicate an empathy for the client′s threatened inadequate state and to aid him linguistically. Then slowly the teacher-counselor strives to enable him to arrive at his own increasingly independent language adequacy. This process is furthered by the language counselor′s ability to establish a warm, understanding, and accepting relationship, thus becoming an "other-language self" for the client. The process involves five stages of adaptation:
STAGE 1
The client is completely dependent on the language counselor.
1. First, he expresses only to the counselor and in English what he wishes to say to the group. Each group member overhears this English exchange but no other members of the group are involved in the interaction.
2. The counselor then reflects these ideas back to the client in the foreign language in a warm, accepting tone, in simple language in phrases of five or six words.
3. The client turns to the group and presents his ideas in the foreign language. He has the counselor′s aid if he mispronounces or hesitates on a word or phrase. This is the client′s maximum security stage.
STAGE 2
1. Same as above.
2. The client turns and begins to speak the foreign language directly to the group.
3. The counselor aids only as the client hesitates or turns for help. These small independent steps are signs of positive confidence and hope.
STAGE 3
1. The client speaks directly to the group in the foreign language. This presumes that the group has now acquired the ability to understand his simple phrases.
2. Same as 3 above. This presumes the client′s greater confidence, independence, and proportionate insight into the relationship of phrases, grammar, and ideas. Translation is given only when a group member desires it.
STAGE 4
1. The client is now speaking freely and complexly in the foreign language. Presumes group′s understanding.
2. The counselor directly intervenes in grammatical error, mispronunciation, or where aid in complex expression is needed. The client is sufficiently secure to take correction.
STAGE 5
1. Same as stage 4.
2. The counselor intervenes not only to offer correction but to add idioms and more elegant constructions.
3. At this stage the client can become counselor to the group in stages 1, 2, and 3.
Reference
Curran, Charles A. (1976): Counseling-Learning in Second Languages. Apple River, Illinois: Apple River Press.
3.1 Functional-notional Approach by Mary Finocchiaro
This method of language teaching is categorized along with others under the rubric of a communicative approach. The method stresses a means of organizing a language syllabus. The emphasis is on breaking down the global concept of language into units of analysis in terms of communicative situations in which they are used.
Notions are meaning elements that may be expressed through nouns, pronouns, verbs, prepositions, conjunctions, adjectives or adverbs. The use of particular notions depends on three major factors: a. the functions b. the elements in the situation, and c. the topic being discussed.
A situation may affect variations of language such as the use of dialects, the formality or informality of the language and the mode of expression. Situation includes the following elements:
A. The persons taking part in the speech act
B. The place where the conversation occurs
C. The time the speech act is taking place
D. The topic or activity that is being discussed
Exponents are the language utterances or statements that stem from the function, the situation and the topic.
Code is the shared language of a community of speakers.
Code-switching is a change or switch in code during the speech act, which many theorists believe is purposeful behavior to convey bonding, language prestige or other elements of interpersonal relations between the speakers.
Functional Categories of Language
Mary Finocchiaro (1983, p. 65-66) has placed the functional categories under five headings as noted below: personal, interpersonal, directive, referential, and imaginative.
Personal = Clarifying or arranging one′s ideas; expressing one′s thoughts or feelings: love, joy, pleasure, happiness, surprise, likes, satisfaction, dislikes, disappointment, distress, pain, anger, anguish, fear, anxiety, sorrow, frustration, annoyance at missed opportunities, moral, intellectual and social concerns; and the everyday feelings of hunger, thirst, fatigue, sleepiness, cold, or warmth
Interpersonal = Enabling us to establish and maintain desirable social and working relationships: Enabling us to establish and maintain desirable social and working relationships:
Greetings and leave takings; introducing people to others; identifying oneself to others; expressing joy at another′s success; expressing concern for other people′s welfare; extending and accepting invitations; refusing invitations politely or making alternative arrangements; making appointments for meetings; breaking appointments politely and arranging another mutually convenient time; apologizing; excusing oneself and accepting excuses for not meeting commitments; indicating agreement or disagreement; interrupting another speaker politely; changing an embarrassing subject; receiving visitors and paying visits to others; offering food or drinks and accepting or declining politely; sharing wishes, hopes, desires, problems; making promises and committing oneself to some action; complimenting someone; making excuses; expressing and acknowledging gratitude
Directive = Attempting to influence the actions of others; accepting or refusing direction:
Making suggestions in which the speaker is included; making requests; making suggestions; refusing to accept a suggestion or a request but offering an alternative; persuading someone to change his point of view; requesting and granting permission; asking for help and responding to a plea for help; forbidding someone to do something; issuing a command: giving and responding to instructions; warning someone; discouraging someone from pursuing a course of action; establishing guidelines and deadlines for the completion of actions; asking for directions or instructions
Referential = talking or reporting about things, actions, events, or people in the environment in the past or in the future; talking about language (what is termed the metalinguistic function: = talking or reporting about things, actions, events, or people in the environment in the past or in the future; talking about language (what is termed the metalinguistic function:
Identifying items or people in the classroom, the school the home, the community; asking for a description of someone or something; defining something or a language item or asking for a definition; paraphrasing, summarizing, or translating (L1 to L2 or vice versa); explaining or asking for explanations of how something works; comparing or contrasting things; discussing possibilities, probabilities, or capabilities of doing something; requesting or reporting facts about events or actions; evaluating the results of an action or event
Imaginative = Discussions involving elements of creativity and artistic expression
Discussing a poem, a story, a piece of music, a play, a painting, a film, a TV program, etc.; expanding ideas suggested by other or by a piece of literature or reading material; creating rhymes, poetry, stories or plays; recombining familiar dialogs or passages creatively; suggesting original beginnings or endings to dialogs or stories; solving problems or mysteries
Reference
Finocchiaro, M. / Brumfit, C. (1983): The Functional-Notional Approach. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
4. The Silent Way by Caleb Gattegno
If the Silent Way is a method for teaching foreign languages, it is a most unusual one, for its inventor, Dr. Caleb Gattegno of Alexandria, Egypt, repeatedly insisted that "the Silent Way is not a method at all."
Gattegno, in fact, dedicated his life to a much broader field which he called The Subordination of Teaching to Learning. He held that good teaching must always conform to the demands of learning and he spent most of his life investigating what those demands might be. Gattegno dismissed traditional teaching as being too concerned with filling memories rather than educating students′ awareness, which, he declared, is the only thing in us that is educable. Over the years he applied his discoveries about awareness and learning to ordinary school subjects such as mathematics, reading and language teaching, in every case transforming a traditional discipline into something the world had never seen before.
In the Silent Way, Gattegno developed a number of highly adaptable "tools" that can be used to make students aware, for example, of the intricacies of a language′s grammar or the pitfalls of its pronunciation. Typically, these tools permit such clear insights into complicated subjects that no explanation by the teacher is necessary. In an effort to show teachers that repetition and explanation were of far less importance in language teaching than educating awareness, Gattegno would teach Arabic, Hindi, English or Spanish "the Silent Way," without ever uttering a single word. Whether he was teaching languages, algebra or adult literacy, Gattegno′s classes were so dramatically successful that he was frequently referred to as "The World′s Greatest Teacher."
Procedures
This method begins by using a set of colored rods and verbal commands in order to achieve the following:
To avoid the use of the vernacular. To create simple linguistic situations that remain under the complete control of the teacher To pass on to the learners the responsibility for the utterances of the descriptions of the objects shown or the actions performed. To let the teacher concentrate on what the students say and how they are saying it, drawing their attention to the differences in pronunciation and the flow of words. To generate a serious game-like situation in which the rules are implicitly agreed upon by giving meaning to the gestures of the teacher and his mime. To permit almost from the start a switch from the lone voice of the teacher using the foreign language to a number of voices using it. This introduces components of pitch, timbre and intensity that will constantly reduce the impact of one voice and hence reduce imitation and encourage personal production of one′s own brand of the sounds.
To provide the support of perception and action to the intellectual guess of what the noises mean, thus bring in the arsenal of the usual criteria of experience already developed and automatic in one′s use of the mother tongue. To provide a duration of spontaneous speech upon which the teacher and the students can work to obtain a similarity of melody to the one heard, thus providing melodic integrative schemata from the start.
Materials: The complete set of materials utilized as the language learning progresses include:
A set of colored wooden rods A set of wall charts containing words of a "functional" vocabulary and some additional ones; a pointer for use with the charts in Visual Dictation A color coded phonic chart(s) Tapes or discs, as required; films Drawings and pictures, and a set of accompanying worksheets Transparencies, three texts, a Book of Stories, worksheets
Reference
Caleb Gattegno (1972): Teaching Foreign Languages in Schools: The Silent Way. New York City: Educational Solutions.
5. Total Physical Response by James J. Asher
James J. Asher defines the Total Physical Response (TPR) method as one that combines information and skills through the use of the kinesthetic sensory system. This combination of skills allows the student to assimilate information and skills at a rapid rate. As a result, this success leads to a high degree of motivation. The basic tenets are:
Understanding the spoken language before developing the skills of speaking. Imperatives are the main structures to transfer or communicate information. The student is not forced to speak, but is allowed an individual readiness period and allowed to spontaneously begin to speak when the student feels comfortable and confident in understanding and producing the utterances.
TECHNIQUE
Step I: The teacher says the commands as he himself performs the action.
Step 2: The teacher says the command as both the teacher and the students then perform the action.
Step 3: The teacher says the command but only students perform the action
Step 4: The teacher tells one student at a time to do commands
Step 5: The roles of teacher and student are reversed. Students give commands to teacher and to other students.
Step 6: The teacher and student allow for command expansion or produces new sentences.
Reference
James J. Asher (1979): Learning Another Language Through Actions. San Jose, California: AccuPrint.
6. Suggestopedia by Georgi Lozanov
based on the science of impact approach invented by the Bulgarian psychiatrist G. L. Originally this method has been used as an ordinary teaching method at Bulgarian primary schools. Meanwhile it has been implemented in many other countries as a method for teaching foreign languages to adults. This method is based on the presumption that our brain - particularly the right half - the hemisphere - disposes of a considerably unused potential that can be made available through the so-called power of suggestion. Thus the acquiring of foreign languages can be improved by using the reserves of the unconscious mind. Inhibitions or barriers can be abolished through desuggestion prompting a positive attitude towards language learning, called resuggestion. In the first lesson, the so-called concert, the learners are confronted with long passages in the foreign language. After that the text will be translated into the learners′ mother tongue - that happens in a kind of theatrical performance while there is classical music played in the background. The aim is to produce a completely relaxed atmosphere - and by establishing this you are to learn a foreign language. After the lesson you should feel a kind of enthusiastic as if you had attended a real concert. By using several patterns in the foreign language the learners should get the impression of being able to acquire the language in an easy and natural way. Later during another lesson the learners use the language material for interacting in a communicative way. Grammar mistakes won′t be looked at or even mentioned. By using this method described above - that is called immersion - the learners should be able to learn more than one thinks.
Following Lozanov′s own definition suggestopedics/desuggestopedics has nothing in common with methodical improvements within the framework of the traditionally known potential of brain and mind. It is organized on the basis of conditions and laws for systemic activation and utilization of the reserve (potential, unused) capacity of brain and mind discovered by Lozanov. This means 3- to 5-fold better results for the time being, without tiredness and home learning. The integral learning process is like this in a happy game.
Following Lozanov he contributes this effect described above to the psychophysiological laws of mind/brain functions in any communication and particularly in the learning communication as follows:
_ integral unity and simultaneousness of conscious and paraconscious processes;
_ integral unity and simultaneousnes of central and peripheral perceptions;
_ integral unity and simultaneousness of a various-degree activation not only of the left and right hemispheres but also of the entire brain system;
_ integral unity and simultaneousness of globality and partiality in the functions of mind/brain;
_ integral unity and simultaneousness of affectivity and logic, deliberation and intuition;
_ integral unity and simultaneousness of psychosomatic reactions;
_ preparedness of mind to work on its reserve level provided that adequate conditions have been set up.
6.1 Accelerated Learning
Accelerated Learning has been variously described as Suggestopedia, Superlearning, Whole Brain Learning, Integrative Learning, Quantum Learning and Holistic Learning. The father of Accelerated Learning was undoubtedly Georgi Lozanov. He introduced a technique called Suggestopedia into his classroom in the Seventies. Suggestopedia is basically a technique of introducing positive suggestion into and eliminating negative suggestion from the learning process. Dynamic descriptions and key points of the material to be learned are fixed into the subconscious using music during "concert" sessions and later activated to provide the basis for the detailed learning. Lozanov discovered that the brain has an almost infinite potential for learning if the subconscious mind receives information in the right way.
His work was treated with great skepticism at first and, in order to quantify the benefits of his method of teaching, he founded a language school and proved that Suggestopedia could deliver a 300% improvement in the speed and effectiveness of learning. He visited the United States and developed a course to teach his techniques to other teachers. Even then it was a number of years until his techniques gained widespread acceptance and other teachers such as Peter Kline, Eric Jensen, Sheila Ostrander and Bobbi DePorter started to develop his ideas further. Howard Gardner also contributed his theory of Multiple Intelligences at this time and Win Wenger published his work on increasing intelligence.
These days the term Accelerated Learning covers a whole spectrum of techniques from Lozanov′s original ideas of Suggestopedia and using music to the use of drama and visualisation, teaching multiple intelligence′s, creating the co-operative classroom and enhancing self-esteem. Above all, Accelerated Learning is FUN learning. It is about bringing fun back into the classroom.
In this context so-called sensory images are considered as "...the fundamental language of the brain", i.e. everything that you know is represented metaphorically by your unconscious. Every phrase and every word has absolutely no meaning of its own. It only has the meaning that you attach to it. And on a deeper level, that means that everything you know is somehow represented in images, sounds, and feelings.
The importance of accessing and utilising Multi-Sensory Imaging (and encoding) is further backed up by studies into sensory modality. Much of the work done in this area has been carried out within the field of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP). Following its theory each person has a dominant sensory system. Thus you may prefer to communicate or learn in either:
A Visual Way
(i.e. you are orientated to visualise)
An Auditory Way
(you normally like to hear presentations or talk out problems)
A Kinaesthetic Way
(kinaesthetic means, "to do with movement, active, action orientated′)".
Many people think that a revolution must occur in the way we teach and the way we learn. Accelerated Learning is a proven method of increasing the absorption of knowledge - the key to the success of any educational system. Most of the major developments in the field have occurred in the United States where the techniques of Accelerated Learning are widely and most successfully used.
