Language Teaching Method Essay

Language Teaching Methods

Methods:

Method refers to what of a teaching programmer. It involves classroom activities, tasks and moment-to-moment process of teaching, the role of the learner and the teacher. A method includes three components:

 Approach

 Design

 Procedure

Approach:

Approach is concerned with the theory of nature language and language learning. For instance, in language teaching practices two important theories of language learning have been put forward.

Design:

Design concern itself with:

 The general and specific objective of the course;

 A syllabus model;

 Types of learning and teaching tasks;

 Roles of learners and teachers; and

 Role of teaching materials.

Procedure:

Procedure is

However, it was in the late eighteenth century that the technique of teaching grammatical rules with translation in the foreign language became popular. The grammar-translation method cannot probably be traced back to the tenets of any particular master teacher or methodologist but it seems to be rooted in the formal teaching of Greek and Latin which prevailed in Europe for many centuries. Though Latin and Greek were not learnt for communication they were considered to be useful for intellectual discipline and were seen as prestige symbols.

The characteristics of the grammar-translation method were as follows:

 Grammar was taught prescriptively through the presentation and study of rules.

 Practice was provided through translation exercise, from the target language into the mother tongue and vice versa.

 The focus of translation was the sentence.

 Vocabulary was taught through bilingual word lists, which learners had to memorise.

 This method focused on the skills of reading and writing and did not pay much attention to those of listening and speaking.

 The mother tongue of the learner was used to explain new items and make comparison with the equivalents in the target

They all concentrated on the components of the English language, namely words, structures, word-order, grammar etc. The communicative method almost ignored this function of the language and succeeded in imparting knowledge of language forms and rules. Communicative methods followed by:

 The method is function-based and task-centred

 While conveying the message is primary, accuracy is secondary

 Judicious uses of the mother tongue are translation is allowed to help student to perform the task

 Pair work and group work are frequently used in the classroom.

The Bilingual Method: This method was first adopted by Dr.C.J. Dodson who also experimented it on students and achieved good results. This method considered a combination of the direct method and the grammar translation method. It aims to make the learners bilingual- the ability to use two languages equally well.

The Principles followed in the bilingual Method:

 The method utilizes the students’ language habits

 Sentence is the unit of teaching not a