Scott Thornburys 30 Language Teaching Methods
Scott Thornburys 30 Language Teaching Methods
Scott Thornburys 30 Language Teaching Methods
30 Language
Teaching
Methods
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Scott Thornbury’s
30 Language
Teaching
Methods
Scott Thornbury
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Contents
Thanks and Acknowledgements
Why I wrote this book
A: Natural methods
1 Total Immersion
2 The Natural Method/Approach
3 The Direct Method
4 The Oral Method
5 The Reading Method
6 The Audiolingual Method
7 Total Physical Response
B: Linguistic methods
8 Explication de Texte
9 Text Memorization
10 Grammar-Translation
11 The Lexical Approach
12 Text-based Instruction
13 The Comparative Method
C: Communicative methods
14 The Situational Approach
15 Communicative Language Teaching
16 Task-based Language Teaching
17 Competency-based Teaching
18 Whole Language Learning
19 Content-based Instruction
20 Dogme ELT/ Teaching unplugged
D: Visionaries
21 Community Language Learning
22 Suggestopedia
23 The Silent Way
24 Crazy English & the Rassias Method
E: Self-study methods
25 Orientalists
26 Prendergast’s ‘Mastery System’
27 Brand name Methods: Assimil, Michel Thomas, Pimsleur
28 Programmed Instruction: Duolingo
29 Online Polyglots
F: Beyond methods
30 Principled Eclecticism
Index
Thanks
I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Philip Kerr, whose rigorous and insightful feedback kept me focused
throughout the writing process, and to Alison Sharpe, equally vigilant, during the editing. And thanks to
Karen Momber and Jo Timerick at Cambridge for their constant support and encouragement.
Scott Thornbury
Acknowledgements
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notice, we will be happy to include the appropriate acknowledgements on reprinting and in the next
update to the digital edition, as applicable.
Text
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Case Study of a Successful Adult SLA in a Naturalistic Environment’ by Georgette Ioup, Elizabeth
Boustagui, Manal El Tigi, and Martha Moselle in Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Vol. 16
(01), p. 77. Copyright © 1994 Cambridge University Press; National Geographic Society for the text on
p. 4 from ‘Don Francisco’s Six Steps to Better English’ in How I Learned English: 55 Accomplished
Latinos Recall Lessons in Language and Life by Tom Miller. Copyright © 2007 National Geographic
Society; Graham Greene for the text on p. 10 from The Confidential Agent by Graham Greene,
published by Penguin Books Ltd. Copyright © 1939, 1971 Graham Greene. Rosetta Stone Ltd. for the
text on p. 11 from ‘Learn Languages: Rosetta Stone’, https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?
id=air.com.rosettastone.mobile.CoursePlayer&hl=en. Copyright © Rosetta Stone Ltd. Reproduced with
kind permission; The University of Chicago Press for the text on p. 13 from Teaching Foreign-
Language Skills by Wilga M. Rivers. Copyright © 1968, 1981 The University of Chicago Press. John
Wiley & Sons Inc. for the text on p. 19 from ‘The Reading Approach and The New Method System’ by
Michael West, The Modern Language Journal, Vol 22. (03), pp. 220–222. Copyright © 1937 John
Wiley & Sons Inc. Reproduced with permission of John Wiley & Sons Inc. granted via the Copyright
Copyright Clearance Center; The University of Michigan Press for the text on p. 23 and p. 24 from
English Pattern Practices: Establishing the Patterns as Habits by Robert Lado and Charles C.
Fries. Copyright © 1943, 1970 The University of Michigan Press; Robert M. Ramsey for the text on p.
24 from English Through Patterns by Robert M. Ramsey, published by Editorial Teide S.A. Copyright
© 1969 Robert M. Ramsey; Taylor and Francis for the text on p. 36 from Foundations of Foreign
Language Teaching: Nineteenth-Century Innovators, Volume 1 by A.P.R. Howatt and Richard C.
Smith. Copyright © 2000 Routledge, a Taylor and Francis imprint; Helbling Languages for the text on p.
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Kress. Copyright © 1985 Deakin University Press; T. F. Mitchell for the text on p. 48 from The
Language of Buying and Selling in Cyrenaica: A Situational Statement reproduced in Principles of
Firthian Linguistics by T. F. Mitchell. Copyright © 1975 Longman; The University of Michigan Press
for the text on p. 51 from Linguistics across Cultures: Applied Linguistics for Language Teachers
by Robert Lado. Copyright © 1957, 1971 The University of Michigan Press; Oxford University Press
for the text on pp. 57–58 from English in Situations by Robert O’Neill. Copyright © 1970 Oxford
University Press. Reproduced with permission; Oxford University Press for the text on p. 58 from
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and Ingrid Freebairn for the text on p. 61 from Building Strategies: Teacher’s Book by Brian Abbs
and Ingrid Freebairn, published by Longman. Copyright © 1984 Brian Abbs and Ingrid Freebairn.
Reproduced with kind permission; Cambridge University Press for the text on p. 62 from Touchstone
1 Teacher’s Edition by Michael McCarthy, Jeanne McCarten and Helen Sandiford Copyright © 2005
Cambridge University Press. Reproduced with kind permission; Council of Europe for the text on p. 69
from Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching,
Assessment. Copyright © Council of Europe. Reproduced with kind permission; Marie Wilson Nelson
for the text on p. 74 from At the Point of Need: Teaching Basic and ESL Writers by Marie Wilson
Nelson, published by Heinemann, a division of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Copyright © 1991 Marie
Wilson Nelson. Reproduced with kind permission; Delta Publishing for the text on p. 82 from Teaching
Unplugged: Dogme in English Language Teaching by Luke Meddings and Scott Thornbury.
Copyright © 2009 Delta Publishing. Reproduced with kind permission; University of Alberta for the text
on p. 85 from Language, Consciousness and Personal Growth: An Autobiographic Study of a
Second Language Learner by Zhou Wu. Copyright © 1993 University of Alberta. Reproduced with
kind permission; Natural News for the text on p. 90 from ‘The Top Ten Technologies: #10 Superlearning
Systems’ by Mike Adams, Natural News website, 14.07.2014. Copyright © 2014 Natural News; Da
Capo Press for the text on p. 95 from How Children Fail by John Holt. Copyright © 1982 Da Capo
Press, a Hachette Book Group Company; Oxford University Press for the text on p. 96 from The
Multilingual Subject by Claire J. Kramsch. Copyright © 2009 Oxford University Press; Trustees of
Dartmouth College for the text on p. 99 from ‘The Method’ http://rassias.dartmouth.edu/method/.
Copyright © 2017 Trustees of Dartmouth College. Reproduced with kind permission; Condé Nast for
the text on p. 99 from ‘Crazy English: The National Scramble to Learn a New Language Before the
Olympics’ by Evans Osnos, The New Yorker website, 28.04.2008. Copyright © 2008 Condé Nast; The
Mezzofanti Guild for the text on p. 119 from ‘You Don’t Need to Study Grammar to Learn a Foreign
Language’ by Donovan Nagel. Copyright © The Mezzofanti Guild; Lindsay Does Languages by ‘Why
Social Media is the Best Free Language Learning Tool’, Lindsay Does Languages website, 15.11.2016.
Copyright © 2016 Lindsay Does Languages; HarperCollins for the text on 119 from Fluent in 3
Months: Tips and Techniques to Help You Learn Any Language by Benny Lewis. Copyright © 2014
HarperCollins; Alexander Arguelles for the text on p. 120 from ‘Foreign Language Expertise’,
http://www.foreignlanguageexpertise.com/about.html. Copyright © 2011 Alexander Arguelles; Speaking
Fluently for the text on p. 120 from ‘The Secret of Learning Languages’ by Richard Simcott, Speaking
Fluently website, 11.02.2016. Copyright © 2016 Speaking Fluently.
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Why I wrote this book
‘Another book about methods? I thought methods were dead. I thought we were now in a post-method
era.’
It’s true that the concept of ‘method’ is generally shunned in the literature on language teaching
nowadays. Even as long ago as 1969, L.G. Kelly, in his survey of language teaching over the last 25
centuries, contended that ‘methods are of little interest’. In similar fashion, H. H. Stern (1983)
announced ‘a break with the method concept’, due in part to the failure of researchers to find any
significant advantage in one method over another. In 1990, N.S. Prabhu wrote an influential paper called
‘There is no best method – why?’ and in the following year Dick Allwright published another called
‘The Death of Method’.
Subsequently, B. Kumaravadivelu (1994) identified what he called the ‘postmethod condition’, a result of
‘the widespread dissatisfaction with the conventional concept of method’. At around the same time,
Adrian Holliday (1994) was arguing the case for ‘appropriate methodology’ which must, first and
foremost, be sensitive to the local culture – something which imported methods are probably not.
Nevertheless, in the popular imagination at least, faith in the idea of method persists. Websites
advertising new and improved methods for language learning abound. Here are some promotional
slogans taken at random:
Learning a foreign language is easy with the XXX Method.The highly acclaimed YYY Method lets
you pick up a new language naturally. Over a period of more than 15 years, ZZZ has developed and
perfected a unique method of teaching languages.
What’s more, training courses regularly include a component on the history of language teaching
methods. Teachers in general are intrigued by the variety of methods that have been proposed, and are
often keen to experiment with them. Indeed, as D. Bell (2007) discovered, when he canvassed a
number of teachers, ‘methods, however the term is defined, are not dead. Teachers seem to be aware
of both the usefulness of methods and the need to go beyond them’.
One attraction of methods is that they offer coherent templates for generating classroom routines. The
method helps structure what – to both teachers and learners – is a potentially haphazard experience. It
provides answers to questions like: Where do I start? What materials and activities should I use? In
what order? To what end? For novice teachers, in particular, methods offer a lifeline. For more
experienced teachers, they offer a toolkit. As Richards and Rodgers (2014) put it, ‘methods can be
studied not as prescriptions for how to teach but as a source of well-used practices, which teachers can
adapt or implement based on their own needs’.
Of course, a method is of not much use if we don’t believe in it – if, in Prabhu’s (1990) terms, it
contravenes a teacher’s ‘sense of plausibility’. Methods are underpinned by beliefs about learning and
language and, even if these are not always made explicit, we need to feel in harmony with them.
But if the method does fit, if it does resonate with our beliefs, then it has every chance of working – not
because it is intrinsically sound (remember ‘there is no best method’), but because it confers on a
teacher a degree of confidence in his or her own efficacy. Jane Spiro (2013) puts it very well: ‘The
critical factor in success is the commitment and belief of the teacher in the methods he or she is using,
and the continuing reflection of the teacher as to whether these methods are making a positive
difference’.
This book, then, aims to unpack – not just the history of methods – but the beliefs that underpin them
and the benefits that still might possibly accrue from experimenting with them.
Not all the methods included in this book have method as part of their label: some are called
approaches, and one is simply a way. But they are all consistent with David Nunan’s (2003) definition:
‘A language teaching method is a single set of procedures which teachers are to follow in the
classroom. Methods are usually based on a set of beliefs about the nature of language and learning’.
Researchers are quick to point out, of course, that no two teachers will implement a method in exactly
the same way – hence the idea of a method being ‘a single set of procedures’ is necessarily an idealized
one. For this reason, I am ignoring the distinction that is often made between method and approach,
because, in terms of what happens in actual classrooms, it is of little consequence.
Methodology, on the other hand, is a more general term to characterize the classroom procedures and
activities that teachers select – such as error correction, group work, or video viewing – and the way
that these are managed, irrespective of the specific method that they subscribe to.
Most training courses and methodology texts include a section on ‘the history of methods’ and this
typically takes the form of a ‘modernist’ narrative, i.e. one of uninterrupted progress from ‘darkness into
light’. In actual fact, a closer reading of the history suggests that this account is over-simplified, and that
methods not only co-exist, often for long periods of time, but are continuously re-invented out of the
same basic ingredients. This book, then, aims to counteract the traditional narrative by grouping methods
according to what they have in common, even if separated in time, and to dispel the view that methods
‘die’ and no longer have anything to offer us.
The choice of methods to include has been motivated by a number of factors: primarily, the strength of
their influence over time (e.g. the Direct Method, Communicative Language Teaching), but, conversely,
their relative failure to gain wider acceptance, despite their intrinsic merits (e.g. the Comparative
Method, text memorization). Rehabilitating these ‘lost methods’ because of what they still might have to
offer us has been another reason I wrote this book. Also included are those ways in which people learn
languages that are not classroom-based, thereby stretching Nunan’s definition (above) to extend to self-
study and even immersion. At the same time, this book does not hope to be exhaustive, neither in terms
of the methods that it covers nor in terms of the detail with which each one is described. Space simply
does not permit.
Despite these limitations, it is hoped that you will not only have a broader understanding of the enormous
variety of ways that languages are – and have been – learned, but also be in a better position to
evaluate some current practices – a necessary step in our continued professional development.
Abbreviations
To save space, and repetition, here is a list of common abbreviations used in this book:
Bell, D. (2007) Do teachers think that methods are dead? ELT Journal, 61: 135–143.
Holliday, A. (1994) Appropriate Methodology and Social Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Kelly, L.G. (1969) 25 Centuries of Language Teaching: 500 BC – 1969. Rowley, MA: Newbury
House.
Kumaravadivelu, B. (1994) The Postmethod condition: (E)merging strategies for second/foreign
language teaching. TESOL Quarterly, 28: 27–48.
Nunan, D. (ed.) (2003) Practical English Language Teaching. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Prabhu, N.S. (1990) There is no best method – why? TESOL Quarterly, 24:161–176.
Richards, J. C. and Rodgers, T.S. (2014) Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching (3 rd
edition). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Spiro, J. (2013) Changing Methodologies in TESOL. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Stern, H.H. (1983) Fundamental Concepts of Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
A: Natural methods
1 Total Immersion
2 The Natural Method/Approach
3 The Direct Method
4 The Oral Method
5 The Reading Method
6 The Audiolingual Method
7 Total Physical Response
1 Total Immersion
The background
It may seem odd to begin a book on methods with a ‘zero-method’. After all,
total immersion pre-dates the concept of ‘method’ by several hundreds of
millennia. Ever since people first moved – or were forced to move – away
from their local speech community, they have come into contact with other
languages. And, given time and motivation, they have learned them – often to
impressive levels of ability. Hence, total immersion supplies the benchmark
against which the success of all other methods can be measured.
đắm chìm toàn bộ cung cấp các điểm chuẩn để đo lường mức độ thành công của tất cả các phương pháp khác
Take ‘Julie’, for instance. Julie was a British woman who married an
Egyptian and settled in Cairo aged 21. She never attended classes in
Egyptian Arabic, and could not read or write in it, but within just two and a
half years she was able to ‘pass’ as a native speaker of the language. How
was she able to achieve this? Probably because she was totally immersed in
Arabic. As the researchers who studied her (Ioup et al 1994) describe it:
Nine days after arrival, her husband was unexpectedly called to military
service and she was left with non-speaking-English relatives for 45 days.
Since there was no one to assist her in English, she relied on context and
gesture to interpret utterances and express meaning. Thus, at this initial
stage her language acquisition situation resembled the environment for
child L1 acquisition.
By the time her husband returned she was able to communicate with her in-
laws using simple sentences and idiomatic expressions and, after six months,
she was fairly fluent. The immersion process continued when she took a job
in an Egyptian school, and, after three years in Egypt, she no longer used
English with her husband or children: Arabic had, effectively, become the
home language (although her children did grow up bilingual).
Julie’s case is only exceptional in that, despite being a late starter, she
achieved a degree of proficiency in her second language that is relatively
unusual in adults. But the situation of being suddenly immersed in a language
and having to pick it up ‘naturalistically’ is one that is familiar to most
immigrants, even if they don’t always ‘pass’ as native speakers. And, while
it may be arguable whether immersion is a ‘method’ as such, there is a
widespread view – supported by stories such as Julie’s – that, if you have to
learn a second language, then the best thing you can do is hop on a plane and
go to the country where the language is spoken. Many ‘off the shelf’ methods, có sẵn, tự
nhiên
such as the Natural Method (see chapter 2), in fact, attempt to simulate the
immersion experience.
Total immersion on its own seems to be less effective than total immersion
plus. That is to say, as well as round-the-clock exposure, there needs to be
some ‘push’ for greater precision, and there needs to be some focused
attention on form. (It’s probably the lack of both that accounts for the limited
language development in the case of both Alberto and Wes.)
For example, to help her cope with the initial experience of total immersion,
Julie kept a notebook in which she jotted down any words or expressions she
could make sense of. She started to include grammatical information, such as
verb endings, too. But, at this initial stage, of most use were formulaic
‘chunks’, which gave her a toe-hold into real communication. She also took
(grateful) note of the corrections and re-phrasings that her relatives offered
her when communication broke down.
The system really worked for me. After 90 days I could navigate pretty
well, and after a year I felt I had enough ability to join in conversations
and understand almost everything being said.
Does it work?
For Julie and Marcos, immersion was clearly successful. For Wes less so,
and for Alberto hardly at all. What made the difference? As mentioned, the
use of deliberate strategies to filter and record the input, to pay attention to
corrections, and to plan subsequent exchanges, all seemed to play an
important part in the success of Julie and Marcos. Just as important may have
been their willingness to take risks, which, in turn, may have been driven by
sheer necessity: in Julie’s case in particular, she had no choice but to learn
Arabic.
Of course, Julie and Marcos were successful speakers of their target
languages. But we don’t know a lot about their reading and writing skills.
Whereas total immersion can lead to very high levels of proficiency in oracy
(speaking and listening), literacy skills typically lag behind. This is because,
outside of an academic context, learners simply don’t get the exposure to
written text, or the practice producing it, that literacy requires.
Ioup, G., Boustagoui, E., Tigi, M., & Moselle, M. (1994) Reexamining the critical period hypothesis: a
case of a successful adult SLA in a naturalistic environment. Studies in SLA, 16: 73–98.
Kreutzberger, M. (2007) Don Francisco’s Six Steps to Better English. In Miller, T. (ed.) How I learned
English, Washington, DC: National Geographic.
Schmidt, R. (1983) Interaction, acculturation and the acquisition of communicative competence. In
Wolfson, N., & Judd, E. (eds.) Sociolinguistics and Second Language Acquisition. Rowley, Mass.:
Newbury House.
2 The Natural Method/Approach
The background
It’s fair to say that the history of language teaching has swung back and forth
between just two poles. On the one hand, there have been methods that take
the position that additional languages have to be learned – through the
application of some kind of mental effort. This is because additional
languages are not picked up on our mother’s knee, as it were. At the other
extreme are the methods that are grounded in the belief that, given the right
conditions, additional languages can be acquired in the same way we
acquired our mother tongue. Because they attempt to replicate at least some
of the conditions of uninstructed acquisition, these latter methods are loosely
grouped together as ‘natural methods’. Over time, one or two have explicitly
labelled themselves as being the Natural Method, or the Natural Approach.
I raise quickly my finger before you, and show it to you. Do you not
understand, whatever your language may be, that that means there is the
finger? And if I point my extended forefinger towards the table or the
door, do you not understand that I say, There is the table; there is the
door? And if, on showing you the finger, I say in my French language
Voilà le doigt, do you not understand that the French pronounce these
words to indicate that thing?
Simply by extending this idea almost indefinitely, Sauveur was able to weave
conversations out of the ‘here-and-now’, with the learners responding
minimally at first, but participating more fully as they became familiar with
the material. The ultimate aim was that the learners would be able to interact
with one another with minimal reliance on the teacher. Although the
conversations were available in print form, Sauveur discouraged teachers
from using the book in class: ‘Give the pupils the book to read at home as
preparation for your teaching, but forbid them to open it in the class; their ear
alone must be occupied there’.
Does it work?
Apart from the attention that Sauveur’s method attracted at the time, its
effectiveness was not really put to the test: we only have his word for it. He
reports, for example, a class whose conversation, after four and a half
months of five two-hour lessons a week, was ‘so animated and so
interesting’ that, listening to them, he thought he was back in France.
Certainly, compared to the prevailing grammar-translation methodology of
the time, his Natural Method must have been a breath of fresh air. So, too, in
its own way, was Terrell’s Natural Approach, contrasting as it did with the
forced production and rigorous correction associated with audiolingualism.
However, in its outright rejection of learning-type classroom procedures,
such as error correction, the Natural Approach might have let the pendulum
swing too far in the direction of acquisition. The classroom, after all, is not a
‘natural’ context for language learning: apart from anything else, the amount
of real exposure and practice that individual learners get is inevitably
limited. At best, so-called natural approaches might serve as a relatively
stress-free introduction to a language, after which more conventional
methods might take over.
The background
In The Confidential Agent by Graham Greene (1939), the agent of the title,
known simply as D., has to make contact with another spy, Mr K., who works
in a language school in London. Mr K. teaches Entrenationo – an invented
language like Esperanto. The director of the school, Dr Bellows, welcomes
D. before taking him to his private lesson with Mr K. On the way, Bellows
warns D.: ‘We teach by the direct method. We trust – to your honour – not to
speak anything but Entrenationo’. This is confirmed by Mr K. when the
lesson starts: while loudly teaching words from a wall-chart and numbers
using wooden blocks, he whispers: ‘We are forbidden by the rules to talk
anything but Entrenationo. I am fined one shilling if I am caught’. This, of
course, makes the exchange of secrets with K. somewhat difficult, especially
since Dr Bellows periodically enters the room to check that the rules are
being followed.
As exaggerated as this scene is, it does capture the flavour of the Direct
Method in its heyday, especially as practised by large language teaching
franchises, such as the Berlitz chain. Maximilian Berlitz is, of course, the
name that is indelibly associated with the Direct Method: he opened his first
school in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1878, and, at the time that Greene
was writing The Confidential Agent, there were Berlitz schools in most
major cities in Europe and the Americas.
Berlitz was the first to mass-market the Direct Method, but he was by no
means the first to argue that second language learning should be taught
‘directly’, i.e. unmediated by translation. The Reform Movement of the late
nineteenth century provided the intellectual climate out of which a number of
methods, including Berlitz’s, emerged. All had in common a focus on
teaching the spoken language, and on teaching it entirely in the L2. Early
reformers – such as Lambert Sauveur (see chapter 2 The Natural
Method/Approach) – had looked to first language acquisition for their
inspiration. In the same fashion, Berlitz claimed that ‘the Berlitz Method is
the systematized application of the psychological laws which enable a child
to learn its mother tongue’ (1911/1917). These psychological laws took the
form of what was called ‘associationism’ – the theory that language learning
is essentially the forming and strengthening of associations between language
items and their referents in the real world. As Henry Sweet (1899/1964) put
it, ‘the whole process of learning a language is one of forming associations’.
Translation into or out of another language, on the other hand, might cause
‘cross-associations’, which interfere with the more direct links on which
accurate and fluent production depends.
The view that learning a second language should replicate first language
learning, and that it results from forming tight associations that are
‘uncorrupted’ by translation, is a core tenet of a number of mass-marketed
online courses, such as Rosetta Stone:
Learn a new language the way you learned your first. Fun, intuitive,
immersive lessons teach you to speak and think in your new language.
Develop fundamental language skills naturally with no translation or
memorization required!
Other features that characterize the Direct Method are the use of visual aids
and real objects that substitute the need to use translation. The wall-chart
described in The Confidential Agent is typical of its time: ‘A family sat
eating in front of what looked like a Swiss chalet. The father had a gun, and
one lady an umbrella; there were mountains, forests, waterfalls; the table was
crammed with an odd mixture of food – apples, and uncooked cabbage, a
chicken, pears, oranges and raw potatoes, a joint of meat. A child played
with a hoop, and a baby sat up in a pram drinking out of a bottle’.
Does it work?
There are few better accounts of experiencing the Direct Method first-hand
than that of the linguist Roger Brown’s attempt to learn Japanese at a Berlitz
school in the 1970s (Brown 1973). It starts: ‘My skilled and charming
teacher began with the words: “How do you do? That’s the last English we
will use.” And it was’. As a researcher of first language acquisition, Brown
is particularly interested in the claim that the Direct Method replicates the
experience of children acquiring their mother tongue – but he is sceptical:
Working only in the new language can be a great strain on both teacher
and student. Sometimes I think it really does lead to experiences akin to
those of the preliterate child but often, surely not. […] The insistence
on avoiding the first language sometimes seems to lead to a great waste
of time and to problems children [learning their first language], for some
reason, seem not to have. One long morning my teacher tried to put across
three verbs, kimasu, yukimasu, and kaerimasu, with the aid of paper and
pencil drawings of pathways and persons and loci, and by much moving
of herself and of me – uncomprehendingly passive as a patient in a
hospital. But I could not grasp the concepts. I feel Mr Berlitz would have
suffered no great dishonour if she had said to me that the concepts in
question sometimes go by the names come, go, and return.
Despite Brown’s misgivings, there is a lot to be said for maximising the use
– by both teacher and learners – of the target language, and for discouraging
an over-reliance on translation. Sustaining a monolingual lesson with
elementary learners requires considerable inventiveness, and, if done well,
can be immensely motivating. But withholding the use of the learners’ L1
simply through a dogged faith in Berlitz’s fundamental principles may be
counterproductive. For this reason, some scholars (e.g. Wilga Rivers 1981)
have argued for a ‘modified’ form of the Direct Method in which:
Berlitz, M. (1911/1917) Method for Teaching Modern Languages. First Book (revised American
edition). New York: Berlitz.
Brown, R. (1973) A First Language: The Early Stages. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Jespersen, O. (1904) How to Teach a Foreign Language. London: George Allen & Unwin.
The background
I’m touching the table – the floor – the chair. I’m going to touch the
ceiling. I can’t. I can’t touch the ceiling; it’s too high. I can touch the
blackboard easily because it isn’t too high … etc.
Students are not expected to respond in any way to this ‘shower’ of language:
‘Their only efforts should be devoted to making out the general sense of what
is being said’. ‘Exercises in conscious oral assimilation,’ on the other hand,
involve listening activities that require the learners to focus their attention,
and to respond non-verbally. This might include what Palmer called
‘imperative drill’ (what is now better known as Total Physical Response,
see chapter 7), in which learners physically respond to commands from their
teacher. But in all reading and listening work, the learner must be clear on the
meaning of the content. For Palmer, there were four ways of
presenting meaning: by direct association with the thing itself (as in ‘This is
a book’); by translation (and, unlike other, stricter direct method
practitioners, Palmer considered translation ‘perfectly harmless and in many
cases positively beneficial’ (1921b); by definition; and through
contextualization. For Palmer, exemplification was worth any number of
rules: ‘A well-chosen example or set of examples may so completely
embody the rule that the rule itself will be superfluous’ (1921b).
Etc.
(1921a)
To ensure that learners are familiar with the vocabulary in these exchanges,
unfamiliar items are either translated on the spot, or learners memorize word
lists in advance of the lesson.
Finally, and all being well, the more advanced student might be allowed to
take part in what Palmer called ‘normal conversation’ – where the students
talks and the teacher gently prompts with ‘a quiet and leisurely suggestion
from time to time’ (1921a) while resisting the urge to correct every error as
it occurs.
Does it work?
There are so many features of the Oral Method that have subsequently been
validated by research into SLA that is hard not to think that, in the right
hands, it must have been effective. Among these features are: the value of
implicit learning; the importance of ‘comprehensible input’; the need to
associate form and meaning; the role of automaticity; the part that formulaic
language plays in fluency, and the usefulness of ‘scaffolding’ the learner’s
output. The single most negative aspect of the approach is, perhaps, Palmer’s
obsession with accuracy: ‘The principle of accuracy requires that the
student shall have no opportunities for making mistakes until he has
arrived at this stage in which accurate work is reasonably to be expected’
(1921b). It is now generally agreed that errors are not only an inevitable part
of language learning, but that, with appropriate feedback, they provide
powerful learning opportunities.
The background
What’s the easiest, least stressful way of getting a foothold into a foreign
language – especially if time is at a premium? Arguably, it might be through
reading, especially reading of texts that are not only intrinsically interesting,
but are graded to the learner’s level of competence.
The teacher introduces the new words of the section [of the text]; gives
the meaning of each and gives some drill so as to fix it in the mind.
The teacher makes sure that the pupils understand the questions [that
accompany the text].
The pupils read the questions; then they read the book and search for
the answers. (This reading is done in a low whisper. Silent reading is
not used until pupils can read faster than they speak.)
When everyone has finished reading, the pupils write the answers.
The teacher checks to see that the answers are right.
Some reading aloud may follow.
The texts used in the Reading Method take the form of graded readers, i.e.
simplified texts, graded according to measures of word frequency, the easiest
texts being those using only the most frequent words in the language. Words
likely to be unfamiliar are pre-taught or defined in footnotes, but only in the
target language: there is no use of translation, on the assumption (shared by
the Direct Method, see chapter 3) that use of the students’ own language
would interfere with or inhibit fluid reading. Students are also encouraged to
infer the meaning of unfamiliar words from the context. The learning of
vocabulary from word lists, again organized according to frequency, is
another key ingredient of the method. But there is little or no overt teaching of
grammar, apart from some basic structures and inflections without which
comprehension would be at risk. Writing tasks are also limited to those that
provide practice of the vocabulary and grammar that have been previously
studied.
Speaking is limited to answering questions about the texts and reading aloud:
proponents of the Reading Method recognized that reading fluency was
facilitated when learners could relate the written word to the spoken one.
Hence, in the first lessons learners are introduced to the sound system of the
target language. Reading aloud enables them to ‘hear’ the written word in
their ‘mind’s ear’, as preparation for later silent reading.
Does it work?
Coleman, A. (1929/1930) The Teaching of Modern Foreign Languages in the United States. New
York: Macmillan.
Nakanishi, T. (2015) A meta-analysis of extensive reading research. TESOL Quarterly, 49/1: 6–37.
West, M. (1937) The “Reading Approach” and “The New Method System”. Modern Language
Journal, 22/3: 220–222.
West, M. (1953) A General Service List of English Words. London: Longman.
6 The Audiolingual Method
The background
In this fashion, the founding principle of the method that would be known as
the audiolingual method was (loudly) proclaimed. Robert Lado (author of the
above) was born in Florida of Spanish parents who moved back to Spain
before Lado had had a chance to acquire English. On his return to the US,
aged 21, he started learning English for the first time – thus giving him a
privileged insight into second language learning, and also into the differences
between Spanish and English. Out of this experience, Lado developed an
interest in contrastive linguistics, which he studied at the University of
Michigan’s English Language Institute (ELI) under its director, the structural
linguist Charles Fries.
At the time, a furious effort was being made to develop intensive language
learning programs as part of the war effort. The Reading Method (see
chapter 5) had resulted in a generation ill-equipped to converse fluently in
other languages. Respected linguists, like Leonard Bloomfield, were
recruited to advise on the problem. Fries and Lado took up the challenge,
each bringing their unique expertise to the enterprise: Fries his interest in the
structures – or patterns – of languages, and Lado his belief that it was the
differences between languages that were the cause of learning difficulty.
Out of their collective efforts evolved the Audiolingual Method (so called
because an earlier name, the Aural-oral Method, was difficult to
pronounce!). Adapted to the emerging technologies of the time, it provided
the methodology for programmed learning. It was widespread in the 1950s,
particularly in the US, peaked in the mid-1960s, and then virtually
disappeared without trace – only to return in recent years in the guise of
adaptive learning apps (see chapter 28 Programmed Instruction:
Duolingo).
In his best known book, The Structure of English (1952), Fries argued, ‘if
adults of foreign speech are to learn English they must, among other things,
learn to respond to and to give the signals by which a language conveys its
structural meanings. The most efficient materials for such learning are those
that are based upon an accurate descriptive analysis of the structural
patterns’. Accordingly, lists of sentence patterns were devised, such as these
(from the contents of the book that Lado helped produce in 1943):
Lesson IV
The two basic principles on which the teaching of these patterns was based
were habit formation (through repetition) and avoidance of translation
(through fear of L1 interference). Both were core tenets of the Direct
Method (see chapter 3) that were simply adopted and refined, and both were
justified on the grounds that they characterize first language acquisition
(which is why we are labelling audiolingualism a natural approach).
Because imitation – i.e. mimicry – and memorization were prototypical
practices, the method was sometimes called the Mim-mem Method.
Does it work?
At the theoretical level, the audiolingual method suffered many reverses. For
a start, contrastive analysis (e.g. between Spanish and English) failed to
predict many of the errors that learners typically make, suggesting that errors
were not necessarily ‘bad habits’. And then there was Noam Chomsky’s
celebrated attack on the fundamentals of behaviourism, which seemed to
confirm what a number of methodologists had suspected all along: that
imitation alone cannot account for linguistic creativity.
The background
It took another four decades before this technique was developed into a
method in its own right, to be called Total Physical Response (TPR). It’s
perhaps significant that one of the early papers published on it by the
method’s architect, James Asher, was called ‘Children’s first language as a
model for second language learning’ (Asher 1972). In that article, Asher
argues that ‘not only is listening critical for the development of speaking, but
children acquire listening skill in a particular way. For instance, there is an
intimate relationship between language and the child’s body’. It is this
intimate relationship that TPR seeks to exploit for second language learning.
Etc.
After a number of lessons like this, students are given lists of the basic
instructions they have been exposed to, and asked to study these as
homework. They are then given the chance to speak, by first preparing their
own commands using new combinations of the linguistic elements (pick up,
give, point to, draw; box, car, fish, etc.), and then instructing their
classmates to perform them.
Does it work?
Asher, J. (1972) Children’s first language as a model for second language learning. Modern Language
Journal, 56: 133–139.
Palmer, H. (1921) The Oral Method of Teaching Languages. Cambridge: Heffer.
B: Linguistic methods
8 Explication de Texte
9 Text Memorization
10 Grammar-Translation
11 The Lexical Approach
12 Text-based Instruction
13 The Comparative Method
8 Explication de Texte
The background
In fact, explication de texte goes back at least 2,000 years – to the classical
tradition of praelectio (literally ‘reading aloud’) – where pupils in Ancient
Rome were required to parse the grammar, scan the meter, and comment on
the style of each line of the classical poem or play that they happened to be
studying. The tradition persisted into the Renaissance and beyond, and was
known as ‘construing’. It merged with a tradition of Biblical scholarship (or
exegesis).
It was not until the end of the eighteenth century, though, that explication de
texte began to be applied to living languages. Combined with translation, it
morphed into what became known as Grammar-Translation (see chapter
10). As a vehicle for the study and appreciation of literature, as well as for
the teaching of first language literacy, it found a natural fit with the
philological tradition of the French enlightenment, with its taste for formal
stylistic analysis. For the teaching of foreign languages, and as a reaction to
such Western practices as the direct method, in Soviet Russia it was re-
branded as the ‘conscious-comparative method’, and, as such, was then
exported to China.
An example from a textbook of the time shows how explication de texte was
adapted to the teaching of English in the nineteenth century. The first book of
T. Robertson’s New Course (1851/1872) is ingeniously based on one single
text, a folk tale translated into ungraded English. Each sentence of the story
supplies the content of each of the course’s 20 units. For example, the first
sentence, and hence the first text that the learner meets, goes like this:
We are told that the Sultan Mahmoud, by his perpetual wars abroad, and
his tyranny at home, had filled the dominions of his forefathers with ruin
and desolation, and had unpeopled the Persian empire.
Then follow twenty closely written pages in Spanish (because this is the
version of the course designed for Spanish speakers), providing a key to the
pronunciation, a translation, exercises for translation, and then a section
titled ‘Analysis, Theory and Synthesis’ (women and children are advised to
skip this section) in which every word is subject to detailed ‘explication’ for
what it reveals about English phonology, morphology or syntax. Unpeopled,
for example, exemplifies the way that the prefix un- negates the meaning of
some verbs, while the suffix –ed forms the past participle. The same
procedure is adopted for each of the subsequent 19 segments of the text.
The teacher’s notes for the course recommend that the text be written on the
board and that the book be kept closed during the lesson. The teacher
orchestrates a succession of tasks, including reading aloud, translation,
question and answer, dictation, and the re-combining of elements of the text
to create new phrases or sentences. By the end of the lesson, students are
expected to have learned the text by heart.
Does it work?
Robertson, T. (1851/1872) Nuevo curso de idioma inglés escrito por los franceses (8 th edition).
New York: Appleton & Co.
9 Text Memorization
The background
Earlier still, Jean Joseph Jacotot (1770–1840) had made his learners
memorize complete novels (see chapter 8 Explication de Texte) which
would then become a linguistic resource into which they could search and
retrieve – in much the same way as we might now search an online corpus.
As Howatt and Smith (2000) observe, ‘the texts themselves are largely
irrelevant: they are not like prayers to be repeated verbatim but are important
for what they can yield if they are taken to pieces and used in appropriate
circumstances’.
The idea of using memorized texts as a resource persists to this day in,
among other places, China. As in the memorizing of sacred texts, it is felt that
only when a text has been appropriated in this way is it optimally available
as an object for study and a tool for learning.
Does it work?
It’s unlikely that learners in cultures where the tradition does not already
exist will take kindly to the suggestion that they should embark on text
memorization on a scale as demanding as practised in China. Even in China,
there is some resistance to the idea, and one of the learners in the Ding study
admitted to disliking it at first. Nevertheless, many learners in a wide range
of contexts pick up the words of English language songs, or the language
uttered in video games, or catchphrases from TV shows, whether
intentionally or not. Often, these memorized segments will emerge
unexpectedly, but appropriately and accurately. Handled more systematically,
the memorization of short texts, including dialogues, may offer a foothold into
the language, and provide the ‘feel’ that other, more grammar-focused
approaches, do not.
Ding, Y. (2007) Text memorization and imitation: The practices of successful Chinese learners of
English. System. 35: 271–280.
Gan, Z., Humphreys, G., & Hamps-Lyon, L. (2004) Understanding successful and unsuccessful EFL
students in Chinese universities. Modern Language Journal, 88: 229–244.
Howatt, A.P.R., & Smith, R.C. (2000) ‘General introduction’ to Howatt and Smith (eds.) Foundations
of Foreign Language Teaching: 19 th Century Innovators. London: Routledge.
Palmer, H. (1921) The Oral Method of Teaching Languages. Vonkers on Hudson, New York: World
Book Company.
10 Grammar-Translation
The background
All this will be familiar to many language learners, especially those who
have studied modern languages at school. This is hardly surprising, perhaps,
since the approach was originally devised to meet the needs of school
children in the early nineteenth century, an age-group for whom the self-study,
text-based methods of classics scholars were simply not appropriate. At one
time called ‘the Prussian Method’, because it was developed and refined in
what is now Germany, the twin focus on grammar and translation was a
legacy of the study of classical (i.e. dead) languages. It was part of a long
tradition that included the detailed analysis – or ‘construing’ – of literary
texts (see chapter 8). But the preference for individual sentences, rather than
whole texts, was an innovation. It was felt that the grammar focus could be
more easily controlled and delimited this way. That the sentences were
invented, and often bizarre, was unfortunate – and would eventually serve to
discredit the method (dubbed Grammar-Translation by its detractors). Here,
for examples, are sentences for translation from Ollendorf’s Nuevo Método
(1876):
What mattress have you? – I have the sailor’s. – Have you his good beer
or his fine meat? – I have neither this nor that. – Have you the corn of the
Frenchman or that of the Englishman? – I have neither the Frenchman’s
nor the Englishman’s, but that of my granary. Etc.
My French course was more or less typical: the obligatory elements of the
Grammar-Translation lesson include a statement of the rule in the learner’s
L1; a translated list of vocabulary items, chosen so as to make a good fit with
the grammar point; followed by translation exercises in and out of the target
language. Eventually, the student might translate whole texts – especially for
assessment purposes. Optional elements might include dialogues or texts that
contextualize the syllabus items, as well as prompts for a ‘conversation’
using the same items. But the focus is very much on the written language, on
accuracy and on the memorization of rules.
How teachers actually negotiate this material is very much up to them, since
there is seldom any guidance provided as to how a Grammar-Translation
lesson is realized in practice. In that sense, Grammar-Translation is a method
without a methodology. The default approach is to work with the class in
‘lockstep’ (i.e. as one group), with individual learners taking turns to read
lines of text aloud, and to translate sentences when called upon.
Does it work?
The background
But it was a teacher, writer and publisher who was the first to attempt to take
this mixed bag of constructs – word groups, collocations, patterns, formulaic
language, syntactical constructions and so on – and to base a teaching
approach upon it. In 1993, Michael Lewis published The Lexical Approach.
It built on the success of his earlier book, The English Verb (1986), and
reflected an ongoing interest in pedagogical grammar – with the significant
difference being Lewis’s reappraisal of the relative importance of sentence
grammar, on the one hand, and lexis (including multi-word ‘chunks’), on the
other. Whereas structuralist approaches had foregrounded grammatical
patterns into which a restricted vocabulary was ‘slotted’, Lewis argued that
language was primarily lexical, and that the ‘kit of rules’ that constitutes a
grammar serves merely to link and fine-tune the meanings encoded in words.
In short, as he famously claims in his list of ‘key principles’ at the start of his
book: ‘Language consists of grammaticalised lexis, not lexicalised grammar’
(1993).
Typical activities involve learners scanning texts for possible chunks and
checking these against information in a dictionary or in an online corpus.
Does it work?
Because the lexical approach has seldom if ever been realized as a stand-
alone method but, instead, has been integrated into existing methods, such as
Communicative Language Teaching, or Text-based Instruction, it is difficult
to assess its true effectiveness. Certainly, there has been a renewed interest
in vocabulary teaching, including the teaching of collocation and other multi-
word items, in recent years, and this is reflected in most current teaching
materials. Moreover, research suggests that a critical mass of vocabulary is a
prerequisite for both receptive and productive fluency, and that – as Palmer
long ago argued – the more chunks, the greater the fluency. Retrieving chunks
as opposed to individual words both saves processing time and confers a
degree of idiomaticity (i.e. the capacity to sound natural) on the user. Hence,
any approach that promotes the acquisition of formulaic language can only
benefit the learner.
Unhappily, though, there are few if any innovative procedures that the lexical
approach has offered us. Scanning texts for lexical chunks is like scanning the
night sky for constellations: unless you already know what you are looking
for, it is a fairly hit-and-miss business.
The background
Functional approaches, however, have long recognized the fact that, when we
look at language from the point of view of the meanings it expresses, the
sentence is no longer pre-eminent. A communicative event, such as a
shopping encounter, or a job interview, or an exchange of SMS messages, is
constructed of much more than a succession of independent sentences. And
some communications, such as a compliment (‘Nice shirt!’) or a road sign
(NO PARKING) consist of single phrases. From a functional point of view,
language is realized – not as sentences – but as text, whether spoken or
written, and whether a single word or a 600-page novel.
An early study of how language in its contexts of use occurs as connected text
was conducted in the markets of Tunisia: the researcher (Mitchell 1957)
observed that buying and selling exchanges followed clearly defined stages,
even if different configurations of context factors meant that there was
considerable variation within these stages. The dynamic nature of the
emerging conversation (the text), and the way it is shaped by its context, led
Mitchell to conclude (1975):
Does it work?
Because text-based teaching moves from the whole to the parts, rather than
vice versa, it is notionally aligned to what is known as Whole Language
Learning (see chapter 18), a major tenet of which is that language is best
learned in authentic, meaningful situations, and by engaging with whole texts
– whether spoken or written. Any assessment of its effectiveness needs to
show, as a minimum, that working in this direction is as viable as working
from the parts to the whole, i.e. learning grammar and vocabulary and then
combining these to construct texts. Even so, a syllabus that is firmly grounded
in the learners’ social and cultural needs, and which facilitates their
integration into the target ‘discourse community’, is arguably better than one
that is simply an arbitrary list of grammatical structures.
On the downside, the bias towards written rather than spoken language can
make this approach somewhat dry and academic, and needs to be balanced
with work on spoken genres. And, like any linguistic approach, there is the
ever-present danger that lessons will become simply a ‘chalk-and-talk’
demonstration by the teacher – not helped by the load of linguistic
terminology that this approach has inherited from systemic functional
linguistics.
What’s in it for us?
For learners whose discourse needs are predictable – e.g. those doing
English for Specific Purposes (ESP) courses – a text-based approach makes
a lot of sense, even if it forms just one thread in a more grammar-based
syllabus. Moreover, the fact that a text-based approach has been used with
success with young learners in their first language suggests that it may have a
wider application than a purely academic one. At any age, learning to write
texts that conform to certain generic features – such as reporting an excursion
or a sports event – may be better preparation for second language literacy
than simply ‘free-expression’.
The background
In the early days of contrastive analysis, those linguists working within the
behaviourist tradition were interested in the structural differences between
one language and another, predicting that these differences would cause
problems for learners. As Robert Lado (1971) memorably expressed it:
We assume that the student who comes in contact with a foreign language
will find some features of it quite easy and others extremely difficult.
Those elements that are similar to his native language will be simple for
him, and those elements that are different will be difficult.
In more recent years, the use of the learners’ home language as a cognitive
scaffold for the development of the target language is known as a
‘translanguaging pedagogy’ (Garcia & Kleifgen 2010), and has been
encouraged in multilingual classrooms. Activities include identifying
cognates in the two languages (i.e. words like taxi that are the same or
similar), writing bilingual ‘identity texts’ (i.e. autobiographical texts that mix
the writer’s different languages), and pairing learners from the same language
background so that those who are more fluent can help those who are less so.
While such practices are not necessarily typical of the Comparative Method
as first conceived, they are certainly compatible with an approach that not
only tolerates, but actively encourages, classroom bilingualism.
Does it work?
Fried, V. (1968) Comparative linguistic analysis in language teaching. In Jalling, H. (ed.) Modern
Language Teaching, London: Oxford University Press.
García, O., & Kleifgen, J. (2010) Educating Emergent Bilinguals. New York: Teachers’ College
Press.
Lado, R. (1971) Linguistics Across Cultures: Applied Linguistics for Language Teachers. Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Laufer, B., & Girsai, N. (2008). Form-focused instruction in second language vocabulary learning: a
case for contrastive analysis and translation. Applied Linguistics 29: 694–716.
Scheffler, P. (2012) Theories pass. Learners and teachers remain. Applied Linguistics, 33, 5: 603–607.
Ushakova, T. N. (1994) Inner speech and second language acquisition: an experimental-theoretical
approach. In Lantolf, J.P., & Appel, G. (eds), Vygotskian Approaches to Second Language
Research, Hillsdale, NJ: Ablex.
C: Communicative methods
The background
While linguists were wrestling with these questions, teachers were already
implementing what came to be known as Situational Language Teaching.
Lionel Billows’ Techniques of Language Teaching (1961) outlines the
principles that underpin this approach. In order to ‘situate’ language learning,
Billows proposes a system of concentric circles, radiating out from the
learner’s immediate context (e.g. the classroom) to the world as directly
experienced, the world as imagined, and the world as indirectly experienced
through texts. Billows argues that we should always seek to engage the outer
circles by way of the inner ones.
The basic learning principle at work is that of induction, i.e. from the
examples of a grammatical structure in a text or dialogue (typically presented
orally), the learners work out the rules of its form and use. Here, for
example, is a typical situation (from English in Situations, O’Neill 1970):
Charles Gripp was a bank robber once. The police caught him in 1968
and he is in prison now. Before 1968 Charles drove a large car, robbed
banks, had a lot of money and had arguments with his wife all the time.
He did a lot of things then but he does not do any of those things now and
he never sees his wife. HE USED TO BE A BANK ROBBER. HE USED
TO ROB BANKS, DRIVE A BIG CAR, AND HAVE ARGUMENTS
WITH HIS WIFE ALL THE TIME, BUT HE DOESN’T DO ANY OF
THOSE THINGS NOW.
The pattern may then be displayed in the form of a substitution table, and is
consolidated through successive stages of controlled practice, beginning with
imitation drills.
Class must have chance to gain insight into when to use pattern.
Situations represent typical instances. From these, they can generalise
about use of pattern. Teacher may also decide to give formal rule.
However, this is not enough in itself. […] Formal rules can be helpful but
cannot be substituted for student’s own insight.
Does it work?
On the other hand, the somewhat rigid lesson format of the situational
approach, with its emphasis on the accurate reproduction of pre-selected
patterns, along with the artificially contrived contexts for presentation, is not
a huge advance on the Audiolingual Method (see chapter 6), with which it
shares many beliefs about learning and language.
In the light of recent developments in educational theory, which argue that all
learning is ‘situated’ (Lave & Wenger 1991), it may be time to revisit the
Situational Approach as originally conceived, i.e. where the situation is not
simply a context (or pretext) for presenting grammar, but is the central
organizing principle in course design. This is particularly relevant now that
digital technologies have effectively dissolved the borders between the
classroom and ‘real life’ situations. For example, mobile devices allow
learners to record interactions in the outside world for later analysis in the
classroom, such as exploring the ways that language choices and the ‘context
of situation’ impact on one another. And corpus linguistics now provides
increasingly more detailed descriptions of the kind of language that is used in
specific situations – not just the vocabulary and grammar, but the particular
features of register and style. The way that language varies according to
situation suggests that, in the end, all language use is ‘specific’, and that
language teaching, therefore, is preparing learners to use language for
‘specific purposes’.
Alexander, L.G. (1967) New Concept English: First Things First (Teacher’s Book). Harlow:
Longman.
Billows, L.F. (1961) The Techniques of Language Teaching. London: Longmans.
Corder, S.P. (1966) The Visual Element in Language Teaching. London: Longmans.
Halliday, M.A.K. (1985) Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Edward Arnold.
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Mackey, W.F. (1978) Divorcing language from life: non-contextual linguistics in language teaching. In
Strevens, P. (ed.) In honour of A.S. Hornby. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Malinowski, B. (1923) The problem of meaning in primitive languages. Appendix to Ogden, C.K., &
Richards, I.A. The Meaning of Meaning. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
O’Neill, R. (1970) English in Situations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
15 Communicative Language Teaching
The background
In the early 1960s, the terms ‘communication’ and ‘communicative’ were all
the rage. Communication had been invoked as a tool for post-war
reconstruction; mass media were now being credited with turning the word
into a ‘global village’. Driven by innovations in technology, university
courses on ‘communication studies’ and ‘communication sciences’
proliferated. To sell anything or to get votes, ‘communication skills’ were
considered essential. At the same time, a new branch of linguistics was
emerging: sociolinguists were training their sights on the relationship
between language and society, interested less in language as an abstract
system and more in how it is put to use in actual communication.
It was in this intellectual climate, in 1966, that Dell Hymes put forward the
idea of ‘communicative competence’, i.e. ‘competence as to when to speak,
when not, and as to what to talk about with whom, when, where, in what
manner’ (Hymes 1972). Communicative competence, it followed, involves
more than having a command of the sum of the grammatical structures that
were enshrined in the typical syllabuses of the time. It involves being
sensitive to the effect on language choices of such contextual factors as the
purpose of the exchange and relation between the participants.
Communicative competence was to become the ‘big idea’ that would
underpin Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) and give it its name.
How this big idea might revitalize language teaching was the driving force
behind the Council of Europe Modern Languages Project that was launched
at Rüschlikon, Switzerland, in 1971, and which effectively marked the
inception of CLT. It came to fruition a few years later with the publication of
a number of courses based not on a syllabus of grammatical structures but on
a syllabus of communicative functions – such as making requests,
complaining, narrating and so on. As an epigraph to one of the first of these
courses, Strategies (Abbs, et al. 1975) the writers quoted David Wilkins
(1976), a consultant on the Council of Europe project, to the effect that:
In the teachers’ guide to the same series, the authors spell out their approach
(Abbs & Freebairn 1979):
And, since grammar items are not easily learned by experience, the ‘fluency
first’ teaching cycle that had originally been proposed, in which learners
communicate to the best of their ability, and then get feedback, was sidelined
and re-packaged as Task-based Language Teaching (see chapter 16). It
was replaced by a less deep-end version of CLT, in which pre-
communicative activities (typically with a structural focus) precede
communicative activities. Effectively, the PPP model inherited from
Situational Language Teaching (see chapter 14) was dusted off and
stretched a little, so as to include more production activities (such as
information-gap tasks, role plays and discussions) but not a lot else changed.
Lesson A presents the main grammar point of the unit with some
relevant new vocabulary …
Lesson B teaches the main vocabulary of the unit and builds on the
grammar taught in lesson A …
Lesson C teaches a Conversation strategy and some common
expressions useful in conversation, followed by a listening activity
reinforcing this conversational language …
Lesson D, after the first three units, focuses on reading and writing
skills while providing additional listening and speaking activities.
By the time English language teaching became a global industry in the 1980s
and 1990s, it was this ‘weak’ version of CLT that was taken to be the default
form. In many EFL contexts there was no ‘communicative revolution’ at all.
Does it work?
However, CLT has not been without its critics. Resistance to CLT in many
(especially non-Western) contexts is argued on the grounds that it might not
be appropriate in cultures where theoretical knowledge is valued more
highly than practical skills, and where accuracy, not fluency, is the goal of
language education. Moreover, a method that prioritizes communicative
competence would seem to favour teachers who are themselves
communicatively competent, which in many – perhaps most – EFL contexts is
not necessarily the case.
The lasting legacy of CLT is the idea of the ‘communicative activity’. That is
to say, an activity in which there is a genuine exchange of meanings, and
where participants can use any communicative means at their disposal. In
other words, they are not restricted to the use of a pre-specified grammar
item. Whether or not a programme consisting solely of such activities enables
language acquisition has been thrown into doubt by research suggesting that a
‘focus on form’ – such as attending to features of the grammar – is necessary.
But such activities have made classrooms more interesting, and even fun.
Abbs, B., Ayton, A., & Freebairn, I. (1975) Strategies: Students’ Book. London: Longman.
Abbs, B., & Freebairn, I. (1979) Building Strategies: Teacher’s Book. London: Longman.
Brown, H.D. (1994) Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy.
Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall Regents.
Hymes, D. (1972) On communicative competence. In Pride, J.B. and Holmes, J. (eds)
Sociolinguistics: Selected Readings. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
McCarthy, M., McCarten, J., & Sandiford, H. (2005) Touchstone 1 (Teacher’s edition). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Wilkins, D. (1976) Notional Syllabuses. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
16 Task-based Language Teaching
The background
Much ink has been shed as to what constitutes a task, but there is general
agreement that a task should be directed at achieving some outcome, where
language is the means but not the end. Filling in the verbs in a gap-fill
exercise is not a task. Finding the differences in two pictures, by exchanging
spoken descriptions with your partner, is. As is the collaborative planning
and taking of a class photo. Tasks can involve any one of the four skills,
together or in isolation. They are more often done collaboratively, but they
can be done individually, and in class or on line.
Does it work?
While the (somewhat delayed) evaluation of the Bangalore project was itself
inconclusive, there is probably no method that has been more persuasively
championed than TBLT: it comes supported by an ever-growing research
base into SLA, especially the school of SLA that subscribes to a cognitive
view of learning, i.e. one that construes the learner as a ‘limited capacity
information processor’. Performing tasks, and getting feedback on them,
would seem to optimize this kind of processing. Laboratory-type studies of
specific features of the method, such as different ways of focusing on form,
have been encouraging. Evidence that alternative models of instruction –
such as PPP – work any better is scarce.
Why isn’t TBLT more widely applied, then? One reason might be the
syllabusing issue, mentioned above. There is also the plausible concern that,
without a language syllabus, learners will simply recycle their existing
(limited) competences. More acute still is the uncertainty, on the part of many
teachers and their supervisors, as to how to deal with the unpredictability of
task outcomes. Not to mention the actual management challenges of setting
up, monitoring and providing feedback on pair and group work. Where TBLT
seems to work best is when experienced teachers are working with smallish
groups of learners, e.g. immigrants, whose practical language needs can be
accurately predicted, such that the programme can be designed to address
them.
The idea that the ‘students lead [and] the teacher follows’ is a powerful one
– implying a fundamental redistribution of power in the curriculum. Taken to
an extreme, it suggests the adoption of what is called a ‘process syllabus’,
that is, a syllabus that is in a constant state of negotiation, as learners’ needs
emerge, their interests fluctuate and their capacities evolve. In this sense,
‘tasks are not isolated events but parts of a process whose goals are
determined by the interaction between learners and their expressed interests
and needs’ (Legutke & Thomas 1991). Recent developments in some
mainstream education systems, e.g. Finland, where school subjects are no
longer taught as independent disciplines, but are merged into the
collaborative implementation of long-term projects involving a whole
constellation of tasks, might seem to offer a way forward.
Allwright, R. (1979) Language learning through communication practice. In Brumfit, C. & Johnson, K.
(eds) The Communicative Approach to Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Legutke, M., & Thomas, H. (1991) Process and Experience in the Language Classroom. Harlow:
Longman.
Long, M. (2015) Second Language Acquisition and Task-Based Language Teaching. Oxford:
Wiley Blackwell.
Prabhu, N.S. (1987) Second Language Pedagogy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Willis, D. (1990) The Lexical Syllabus: A New Approach to Language Teaching. London: Collins.
Willis, J. (1996) A Framework for Task-Based Learning. Harlow: Longman.
17 Competency-based Teaching
The background
A1 A2 B1
I can write a short, I can write short, I can write
simple postcard, for simple notes and simple
example sending messages relating connected text
holiday greetings. I to matters in on topics
can fill in forms areas of which are
with personal immediate need. I familiar or of
WRITING
These very broad outcomes can be specified in yet finer detail: the finer the
better, arguably, since discrete outcomes are more efficiently taught and
tested than very general ones. A case in point is the Pearson Global Scale of
English (GSE) which boasts over 1,800 can do statements.
However, as in the case of the CEFR, attempts to flesh out the descriptors by
specifying the precise linguistic elements (e.g. the grammar and vocabulary)
that are implicated in each competence may undermine a skills-based
approach, inviting a more traditional, atomistic teaching approach, along the
lines of the PPP (present-practice-produce) model (see chapter 14). More
problematic still is the fact that, whatever methodology is employed, a key
component of the teaching-learning cycle is testing to see if the target
competencies have been acquired. And the more precisely and narrowly the
competencies are defined, the more items there will be to test.
Does it work?
The trend to ‘commodify’ learning in this way is consistent with the way that
education is increasingly being construed as a business, where production
targets and marketing plans directly determine the way that the work-force is
trained, and where managers (and teachers) are accountable both to their
stakeholders and to their customers. As Gray and Block (2012) put it, ‘terms
such as “outcomes”, “value added”, “knowledge transfer”, “the knowledge
economy” and above all “accountability” have become part of the day-to-day
vocabulary of education’.
Despite its business-like associations, the idea that the curriculum should be
‘reverse engineered’ according to an analysis of learners’ needs is not
necessarily an unworthy one. In fact, it is a fundamental principle
underpinning the teaching of ESP: the starting point of course design is a
needs analysis, from which the course objectives, materials and even
teaching procedures are derived. Success of the programme is measured in
terms of how well the needs have been met.
Auerbach, E. (1986) Competency-based ESL: one step forward or two steps back? TESOL Quarterly,
20: 411–430.
Council of Europe (2001) Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning,
Teaching, Assessment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gray, J., & Block, D. (2012) The marketisation of language teacher education and neoliberalism:
characteristics, consequences and future prospects. In Block, D., Gray, J., & Holborow, M. (eds)
Neoliberalism and Applied Linguistics. London: Routledge.
Heyworth, F. (2004) Why the CEF is important. In Morrow, K. (ed.) Insights from the Common
European Framework. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ravitch, D. (2010) The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and
Choice are Undermining Education. New York: Basic Books.
van Ek, J. (1975/1980) Threshold Level English. Oxford: Pergamon.
18 Whole Language Learning
The background
Freinet occupies one end of a continuum along which all teachers – whether
teachers of first language literacy or of an additional language – situate
themselves. At one extreme, there are those who believe that you learn a
language by studying each of its components first, that is, by progressing from
the parts to the whole (often by means of ‘dry academic exercises’). And
there are those (like Freinet) who believe that you learn the components of
the language by engaging with it as an integrated whole, in the form, for
example, of ‘creative work’. That is, learning goes from whole to part.
In first language literacy teaching, this division is most famously represented
in the arguments (often acrimonious) between those who advocate the
teaching of phonics and those who don’t. Phonics is the study of sound-letter
relationships, and its proponents argue that using this knowledge to ‘sound
out’ words is the best way of learning to read. A whole-language approach,
on the other hand, takes a ‘top-down’ perspective, in which reading involves
working out word meanings from context, and recognizing word shapes by
means of activities such as being read to while following the words on the
page, or reading aloud with the assistance of an adult or a slightly more
proficient classmate.
The whole language approach emphasizes the social and cultural dimension
of education. It also aims to promote the learner’s self-realization through
learning, a feature that aligns it with the humanistic tradition of education. In
this sense ‘whole’ stands not only for ‘whole language’, but also ‘whole
person’: learning works best when the learner is engaged not only
intellectually but emotionally and even physically.
Does it work?
Nelson (op. cit.) and five independent teams of researchers found so:
‘Despite the loss of drive some suffered at first without grades, motivation
surged when they experienced writing’s rewards: pride of publication …,
feelings of accomplishment, influence on others, better grades in other
courses, competence, empathy and praise from friends, and … emotional
release’. Likewise, ‘free voluntary reading’, an approach to first language
literacy training that is energetically promoted by Stephen Krashen (2004),
and which is entirely consistent with the principles of Whole Language
Learning, is equally positively evaluated: ‘In-school free reading studies and
“out of school” self-reported free voluntary reading studies show that more
reading results in better reading comprehension, writing style, vocabulary,
spelling, and grammatical development’. And he adds, ‘in face-to-face
comparisons, reading is consistently shown to be more efficient than direct
instruction’. Krashen argues that the approach applies equally well to second
language development.
Cazden, C. (1992) Whole Language Plus: Essays on Literacy in the US and NZ. New York:
Teachers College Press.
Clandfield, D., & Sivell, J. (eds.) (1990) Co-operative Learning and Social Change: Selected
Writings of Célestin Freinet. Montréal: Our Schools, Our Selves.
Freeman, Y.S., & Freeman, D.E. (1998) ESL/EFL Teaching: Principles for Success. Heinemann.
Krashen, S.D. (2004) The Power of Reading: Insights from the Research (2 nd edition). Portsmouth,
NH: Heinemann.
Nelson, M.W. (1991) At the Point of Need: Teaching Basic and ESL Writers. Portsmouth, NH:
Heinemann.
19 Content-based Instruction
The background
That living room meeting in Montreal in 1963 planted a seed that would give
rise to a wide variety of educational options – and a steady trickle of
acronyms – that, in various ways, combined content teaching and language
learning. These include CBI (content-based instruction – a term more
commonly used in the US), CLIL (content and language integrated learning –
originally a European term) and EMI (English-medium instruction – more
commonly used with reference to tertiary education). The basic principle
underlying all these different versions of classroom immersion is that an
additional language can be acquired when that language is being used as the
vehicle of instruction, even if the learner’s attention is primarily, although not
exclusively, on the message and not on the medium.
Does it work?
But even the Canadian learners do not always achieve native-like levels of
proficiency in French, a fact that has been attributed to, among other things,
lack of explicit instruction and corrective feedback. These are exactly the
areas that a CLIL methodology claims to remedy, by providing balanced
attention to both code and content – what Roy Lyster (2007) calls ‘a counter-
balanced approach’. Whether, in fact, it does this depends on a variety of
factors, not least the skills of the teacher, their training, and their beliefs. On
the whole, however, research into CLIL suggests that, in the right conditions
and given sufficient attention to the formal features of the vehicular language,
the L2 learning outcomes are positive, even if not perfect. Less thoroughly
researched are the effects on overall academic achievement, and advocates
of CLIL will need to work hard to convince doubting parents in some CLIL
contexts – e.g. where the standard of subject matter teaching is not already
strong – that their children are getting the integrated education that CLIL
promises.
The background
In 1995, over a bottle of red wine, the Danish film-maker Lars von Trier and
three colleagues drafted the manifesto of the Dogme 95 film-makers
collective. They were driven by a commitment to rescue cinema from big-
budget, hi-tech, Hollywood-style production values and to recover what von
Trier referred to as ‘our joyful film-making’. In order to make films that
would be true to the ‘inner story’ of the characters, the group pledged
allegiance to a set of ‘vows’, the first of which was:
Shooting should be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought
in (if a particular prop is necessary for the story, a location must be
chosen where the prop is to be found).
In the same style and spirit as the Dogme filmmakers’ vows, I drafted some
vows of my own, the first being:
Teaching should be done using only the resources that teachers and
students bring to the classroom – i.e. themselves – and whatever happens
to be in the classroom. If a particular piece of material is necessary for
the lesson, a location must be chosen where that material is to be found
(e.g. library, resource centre, bar, students’ club …).
In practice, a Dogme approach will vary according to its context. For some
teachers and in some situations, it may be enough to intersperse their teaching
with ‘Dogme moments’, such as when a learner’s utterance offers a learning
opportunity and the lesson takes a brief detour in pursuit of it. Assuming they
are in a context where they are allowed to, other teachers may be motivated
to design their whole course according to Dogme principles.
Does it work?
Dogme is under-researched, but its critics have identified some possible
weaknesses. For a start, it seems to favour small groups of motivated
learners who are prepared to ‘suspend disbelief’ in a programme that has no
clear syllabus nor coursebook. Moreover, because its approach is essentially
reactive, it assumes its teachers have the skills – and the language – to deal
spontaneously with learners’ output. And the fact that the emphasis is on
conversation as the context out of which language ‘emerges’ means that
learners may be less well prepared for more formal or written registers, such
as academic writing. Finally, Dogme is open to the same charge as Task-
based Instruction – that the lack of a syllabus of preselected language items
means that learners are simply relying on their existing competence without
being pushed to extend it. In response, proponents of a Dogme approach
appeal to sociocultural theories of learning, which suggest that development
can occur through collaborative activity, especially when ‘scaffolded’ by a
supportive teacher.
Despite the above criticisms, many teachers have felt liberated when their
lessons are no longer shackled to coursebook texts or a preselected
‘grammar point’. In fact, research into teachers’ developmental trajectories
suggests that many expert teachers learn to rely less on ‘imported’ materials
and more on what arises from the learners themselves. At the same time,
learners who have experienced greater control of the classroom topic agenda
typically rate ‘Dogme moments’ highly. Apart from anything else, ‘doing a
Dogme lesson’ from time to time might be a very productive professional
development exercise – a fact attested by many teachers who choose this
option as part of their ‘experimental practice’ on in-service teacher
education courses.
Breen, M. (1985) The social context for language learning – a neglected situation? Studies in Second
Language Acquisition, 7: 135–158.
Meddings, L., & Thornbury, S. (2009) Teaching Unplugged: Dogme in English Language Teaching.
Peaslake, Surrey: Delta Publishing.
Thornbury, S. (2000) A dogma for EFL. IATEFL Issues, 153: 2.
D: Visionaries
The background
When I hear my voice, I just hate it … It is not simply that my ears hate
my mouth, or my mouth hates my eyes. The inner conflict inhabits my
entire being. This makes me feel that my own ‘self’ is falling apart. Now
I have two ‘mes’ inside myself. A ‘me’ with whom I am familiar and
with whom I feel connected … The other ‘me’ is a stranger.
Thus, Zhou Wu (1993, quoted in Granger 2004) recalls the anxiety and loss
of identity associated with migrating to Canada and discovering that his
English, which seemed perfectly adequate at home in China, failed him in the
Canadian context.
The classic CLL procedure is one in which small groups of learners (also
known as ‘clients’), seated in a circle, jointly construct a conversation on a
topic of their own devising, with the unobtrusive assistance of the teacher (or
‘knower’).
Any student can start, and there is no set order or even requirement to
participate. A student quietly tells the teacher, in her L1, what she wants to
say in the L2. The teacher translates. The student repeats and the teacher may
correct if necessary. When the student is satisfied, the utterance is recorded.
Other students respond, each utterance being assembled, fine-tuned and
recorded in turn. Here, for example, is the conversation that three adult
Spanish learners of English constructed:
Does it work?
It might also be interesting to know what Curran would have made of online
social networking and its potential to provide both a context and a motivation
for jointly constructed learning opportunities. Sites (such as www.italki.com)
that provide a venue for users of different languages to interact and ‘teach’
one another by, for example, translating and editing each other’s texts, offer a
possible solution to some of the scale limitations of CLL as first conceived.
Breen, M.P. (1985) The social context for language learning: a neglected situation? Studies in Second
Language Acquisition, 7: 135–158.
Curran, C. (1983) Counselling-Learning. In Oller, J.W., Richard-Amato, P.A. (eds) Methods that
Work: A Smorgasbord of Ideas for Language Teachers. Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House.
Granger, C.A. (2004) Silence in Second Language Learning: A Psychoanalytic Reading. Cleveland:
Multilingual Matters.
Slimani, A. (1989) The role of topicalization in classroom language learning. System, 17: 223–234.
22 Suggestopedia
The background
Does it work?
The background
Like the other luminaries of the so-called humanistic methods movement with
whom he is typically associated – Curran of Community language learning
(see chapter 21), and Lozanov of Suggestopedia (see chapter 22) –
Gattegno’s rhetoric verges on the quasi-mystical at times. He invokes, for
example, the ‘spirit’ of the language, which is encoded in its melody and
rhythm and also in the difficult-to-translate small words, such as
prepositions, articles and auxiliary verbs. To capture the spirit, he
recommends having learners listen to recordings of authentic speech, even if
they don’t understand them. But underlying his thinking is a strong seam of
common sense: in fact, he wrote a book called The Common Sense of
Teaching Foreign Languages. Gattegno himself provides detailed
descriptions of typical lesson sequences, while at the same time
acknowledging that every learning situation and every language is different.
Moreover, no two learners will follow the same learning trajectory. The
teacher, therefore, should be prepared to adapt the approach to suit the local
conditions and in accordance to what actually happens in the class.
Nevertheless, the fundamental principle – that teaching is subordinated to
learning – should dictate every decision.
Using minimal vocabulary (rod; black, red, yellow, etc.; give, put, me, him,
her, etc.) and guided by colour-coded charts that display the phonemes of the
language, learners construct increasingly more complex utterances in
response to cues provided by the teacher. New vocabulary items or
constructions may be modelled initially, but thereafter there is little or no
repetition on the part of the teacher nor anything but the most minimal
feedback. Instead, learners are expected to develop their own ‘inner criteria’
for evaluating the accuracy of their utterances. Long silences are tolerated as
learners engage cognitively with the materials, trying to work out their
hidden laws. As the need for more complex grammatical patterns arises, the
rods are used to create contexts for these. Theoretically, at least, the entirety
of a language’s grammar can be built up using these minimal means.
Does it work?
For obvious reasons, the Silent Way is not widely practised, and therefore
any claims as to its effectiveness are largely anecdotal. It is a procedure that
is probably more often demonstrated at beginner level, as part of teaching
preparation courses, than actually implemented in real classrooms with real
students. Nevertheless, assuming a degree of student compliance, it’s not
hard to imagine it having a certain impact, in line, perhaps, with the so-called
Hawthorne effect, i.e. when learners know that they are being experimented
on, they tend to outperform their present competence. John Holt makes a
similar point (1982):
Gattegno, C. (1983) The silent way. In Oller, J.W., Richard-Amato, P.A. (eds) Methods that Work: A
Smorgasbord of Ideas for Language Teachers. Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House.
Holt, J. (1982) How Children Fail (Revised Edition). Cambridge, Mass: Da Capo Press.
Kramsch, C. (2009) The Multilingual Subject. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
24 Crazy English & the Rassias method
The background
Li Yang is not the only, or even the first, ‘crazy’ teacher. When John Rassias
(1925–2015), the son of Greek immigrants to the USA, started teaching
French – the subject he had majored in – there was little in the method or the
materials that enthused him. It was only when he realized that his other great
love – the theatre – could be enlisted into the teaching of languages that he
began to formulate what became known as the Rassias Method. He pioneered
the method teaching Peace Corps volunteers as preparation for postings to
French-speaking Africa in the 1960s, and further refined it in Dartmouth,
Vermont, where he trained hundreds of teachers in its techniques. Essentially,
these include rapid-fire drilling coupled with comically exaggerated
feedback, as well as role playing and the acting out of ‘skits’. What both Li
Yang and Rassias have in common is a repertoire of performance skills by
means of which they make fairly conventional techniques – such as drilling –
non-threatening, highly entertaining, and hence (they would both claim)
extremely memorable.
Both Crazy English and the Rassias method borrow from audiolingualism
(see chapter 6), and incorporate intensive drilling of structural patterns – so
intensive, in the case of Rassias, that the drilling is usually conducted by
adjuncts, while the teacher’s role is reserved for the less regimented, more
performance-based stages of each lesson. The purpose of the drilling, for
Rassias, seems to be less about habituation than about maximising student
talking time: each student is expected to speak at least 65 times in the course
of a 50-minute lesson. This also accounts for the rapid delivery of question-
and-answer routines, in which teachers are encouraged to snap their fingers
to keep things moving. Feedback on accuracy is provided by exaggerated
gestures, such as blowing kisses (in the case of a correct answer) or miming
a knife thrust (in the case of error). On the other hand, accuracy is not
necessarily the main goal. As Rassias is quoted as saying (Wolkomir 1983),
‘Have the courage to be bad, to make mistakes – but speak!’.
Does it work?
Both Rassias and Li Yang seem less preoccupied with the mechanics of
teaching and much more focused on removing the inhibitions that block
language learning, whatever method is employed. The website for Dartmouth
College (where Rassias developed his program) states:
Judged in these terms, then, the enthusiasm with which both methods have
been received would seem to confirm that, in terms of breaking down
inhibitions, they do succeed. Rassias’s long association with the Peace
Corps, for example, suggests his initial courses provide an effective platform
for subsequent immersive learning while in the field. And the rapturous,
almost cult-like, response that Li Yang evokes must have impelled at least
some of his many fans into dedicating more time and effort into learning
English.
On the negative side, it may be that, for certain learners at least, the mindless
chanting, the play-acting and, above all, the assertive presence of their
larger-than-life teachers are a disincentive. For every student who reports
that ‘having an egg broken over your head by Rassias is an intense loving
experience’ (Wolkomir 1983), there will be at least one who will likely be
less well disposed.
To paraphrase the old workplace slogan: You don’t have to be crazy to teach
here, but it helps. In other words, any method, however discredited, can be
made to work if the teacher injects a degree of novelty, theatricality and
surprise. More importantly, any techniques that serve to reduce the learners’
fears and insecurities – whether or not these techniques are as extreme as
either Li Yang’s or Rassias’s – will go at least some way to ensuring a
method’s chances of success.
Harder, P. (1980). Discourse and self-expression – on the reduced personality of the second language
learner. Applied Linguistics, 1: 262–270.
Osnos, E. (2008) Crazy English: The national scramble to learn a new language before the Olympics.
The New Yorker, April 28. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/04/28/crazy-english (accessed
17th January 2017)
Rassias Centre, Dartmouth College: http://rassias.dartmouth.edu/method/
Wolkomir, R. (1983) A manic professor tries to close up the language gap. In Oller, J.W., Richard-
Amato, P.A. (eds) Methods that Work: A Smorgasbord of Ideas for Language Teachers. Rowley,
Mass.: Newbury House.
E: Self-study methods
25 Orientalists
26 Prendergast’s ‘Mastery System’
27 Brand name Methods: Assimil, Michel Thomas, Pimsleur
28 Programmed Instruction: Duolingo
29 Online Polyglots
25 Orientalists
Background
Both Burton and Vámbéry have left accounts of their methods, the former
being more detailed than the latter, but both coinciding in their reliance on
memorization, reading aloud, and the use of authentic texts.
Did it work?
As for Vámbéry, it was on his first journey abroad, en route from Budapest to
Istanbul, that he was given an opportunity to put his theoretical knowledge of
Serbian, Italian, and Turkish to practice with his fellow shipboard
passengers. He immediately became the centre of attention: ‘They formed a
ring around me, trying to guess at my nationality, and received rather
sceptically my statement that I had never been abroad’. And he adds that,
after only a day or two, he had improved his Turkish to such an extent that, on
arriving in Turkey, he was able to act as a Turkish interpreter for a fellow
Hungarian.
Brodie, F.M. (1967/1986) The Devil Drives: A Life of Sir Richard Burton. London: Eland.
Lomb, K. (1988/2013) Harmony of Babel: Profiles of Famous Polyglots of Europe. Translated by S.
Alkire. Berkeley: TESL-EJ Publications.
Vámbéry, A. (1889) Árminius Vámbéry, His Life and Adventures. London: Fisher Unwin.
26 Prendergast’s ‘Mastery System’
Background
Like his father before him, Prendergast served all his working life in the East
India Company, during which time he learned at least two of India’s
indigenous languages, Hindustani and Telugu. On retirement in his fifties, he
returned to England where (now blind) he spent his remaining years
developing what he called his ‘Mastery’ system, published in 1864 as The
Mastery of Languages or, the Art of Speaking Foreign Tongues
Idiomatically, along with accompanying teaching materials in a variety of
languages. Based largely on his own experience as a learner, (he never
actually taught languages himself), his method was directed at self-study
rather than classroom instruction (although he did provide guidance for
teachers, just in case).
The learner studying alone first memorizes one of the target sentences, for
which there is a translation. For example, the first sentence in the French
course is:
Pourquois ne voulez-vous pas me faire le plaisir de passer demain avec
moi chez le frère de notre ami dans la rue Neuve? (Why will you not do
me the favour of calling on our friend’s brother in New Street with me
tomorrow?)
Does it work?
As a self-study method, though, the Mastery System had one saving strength –
a recognition of the value of what we now call distributed practice, i.e.
short bursts of practice distributed over increasingly longer intervals. As
Prendergast put it, ‘in learning anything by heart, repetitions are
indispensable, and the more they are distributed throughout the day, the
smaller will be the number required to impress the foreign phrases on the
memory’ (1870). To expedite this, Prendergast recommended that learners
carry around with them both the L1 and L2 sentences, and, after first reading
the latter, they should attempt to translate the L1 sentences into the L2,
unseen. Moreover, this should be done in ‘irregular succession’, i.e. in a
different order each time.
These same principles underpin the use of vocabulary learning ‘word cards’,
whereby learners review vocabulary by translating into and out of their L1.
The principle has now been successfully digitalized and refined, and
downloadable apps, with which learners can input their own word (or
phrase) lists and regularly review them in randomized order, are freely
available and massively popular. Prendergast would have approved.
Prendergast, T. (1864) The Mastery of Languages, or the Art of Speaking Foreign Tongues
Idiomatically. London: R. Bentley.
Prendergast, T. (1870) The Mastery Series: French (New Edition). New York: Appleton & Co.
27 Brand name Methods: Assimil,
Michel Thomas, Pimsleur
Background
‘My tailor is rich’. The first example sentence of Anglais sans peine
(‘English without toil’ 1929), in turn the first publication of the Assimil
group, has iconic status – encapsulating as it does the distinctive style of
self-study manuals, instantly recognizable to generations of long-suffering
autodidacts. Its author, Alphonse Chérel (1882–1956), was himself an
autodidact, having left his native France to work as a private teacher in
Tsarist Russia, where he learned Russian. Thence he moved to England and
then Germany, where he picked up English and German respectively. At the
time, virtually the only way to learn a foreign language, apart from living in
the country where the language was spoken, was to attend a Berlitz-type
school or get a private teacher. Aged 46, Chérel decided to remedy the
situation by producing a calendar, on every page of which there was a short,
light-hearted English lesson for self-study. From this seed the mighty Assimil
empire was born, and it flourishes to this day.
All three methods borrow from – and perpetuate – features of the methods
that were dominant at their time of creation. But, in different ways, they each
incorporate elements that are designed to meet the challenge of teacher-less
instruction. Pre-dating Communicative Language Teaching, the syllabuses of
all three are predominantly structural, although explicit grammar instruction
is kept to a minimum: grammar, it is assumed, will be acquired inductively
simply through exposure to, and repetition of, example sentences. In the case
of Michel Thomas, syntax is built up incrementally though the combination of
words (initially often cognates) and phrases. The vocabulary input in all
three courses is deliberately restricted, presumably so as to avoid overload.
Texts, if they exist at all, are typically scripted dialogues. To ensure
understanding, the input in all three courses is translated into the learner’s
L1, and explanations and instructions are also provided in the L1. Both
Michel Thomas and the Pimsleur courses are purely spoken – there is no
written support. The Assimil courses, by contrast, have an accompanying
coursebook, each double-page spread divided between the L2 and the L1
translation. They also have a curious division into receptive and productive
phases: for the first half of the 100-unit course, learners simply listen and
read. Half-way through they return to the beginning and this time translate the
texts and example sentences of each unit from their L1 into the target
language.
Do they work?
Given the decades of uninterrupted sales these courses have enjoyed, it might
seem perverse to even question their effectiveness. They must be working for
somebody. Certainly, in his time Michel Thomas attracted an almost cult-like
following in Hollywood: Emma Thompson is on record as saying that her
crash course in Spanish was ‘the most extraordinary learning experience of
my life – it was unforgettable’. Of course, that was a one-to-one course, not
the self-study version. In fact, given the lack of real interaction or point-of-
need feedback in the self-study courses, it’s hard to credit the claims made in
the publicity for these courses, each purporting to cut learning time radically,
and promising the learner enviable levels of fluency for just 30 minutes’
study a day. Because the only feedback the learner gets is on their ability to
recall by heart the artificially limited input and not on their capacity to
engage in real communication, it may be that learners are under the illusion
that they are progressing, even if they are not. At best, these courses might
provide a foundation on which to build in subsequent immersive situations.
Users of this and similar methods attest to the confidence that is instilled as,
through regular re-playing of the recorded material, they become
‘acclimatized’ to what was initially just meaningless noise. Likewise, the
initial memorization, through repeated practice, of key words and phrases
provides a foothold into an otherwise impenetrable system.
The need for self-study courses is as acute as ever; the technological means
for satisfying this need have increased exponentially since the first Assimil
course was published. Many of the shortcomings of these courses – such as
the lack of opportunities for real time interaction – could relatively easily be
remedied by signing up for some sort of language exchange, such as that
offered by Conversation Exchange (www.conversationexchange.com).
Moreover, most language learning apps (see chapter 28 Programmed
Instruction: Duolingo) now include a social networking component that
allows ‘real’ interaction. Likewise, vocabulary learning apps can be used to
boost the lexical input, while the internet, in conjunction with translation
software, provides a much richer diet of authentic texts than any of these
courses presently offer.
Pimsleur, P. (1980/2013) How to Learn a Foreign Language. New York: Pimsleur Language
Programs.
28 Programmed Instruction: Duolingo
The background
This was already being done, in a variety of languages, by the early 1950s
under the name of Audio-Lingual Language Programming. But, by the 1970s,
with the demise of audiolingualism (see chapter 6), programmed instruction
– never hugely popular at the best of times – had completely fallen out of
favour. It wasn’t until the widespread use of mobile devices, plus an
exponential increase in computing power, that programmed instruction was
rehabilitated and delivered by means of language learning apps.
One of the first of these apps to achieve global success was Duolingo,
launched in 2012 by co-founders Luis von Ahn and Severin Hacker, with the
express aim of providing a language learning tool that was free, fun to use,
and effective. As in the original programmed instruction machines, users are
led from one challenge to the next. But – despite the branching possibilities
offered by digital software – the learning path is essentially linear. In order
to short-cut any stages in the lesson sequence, a user can ‘test out’, but this is
one of the very few concessions to ‘personalization’.
To date Duolingo offers around 80 different courses (e.g. English for Spanish
speakers; French for German speakers etc.), and boasts millions of registered
users (although how many are regularly active users is unknown). And –
thanks to the hosting of ads – it is free, although a fee-paying testing service
has also been launched for some languages.
On signing in, users are presented with their learning ‘roadmap’ and are
prompted to set their own learning goals, in terms of the amount of time they
plan to study daily, and the number of points they hope to gain (but not of
what they would like to learn – there are only limited options in terms of
what they can choose to focus on within their present level).
Does it work?
While Duolingo cites a research study that shows that 34 hours of Duolingo
is the equivalent of one whole semester of university-level language
instruction, there is little if any independent investigation into its
effectiveness. Like many digital self-study tools, Duolingo has been
criticised for its ‘old-fashioned’, somewhat mechanical approach, including
its narrow focus on discrete-items of grammar, its reliance on de-
contextualized sentences, and the built-in assumption that accuracy is a
prerequisite for fluency. Moreover, its contrived language examples
undermine any claims to be authentic or even accurate. Nor are there
opportunities for creative language use, nor real (i.e. human-to-human)
interaction. All this suggests that Duolingo (and similar apps) might work
best to complement, rather than substitute for, ‘live’ learning in classrooms.
Apart from being free, what, then, explains Duolingo’s phenomenal success?
As well as its attractive and user-friendly interface, users invariably
highlight the built-in motivation provided by the gamification software, and
the sense of immediate gratification that this supplies: as the website boasts,
‘it’s addictive!’. They also value the element of surprise, in not quite
knowing what type of exercise they will be served next, while at the same
time appreciating the spaced repetition of tasks that maximises their
memorability. And, of course, there is its portability and the fact that the
learner can brush up whenever they have a spare moment, wherever they are.
But the real takeaway is doubtlessly the sense that learners get that they are
constantly and incrementally improving – improvement that they can attribute
to their own agency, given that they set their own learning targets. The system
is oriented towards success at every step.
Duolingo: https://www.duolingo.com/
Selwyn, N. (2014) Distrusting Educational Technology. London: Routledge.
Valdmann, A. (1966) Programmed instruction and foreign language teaching. In Valdmann, A. (ed.)
Trends in Language Teaching. New York: McGraw-Hill.
29 Online Polyglots
Background
The experience of learning several languages has given many the confidence
to recommend – if not a method as such – at least certain strategies that
predict success. As a consequence, some have developed self-help guides,
learning materials, and entire language courses. There are now so many of
these self-taught polyglots that hundreds of them meet annually at conferences
in both North America and Europe. Significantly, perhaps, few have any
academic background in educational theory or in linguistics, and seldom if
ever reference the literature on SLA in their blog posts. This apparent
indifference is mutual: despite their often extraordinary achievements, self-
taught polyglots are virtually ignored in the SLA research literature.
How does it work?
It is nativist in the sense that the default model of language acquisition is the
child learning his or her mother tongue, i.e. a naturalistic and immersive one.
As Lewis (2014), puts it, ‘the way to learn a language is to live it’. Hence,
there is often a blanket rejection of procedures associated with formal
language learning, such as studying grammar rules, rote learning and (to a
lesser extent) translation. As Donovan Nagel argues, ‘you didn’t become a
fluent speaker of your own language by studying its grammar’ (The
Mezzofanti Guild). Indeed, there is a built-in assumption that most formal
instruction still follows grammar-translation principles.
Most, if not all, autodidacts foreground the social function of language and
the belief that acquisition is socially constructed. As Lindsay Dow argues,
‘it’s a common truth by now that we need human interaction to communicate
well in a language’. Lewis (op. cit.) suggests that social interaction is not
only necessary but sufficient:
We keep trying to find language solutions through courses, software,
apps, flights abroad, books, schools, and a host of other methods, some of
which can be useful, but these are nothing but accessories to the true core
of language-learning: the people we speak with and hear.
For many, this is what motivates them, i.e. contact with other people and
cultures: language learning and travel are inextricably connected. Less
weight is given to the development of literacy skills, and it is generally
accepted that pronunciation, while important, need not be native-like so long
as it is intelligible – although some, like Gabriel Wyner (2014) would
dispute this: ‘An accurate accent is powerful because it is the ultimate
gesture of empathy’.
Perhaps of most significance are the learning strategies that these polyglots
enlist, especially for vocabulary acquisition. These include the use of word
cards (or their digital equivalent), spaced repetition, a reliance on cognates
(at least initially), contextualization, and mnemonic techniques, such as
associating words with memorable images. Other form-focused strategies
that are mentioned are: shadowing (i.e. listening to a recording and sub-
vocalizing at the same time), transcribing spoken language, and reverse
translation (i.e. translating a text from L2 into L1 and then back again,
unseen). Unlike the promoters of Brand name methods, autodidacts
acknowledge that language learning takes a good deal of time and
concentrated effort: for example, Alexander Arguelles, a ‘hyper-polyglot’,
attributes his phenomenal success to ‘drive, discipline, countless hours of
systematic hard work, sustained interest and motivation, access to good
materials and intelligent methods and procedures for using them’.
Does it work?
If we take them at their word, these polyglots have achieved impressive – in
some cases, superhuman – feats of language learning. It has clearly worked
for them, especially when combined with immersion in the target language
community. What none of them mentions, however, is aptitude, i.e. an innate
talent for language learning. Research suggests that aptitude is not evenly
distributed across populations. Notwithstanding, many of these polyglots are
insistent that there is no bar, including age, to achieving fluency in at least
one other language. Nevertheless, their up-beat optimism and questionable
claims need to be tempered with a little caution: some people are just not
good language learners.
What stands out from all these accounts is these learners’ agency – in the
sense that they are the instigators and managers of their own learning. This is
reflected in their choice of learning strategies: the metacognitive, such as the
way they set realistic and achievable goals, and the way they actively seek
out the best technological aids for their purposes; the cognitive, such as their
choice of vocabulary learning techniques, or the deliberate attention given to
form; and the social, such as setting up conversation exchanges, either on-
line or face-to-face, or finding a ‘buddy’ to share their learning experiences
with. These learners have really learned how to learn. Their combined
wisdom, in the form of proven learning strategies, along with their infectious
enthusiasm for language learning, is worth sharing with classroom learners.
Arguelles, A. http://www.foreignlanguageexpertise.com/
Dow, L. http://www.lindsaydoeslanguages.com/
Lewis, B. (2014) Fluent in 3 Months: Tips and Techniques to Help You Learn Any Language.
London: HarperCollins.
The Mezzofanti Guild http://www.mezzoguild.com/
Simcott, R. http://speakingfluently.com/
The Polyglot Dream: http://www.thepolyglotdream.com
Wyner, G. (2014) Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It. New
York: Harmony.
F: Beyond methods
30 Principled Eclecticism
30 Principled Eclecticism
Background
One reason for the plethora of methods is that we still do not know
everything there is to know about how people learn languages – whether their
first language or an additional one. The study of second language acquisition
(SLA) is a relatively new field (as scientific fields go). While we are much
better informed than we were half a century ago, there are still some key
questions over which there is a great deal of debate. These include:
As new research findings come to light, and new theories are generated to
explain them, old methods adapt or new methods are invented to take account
of these developments. The Lexical Approach (see chapter 11), for example,
was largely influenced by insights from the study of language corpora. And
Task-based Language Teaching (see chapter 16) draws heavily on research
into cognition. On the other hand, research seldom yields findings that are
100 percent conclusive. This means that any methods that derive from
research are themselves liable to be discredited.
Another reason for the proliferation of methods is the diversity of learning
situations. People learn languages as children, as teens, and as adults. They
learn them in their home country or in places where the language is spoken.
They learn them intensively or part-time. They learn them in classrooms or in
the street or by means of their mobile phones. They learn them for pleasure,
for study, for work, for travel – or none of the above. Arguably, different
methods cater better than others for different combinations of these variables.
Yet another reason for the emergence of so many methods might simply be
fashion – or, put another way – ideology. Methods, it has been argued, are
never disinterested: they embody particular views about the nature of mind,
of language, of education, and of society – and the interconnections between
all four. As beliefs and attitudes change, the need arises for new methods that
enshrine these new beliefs. A case in point is the Direct Method (see
chapter 3) which represented a shift from the view of language-as-cultural-
object to one of language-as-transaction. Likewise, the Communicative
Approach (see chapter 15) was the method that best reflected the drive
towards the social reconstruction of post-war Europe.
Some teachers reject the method concept entirely, holding the view that
methods are prescriptive, inflexible and insensitive to local conditions. They
may subscribe to what has been called the ‘post-method condition’ which, in
turn, is associated with postmodernism and its rejection of the idea of
universalist, objective knowledge and of ‘one-size-fits-all’ solutions to
complex problems.
On the other hand, even postmodern teachers need to make decisions about
syllabus, materials and classroom procedures. Chances are they will borrow
from existing methods in ways that are consistent with their beliefs and their
understanding of the local context. In that sense they are adopting what has
been called ‘principled eclecticism’: ‘They are in effect creating their own
method by blending aspects of others in a principled manner’ (Larsen-
Freeman 2000). The idea is not new: as long ago as 1899, Henry Sweet
(1899/1964) argued that ‘a good method must, before all, be comprehensive
and eclectic. It must be based on a thorough knowledge of the science of
language’.
As this book has attempted to show, most methods have worked for someone,
somewhere and at least some of the time. Hence, every method worth its
name has something to offer the resourceful teacher. A number of allegedly
effective classroom and self-study procedures have been mentioned in
passing, including text memorization, reverse translation, ‘shadowing’,
reading aloud, and contrastive analysis. But there is a difference between, on
the one hand, simply stringing a sequence of borrowed techniques together in
a somewhat random fashion, and, on the other, choosing those techniques
which are consistent with a coherent theory of language learning. That is the
difference, in short, between eclecticism and principled eclecticism. It is not
the case, then, that ‘anything goes’. At the very least, the principled teacher
should be able to respond to the question ‘Why did you do that?’ with an
answer that is grounded in some understanding of language, of language
learning, and of the language learning context.
Does it work?
In the end, all methods are eclectic, in the sense that they borrow from, build
on, and recycle aspects of other methods. Our understanding of how and why
this happens, and of how these same processes of appropriation and
reconfiguration impact on our own teaching, is part of our ongoing
professional development.
Advancing that understanding has been the purpose of this book. I hope that,
in some small measure, this objective has been met.
Eclecticism 125–126
English for Specific Purposes (ESP) courses 49–50
English-medium instruction (EMI) 76–77
Error correction
Crazy English 98, 99
natural methods 8, 17
Silent Way 95
see also accuracy
Exams, Competency-based Teaching 70–71
Explication de texte 31–34
Extensive reading 20
Halliday, Michael 48
Harder, Peter 97
Hawthorne effect 95
Heyworth, F. 71
Holt, John 95
Hymes, Dell 60
Imitation
audiolingual method 23, 24–25
natural approach 7–8
oral method 15
situational language teaching 58
Immersion
content-based instruction 76–78
total 2–5
see also natural methods
Imperative drill 15, 26–27
see also total physical response
Implicit learning
oral method 16–17
Suggestopedia 91
India, Bangalore Project 64, 65–66
Innate ability, polyglots 120–121
Instructional conversations 8
Internet see digital learning
Kramsch, Claire 96
Krashen, Stephen
acquisition 7
comprehensible input 20, 44
Suggestopedia 91
whole language learning 74
Malinowski, Bronislaw 56
‘Mastery’ system, Prendergast 106–109
Memorization 35–38
Crazy English 98–99
lexical approach 43
Prendergast’s ‘Mastery’ system 106–109
Michel Thomas Method 110–112
Mim-mem Method 23, 36
see also audiolingual method
Mitchell, T. F. 48
Multi-level learning 90
Natural methods
approach and rationale 6–9
audiolingual method 22–25
direct method 10–13
oral method 14–17
reading method 18–21
Silent Way 93–94
total immersion 2–5
total physical response 26–29
Naturalistic learning 3, 6
Nelson, Marie Wilson 73–74, 75
Neuroimaging 91–92
Neurolinguistic programming (NLP) 90
Sauveur, Lambert
comparison to direct method 11, 12
natural method 7–8
Scaffolding, oral method 17
Schliemann, Heinrich 103
Self-study methods 101
brand name methods 110–113
online polyglots 118–121
orientalists 102–105
Prendergast’s ‘Mastery System’ 106–109
programmed instruction 114–117
social networking 113
Series method (total physical response) 26–29
Shadowing 120
Silent period, total physical response 26–27, 28–29
Silent Way 93–96
Simcott, Richard 120
Sinclair, John 43
Situational language teaching 56–59
see also Task-based Language Teaching
Skills acquisition theory 105
Skinner, B. F. 114
Social networking
community language learning 88
self-study methods 113
South Korea, memorization 35
Speaking skills
natural approach 6–8
oral method 14–16
reading method 19–20
total immersion 2–5
Stern, H. H. 125–126
Stevick, Earl 92
Substitution tables 108
Suggestopedia 89–92
Super learning 90
Sweet, Henry 11, 104, 125
Systemic functional linguistics (SFL) 48
Valdman, A. 114
Vámbéry, Ármin 102, 103–104
Visionaries 84
community language learning 85–88
Crazy English & the Rassias method 97–100
Silent Way 93–96
Suggestopedia 89–92
Vocabulary
Competency-based Teaching 69–70
content-based instruction 77
lexical approach 43–46
online polyglots 120
Prendergast’s ‘Mastery’ system 107, 108, 109
Silent Way 95
von Trier, Lars 80
Yang, Li 97–100