History of language teaching by Howatt

History of Language Teaching

CLASSICAL PERIOD (17th , 18th and 19th centuries)

EDUCATION AS AN ARM OF THEOCRACY Purpose of education to teach religious orthodoxy and good moral character

FOREİGN LANGUAGE LEARNİNG ASSOCIATED WITH THE LEARNİNG OF GREEK AND LATİN purpose of learning a foreign language to promote speakers’ intellectuality

1850’s: Classical method came to be known as Grammar Translation Method

1850’s to 1950’s: Grammar Translation

Emphasis on learnıng to read & wrıte Focus on grammatical rules, syntactic structures, rote

memorization of voc. and translation of literary texts Voc. is taught in the form of lists of isolated words. Long, elaborate explanations of the intricacies of

grammar are given. Medium of instruction was the mother tongue No provision for the oral use of language Speaking and listening were mediated via

“conversation classes”, add-ons to the main course

Early Mid-20th Century

Demand for ability to speak a foreign language Reformers reconsidering the nature of

langauge and learning Three Reformers (the way children learned

languages was relevant to how adults learned languages)C. MarcelF. GouinT. Pendergast

Individuals Reformers (Jean Joseph Jacotot)

Jean Joseph Jacotot (All is in all):• He saw language teaching as one dimension of

philosophy of universal education.• His work drew attention to the ideological significance

of education generally and of language teaching in particular.

• His Method begins with giving the students a piece of translation text, read them the first sentence, ask them to find further example of words, and he return again to the beginning of the text and read it again for them. (Back Formation)

Individuals Reformers (Jean Joseph Jacotot)

Every individual had a God-given ability to instruct himself. The function of a teacher was to respond to the learner, not to direct and control him by explaining things in advance.

Explanation of language is unnecessary and wrong. Every individual has equal intelligence for language

learning All is in all: Learning sth thoroughly and relate

everything else to it. The importance of text rather than isolated words and

sentences.

Individuals Reformers (Claude Marcel)

Claude Marcel:

Emphasized the importance of understanding meaning in language learning

Devising of Rational Method The teaching of Reading: The first Priority in foreign

language Teaching


Marcel starts by making a primary distinction between what he calls impression and expression which together ‘constitute the double object of language and mark the principal subdivision and order of study’.

Impression (or ‘reception’ as it would be called today) psychologically and pragmatically precedes expression (‘production’).

Principal Subdivision: Spoken and Written Skills Marcel’s four branches of skills ( Hearing, Speaking, Reading, and Writing)

He was the first to develop a coherent and educationally responsible methodology of language teaching derived from an analysis of the activity itself and its relationship to other branches of knowledge.


One of the crucial characteristics of the ‘method of nature’ is that ‘the mind should be impressed with the idea before it takes cognizance of the sign that represents it.

He means that the comprehension of meaning precedes the acquisition of the linguistic elements used in its communication.

Marcel’s belief in the precedence of impression over expression implied the prior importance of the two impression ‘branches’ (reading and hearing) over the two expression ‘branches’ (speaking and writing) in his design for a ‘Rational Method’ of language teaching.


He also Distinguishes Between ‘Analytic’ and ‘synthetic’ methods of instruction.

Analytic methods (i.e. ‘methods of nature’) start from example, practice, and experience, and then move on to general truths by a process of induction: ‘The analytical method brings the learner in immediate contact with the objects of study; it presents to him models for decomposition and imitation.

The synthetical method disregard', example and imitation; it turns the attention of the learner to principles and rules, in order to lead him, by an indirect course, to the objects of study’.


The ‘good method’ will comprise both analysis and synthesis, but in different proportions depending on the characteristics of the learner and the relation-ship between the immediate learning task and the general aims of education.

Method of Nature: The child learning it’s mother tongue.

His advice to the teacher is familiar: ‘The instructor must frequently repeat the same expressions, and always accompany them with looks, tones, gestures, and actions which explain them.


Pronunciation did not matter After extensive experience of listening, the cor-rect

pronunciation in spoken expression would come easily and naturally.

Marcel’s main point is that reading is a cognitive process whereby meaning is imposed on written symbols

Smith (1978) ‘readers must bring meaning to print rather than expect to receive meaning from it’.


In other words, the learner would move straight from meaning to print and vice versa without an intervening process of ‘decoding to sound’.

Individuals Reformers (Thomas Prendergast)

Thomas Prendergast ‘Mastery System’

Proposed the first structural syllabus (arranging grammatical structures so that the easiest was taught first)

He went further and observed what children were doing and the learning processes they appeared to be using

He used detached sentences as his basic learning data


To Him the crucial feature of language was the capacity of human beings to generate an infinite number of sentences from a finite set of means. (Generative Principle)

Mastery System: The mastery of languages, or the art of Speaking foreign languages idiomatically.

He noticed that small infants inter-pret the meaning of language by making use of other information available to them in the wider context, what people do, how they look, their gestures and facial expressions.


Children, he noticed, learn ready-made ‘chunks’ of language, ‘pre-fabs’ as they have been called in recent times, and weave them into their utterances: ‘they employ sentences in which will be found many words which they do not thoroughly understand, and some common phrases, the precise meaning of which they do not, and need not, and perhaps never will comprehend, because they puzzle the grammarian himself’.


He noticed that students learn the sentences which contain the most frequently used items of the language.

The ‘mastery sentences’ were, as we have noted, deliberately ‘packed’ with linguistic information. This gives them an unfortunate air of unreality.


Prendergast’s seven teaching steps: Step 1: required the memorization of five or six

sentences making up about one hundred words altogether. The basic aim was a correct pronunciation and a fluent control of the model sentences. Lessons should be very short, but as frequent as possible. No books were permitted and the learner imitated the teacher. Meaning was taught by glossing the sentences in the mother tongue. All attempts at conscious analysis or ‘grammar’ were ruled out since the aim was unconscious mastery not ‘understanding of structure’.


Step 2: learners work on written language. Step 3 and 4: are concerned with the manipulation of

the model sentences (‘evolutions’) and the acquisition of further models.

Steps 5, 6, and 7: the development of reading and conversation skills.


He made considerable use of translation but insisted that it should be ‘cursory obser-vation, not close study— habituation not investigation’.

He came to the same basic conclusions as West—the need for sim-plicity, a small, carefully selected minimum vocabulary and a graded set of materials.

Individuals Reformers (François Gouin)

François Gouin ‘Series Method’

Painful experience in learning German Tried to memorize a German grammar book and a list of

248 irregular German verbs

Observed his three-year old nephew Came up with the following insights

Children use language to represent their conceptions. Language is a means of thinking, of representing the

world to oneself.


Series METHOD: a method that taught learners directly (without translation) and conceptually (without grammatical rules and explanations) a “series” of connected sentences that are easy to percieve.

Emphasized presenting each item in context and using gestures to supplement verbal meaning

Taught learners directly a series of connected sentences.

Ex. I stretch out my arm. I take hold of the handle. I open the door. I pull the door.


Gouin’s central concept was that the structure of a language text reflected the structure of the experience it described.

he believed that ‘sequentiality’ was the primary feature of experience and that all events could be described in terms of a ‘series’ of smaller component events.

He also argued that describing experiences of this kind was intrin-sically motivating.


He claimed four particular advantages for his method: 1. Each phrase expressing a detail, a new fact, the

repetition of the same subjects and same complements, has not the character of an ordinary repetition, of a repetition pure and simple. Owing to this new detail, this step made in advance in each phrase, neither tediousness nor fatigue is m be feared.

2. This natural repetition of the same nouns, this constant and periodic return of the thought towards the same object, this reiterated effort on the representative or visualizing faculty upon the same idea, is not all this the graver’s tool which engraves the ideas and their expressions upon the memory?


3. This same repetition, this perpetual recurrence of the same sounds, is not this the essential condition, is not this the most sure and solid guarantee of a good pronunciation?

4. The listener, feeling himself safe in this repetition of subjects and complements, turns the principal effort of his attention quite naturally upon the verb. But the verb, which is the soul of the phrase, the most important and precious element of the sentence, is at the same time the most difficult to conquer and to keep.


The repetition of the nouns, although anything but ‘natural’, does have the effect that he intended, namely to concentrate the learners’ attention on the verbs, which, in repres-enting the events of the situation, have an almost mystical significance as ‘the soul of the phrase’.

Drawback of Gouin’s system: Excessive use of third-person in his dialogue.

Reform Movement (Principles)

Principles of Reform Movement: (Vietor and Franke)

Three main principles:

1) Primacy of speech

2) The centrality of connected text as kernel of teaching-learning process

3) Priority of an oral classroom methodology


Primacy of Speech: much more prominent role for the teaching of pronunciation, supported by the new knowledge of phonetics.

Connected text: texts were expected to do two things at once. On the one hand they had to be coherent and interesting in their own right, but at the same time they had to function as the repository of the foreign language grammar which the students were expected to extract ‘inductively’.

Oral Methodology: focus on target language.


To reform movement ‘Translation’ is a complex notion which means different things in different contexts of language learning, two of which stand out as particularly crucial.

The first of these is the use of the mother tongue as an aid to the comprehen-sion of a foreign language text.

The second sense of ‘translation’ is the conversion of texts in the mother- tongue into foreign-language texts ‘with the same meaning’, an activity with much more serious pedagogical consequences than glossing.


Composition exercises offered a more valuable exercise as well as being closer to the real use of language in everyday life, while translation into the foreign language was ‘an art which is inappropriate for the school classroom’.

Reform Movement (Klinghart Experiment)

Klinghart Experiment

In the early stages, writing the text on the board was no great hardship since the class spent four lessons on each new sentence.

Pronunciation was of central importance, so the class listened while the teacher read the sentence aloud a couple of times, and repeated it until they could say it fluently.

Reform Movement (Klinghart Experiment )

Klinghart began to teach the children how to ask and answer comprehension questions on the text and also how to extend them to topics in their own lives and experience.

It is at this point that the Reform Method really begins to take off with question-and-answer work, discussion, retelling the story, and so on, all of it conducted in English.

Reform Movement (Roles of Phonetics)

Roles of Phonetics

Phonetics: a mixture of advanced technology and of pure philological science.

Abercrombie: phonetics is not identical with phonetic trans-cription.

IPA (International phonetics Association): an alphabet developed with the intention of enabling students and linguists to learn and to record the pronunciation of language accurately.

Reform Movement (Roles of Phonetics )

An aim of IPA was to provide a unique symbol for each distinctive sound in a language.

Jespersen, Passy, Ellis, Sweet, Jones were those who worked on IPA.

Reform Movement (The Applied Linguistics)

The Applied Linguistics:

The application of linguistic to the study and improvement of language teaching, learning, and planning, communication between groups, system of communication, translating and interpreting, and lexicography.


Sweet’s overall aim in The Practical Study of Languages, It is divided into three main sections.

1.The first (Chapters 2-7 ) deals in detail with the teaching of phonetics and its practical application in pronunciation teaching and the use of transcription, culminating in a statement of his fundamental principle: ‘start with the spoken language’.


2.The next seven chapters contain a superbly sustained and coolly logical exploration of methodological principles and practices covering the five major areas of practical language learning: grammar, vocabulary, the study of texts, transla-tion, and conversation.

3. The book closes with a series of essays on specific topics such as the study of a foreign literature, the learning of classical and what he calls ‘remoter’ languages, and the original investigation of unwritten languages.


The Study begins with the uncompromising statement that ‘all study of language must be based on phonetics’.

Phonetics provides an analytic framework and a practical methodology for the acquisition of an accurate pronunciation. Secondly, it offers a more system of sound-notation than traditional orthography reliable, and, finally, it serves as the scientific discipline on which a principled approach to the training of language teachers can be built.


What Sweet had in mind were the basic phonemic contrasts in the language, as his examples, man/men, head/ had, show quite clearly.

Sweet adopted the theory of psychology, namely associationism. It meant that the learner’s central task was to form and maintain correct associations both between linguistic elements within the language, and between these elements and the outside world.


Sweet’s ‘inductive’ teaching of grammar. What he did not mean was a process of ‘discovery’ on the part of the learner, or, as this notion was called at the time, ‘invention’.

The inductive approach meant in practice that teachers should collar examples of the new grammar from the text, demonstrate and explain how they worked, and help pupils to draw the appropriate conclusions.


Sweet believed in using natural texts, and would probably have approved of the modern ‘authentic text’ movement.

Sweet’s system of grading was based on a functional typology of texts, starting from descriptive ones, which he believed were the simplest linguistic-ally, moving to narratives and, finally, dialogues. Descriptions fulfilled his four criteria for good teaching texts: they were direct, clear, simple, and familiar.


Sweet drew the threads of his methodology together in a graded curricu-lum consisting of five stages.

First, there was the Mechanical Stage during which the learner concentrated on acquiring a good pronunciation and becoming familiar with phonetic transcription.

The second, was Grammatical Stage. The learner began to work on the texts, gradually building up his knowledge of the grammar and acquiring a basic vocabulary.


The third, Idiomatic Stage dealt almost exclusively with the learner’s lexical develop-ment. This completed the basic course.

Stages Four and Five (Literary and Archaic respectively) were university-level studies devoted to literature and philology.

Natural methods of languageteaching (Berlitz)

Berlitz (Direct Method):

Learning a language through ‘constant conversation’.

The communicative language teaching methods have been known by a variety of labels (Natural Method, Conversation Method, Direct Method, Communi-cative Approach, and so on).


Blackie’s four points about natural or direct methods of language teaching. Teach the spoken language first, relate the words of the new language directly to their referents in the outside world, practice, and work as hard as possible to gain and keep the learner’s interest.


Blackie outlines his eighteen-step syllabus for ‘a well-ordered system of linguistic study’:

Steps 1-4: The teacher should start with objects, and get the learner to repeat them. The new words should then be written on the blackboard, and practiced along with ‘a few turns and variations’ introduced ‘ever and anon’.

Step 5: Writing should be introduced, ‘offering its tangible body as a sort of test to examine the more vague and fleeting element of speech’.


Step 6: extended listening practice in the form of ‘short and easy lectures’ on ‘any object of natural history, a picture, a map, or any thing that admits of being described in few and simple sentences’. Harold Palmer called it ‘subconscious comprehension’.

Step 7: ‘Grammar may now be introduced, or rather educed out of the preceding practice’. the ‘inductive approach to grammar teaching’

Steps 8-18: a graded reading scheme starting with simple materials ‘suited to the stage of linguistically progress where the pupil stands’ and. interesting for him to read. ‘It is on this vital point that we see learned and excellent persons most apt to err’

Natural methods of languageteaching (Rousseau and Pestalozzi)

Rousseau and Pestalozzi

Pestalozzi’s ‘object lessons’ Rousseau’s fundamental belief was that Nature

provides the basis for rearing, And child should experiences life and the natural universe directly through the senses, a process which leads to an understanding of its deeper meaning through reflection and carefully structured talk with his ever-present and all-knowing tutor.


Society is a distraction, but spoken communication with his guardian is the only way to genuine comprehension for the young child.

Reading on the other hand is the primary cause of confusion, error, and unhappiness since it creates a fondness for words at the expense of meanings.

Rousseau’s opposition to literacy for young learners was extended to all forms of language teaching.


Pestalozzi’s ‘Object lessons’ begin with the focused contemplation of an everyday object like a cup. The children are then encouraged to explore every aspect of the object through sequences of questions and answers: ‘What is it made of?’, ‘How big is it?’, ‘What can it be used for?’, ‘What color is it?’, ‘Are all cups alike?’, etc., the purpose being to elicit meaning in advance of the language required to express it.

Natural methods of languageteaching (The origins of the Direct Method)

Sauveur followed two basic principles. The first was only to ask what he called ‘earnest questions'. What he meant was genuine questions, not in the sense that he was seeking information he did not possess, but in the sense that he was genuinely looking for an answer. There is a view at the present time that the only genuine classroom questions are ones to which the teacher does not already know the answer, like ‘What’s the time, please?’


Sauveur’s second principle of linguistic organization in the use of class-room language was coherence: 'to connect scrupulously the questions in such a manner that one may give rise to another’.

Kroeh condemned the Natural Method because ‘the “natural method” is not the process by which children learn from their mothers. It is, or ought to be, a great deal better than that, though based upon it. It is natural in its basis; but highly artificial in its development’.


Kroeh makes two further points in his perceptive review that influence the development and wider application of ‘natural methods’.

1. The first is the common complaint that ‘the conversation necessarily turns upon trivial subjects’.

2. Kroeh’s second point is that ‘the teacher is required to do a disproportionate share of the work’.

Natural methods of languageteaching (The origins of the Direct Method) Berlitz’s some direction to teachers: The teacher’s

directions are very clear and straightforward: no trans-lation under any circumstances, a strong emphasis on oral work, avoidance of grammatical explanations until late in the course, and the maximum use of question-and-answer techniques.

The Berlitz Method of Teaching Languages’ which gave three reasons for avoiding transla-tion:


1) translation wastes valuable language learning time which should be devoted entirely to the foreign language

2) translation encourages mother-tongue interference

3) all languages are different (‘every language has its peculiarities, its idiomatic expressions and turns, which cannot possibly be rendered by translation’).

Natural methods of languageteaching (The origins of the Direct Method) Kroeh describes the early Berlitz English course in great

detail. It was in two parts, each subdivided into two sections.

The opening section of Part I began with the objects in the classroom followed by to be and the most common adjectives {big, small, thin, thick, etc.). Other vocabulary items that could be taught ostensively (parts of the body, clothing, etc.) were introduced next as well as prepositional relationships.


Lexical verbs appeared from Lesson 5 onwards but the alphabet was withheld until Lesson 8, a very unfamiliar procedure for a nineteenth-century language course. The second section of Part I introduced simple texts, which were continued, along with everyday dialogues, in Part II. Most of the classwork consisted of question-and-answer activities, always, of course, in the foreign language. Berlitz wrote a number of short reference grammars to accompany his most popular courses. Compared with Sauveur’s intuitive style, the Berlitz Method was simple, systematic, ordered, and replicable.

Berlitz (The Direct Method)

• Posited by Charles Berlitz

Second language learning is similar to first language learning

Emphasis on

- oral interaction

- spontaneous use of language

- no translation

- little if any analysis of grammatical rules and structures

Direct METHOD

The principles of the Direct MethodClassroom instruction was conducted in the

target languageThere was an inductive approach to grammarOnly everyday vocabulary was taughtConcrete vocabulary was taught through

pictures and objectsAbstract vocabulary was taught by association

of ideas

The principles of the Direct Method

New teaching points were introduced orally

Communication skills were organized around question-answer exchanges btw. teachers and students

Speech and listening comprehension were taught

Correct pronounciation and grammar were emphasized

Critiques of the Direct Method

Successful in private language schools (small classes, individual attention and intensive study)

Overemphasized the similarites btw FLLand SLL.

Reqired native speakers as teachers

Its success depended on teacher’s skill and personality more than on the methodology itself

English language teaching since 1900:the making of a profession

English language teaching since 1900: the making of a profession

The teaching of English as a foreignor second language

The basic theme of this part is the emergence from within English lan-guage teaching of an autonomous profession with a distinctive contribution to make to language education.

For our present purposes this is a narrative that can be divided into three distinct phases of differing lengths.


The first is a foundation phase (1900-46) which covers nearly half the century and deals with the merging of four contributory strands which came together between 1915 and the start of the Second World War. In 1946 the outcome was publicly recognized as ‘English language teaching’ (ELT).

The second phase (1946-70) is a rather complex middle stage which started with the consolidation of earlier initiatives that had been disrupted by the war, followed during the 1960s by a period of change which radically altered the scope and structure of ELT.


o One of the most far-reaching causes of change was the alteration in the socio-political landscape with the growing influence of the United States alongside the attainment of independence by most of the remaining major colonial terri-tories between 1960 and 1965.

o A second cause was the arrival of applied linguistics as a source of new ideas and priorities at much the same time.


The dominant theme of the third and final phase (1970 onwards) is the way that instruction in a new language can be designed to meet the needs of learners intending to use it for real-life communication.


Phase 1 1900-46: Laying the foundations


by the beginning of the twentieth century English was being taught to speakers of other languages in four educational contexts, two of which were concerned with children at school, and two with adult learners:

Contexts o f English language teaching, Phase 1 1. Secondary schools in Europe. Interest in learning English

rising. Anglicists among leaders of the Reform Movement. The key British contribution was phonetics. Main representative: Daniel Jones (1881-1967).

2. Adult education in Europe. The primary context for Direct Method teaching along Berlitz lines since the 1880s. Native speaker teachers. Main representative: Harold Palmer (1877-1949).


3. Basic schooling in the Empire. To 1920s: English still taught as a ‘quasi-mother-tongue’; 1920s onwards: beginnings of ‘English ;is a second language’. Main representative: Michael West (1888-1973).

4. Adult education in the UK. ‘English for foreigners’. Small numbers until refugee influx in 1930s. Main representative: C. E. Eckersley (1893-1967).


The importance of Context 1 in the ELT story as a whole was its role in introducing a modern ‘applied linguistic’ approach to language teaching methodology based on an understanding of the underlying disciplines of linguistics and psychology.

With Palmer we pass to the second of the four contexts, the teaching of English as a foreign language to adult learners in Europe.

Palmer was the Director of an Institute for Research in English Teaching (IRET)


Phase 2 1946-70: Consolidation and renewal


In broad terms the history of ELT between the end of the Second World War and the 1970s divides into two quite sharply contrasted episodes before and after 1960, the year which became known as ‘The Year of Africa’ when the major period of decolonization started.

In the United Kingdom the first episode was characterized by an atmosphere of continuation and consolidation rather than change.

Until the late 1950s most British efforts were directed towards teaching English as a second language to school children in the colonies.


By contrast language teaching in the United States was enjoying something of a small boom following the interest caused by the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP) during the war.

Both TEFL and TESL contributed to the search for new ideas and ways of doing things, and, although the full effects of change' were not felt until the 1970s


This rather baffling label first appeared in public in the USA in1948 as the by-product of a program of English language teaching led by Charles C. Fries (1887-1967) at the English Language Institute (ELI) founded in 1941 at the University of Michigan. In the early years the term was understood in a more or less literal sense—the descriptive work of professional phoneticians and linguists was passed to ‘applied linguists’ who used this new ‘scientific’ data in making better language teaching materials.


Although in some ways a response to an American initiative, the situ-ational approach was typical of British ELT in its emphasis on the class-room rather than on the linguistics of the method, and it stressed two main points:

firstly, new grammatical structures should be presented in class in simple situations which made their meaning clear

secondly, they should be carefully graded.


1960-70: Renewal In the new climate, research was also back on the menu and ELT

benefited from a number of specific projects, four of which are summarized below. They all attracted government support in some form:

1. The ‘Survey of English Usage’ directed by Randolph Quirk was set up at London University in 1960. The ultimate outcome was the most substantial grammar of English since Jespersen’s: A Grammar of contemporary English (1972) which was later expanded as A Com-prehensive Grammar o f the English Language(1985).


2. London also played host to the ‘Program in Linguistics and English Teaching’ (1964-71), directed by M. A. K. Halliday. This project produced a range of innovative mother-tongue teaching materials for schools, and, in a more descriptive mode, promoted research on the workings of cohesion (Hasan 1968) which were later expanded into a major study, Cohesion in English (Halliday and Hasan 1976).

3. The Scope project (1966-72), which has already been mentioned, that is set up by the Schools Council at the University of Leeds under the direction of John Ridge and June Derrick. Its aim was to produce teaching materials for English as a second language in primary schools.


4. ‘Primary French’ (to use its popular name) was the largest language teaching research enterprise of its day. It started in 1963 and continued until 1974. Funded partly by government (the Schools Council after 1964) and partly by the Nuffield Foundation, it consisted of two projects. The first, a Pilot Scheme run by NFER, was set up to evaluate the proposal that French should be introduced into primary schools, and the second a project to produce course materials: the Nuffield Foundation Teaching Materials Project.


If there is one word that sums up the 1960s like ‘patterns’ in the 1950s and ‘functions’ in the 1970s, it would be ‘situations'. But ‘situations’ were also events like ‘An evening Out’ or ‘A Visit to the Theatre’ depicted in dialogues designed to dis-play a ‘chunk’ of language in use more or less as it actually occurred in real life, and not invented as a device for illustrating meaning.

Television was hugely popular in the 1960s and it seemed to offer an ideal medium for demonstrating language in situations.


Phase 3 1970 to the present day: Language and

communication


In the history of ELT in the 1970s the idea of communication was the main point, which found its way into almost every aspect of the subject: syllabus planning, teaching materials, testing and assessment, and so on.

Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) repres-ented a conscious choice between competing models.

What adult learners were looking for—and the communicative movement was directed at adults in the first instance—was instruction in English which was relevant to their needs and wishes.


And even more important, the activities which they were called upon to practice in the classroom should be representative of the real-life communicative situations that they knew they would have to meet.

General-purpose objectives were dominant in the first major project of the decade, known generally as the Threshold Level Project.

The Threshold Level was more substantial than 'Basic’; it was designed for learners who wanted to finish their courses believing that they could cope reasonably well with the everyday communicational demands that a temporary visit to a foreign country normally entails.


Wilkins (1972) proposed a model which included two kinds of ‘notional categories’, one concerned with the meaning of linguistic forms (‘semantico-grammatical categories’) and the other with the commu-nicative function of utterances in context (‘categories of communicative function’).

In essence the Austin-Searle point is that using language can be a form of action every bit as real as any physical action. Such ‘speech acts’, for example, promising, suggesting, and so on, are linguistically realized in more than one way and learners need to be aware of this.


Three approaches in particular found favor among teachers and course designers:

One was role-playing or simulation where learners either enacted a communicative event from a memorized text, or improvised one from given guidelines.

second was ‘problem solving’ which had considerable appeal in ESP because it carried research connotations.

But probably the most popular model was skill training which had the advantage of representing a reasonably holistic view of learning while at the same time permitting the exercise of specific components.


instead of a tabula rasa on which the patterns of learning were etched by experience, the mind came to be depicted as a mechanism which was for the most part ‘wired up’ for a pre-determined role in life.

S. D. Krashen, an American applied linguist, also stated the comprehension of meaning. ‘All you need is comprehensible input’.

Sitting in front of a TV set listening to the foreign language, for instance, would do nothing for you. Learners need help such as graded comprehension materials, Krashen called it (‘I + 1 ’). He also stressed that learners should not be forced to respond; they should be given time (a ‘silent period’) lasting possibly months. The internalized system did the rest.


N. S. Prabhu said in his theory What was required was the successful completion of what he called a communicative task.

In Prabhu’s tasks children were required to use their powers of inferencing.

This inferencing activity stimulated by the search for meaning in completing the task con-stituted the appropriate cognitive conditions for language acquisition. provided of course that each new task built on the one before (a bit like Krashen’s ‘i+ 1 ’)


From the grammar-translation method onwards, foreign language lessons had a two-part structure: first the new material was presented to the learners and then it was practiced.

With CLT, activities are tripartite lesson design, refer to as ‘PPP’ (presentation, practice and production).

Aspects of English languageteaching since 1900

Aspects of English language teaching

since 1900

Harold Palmer and the teaching of spoken language

Palmer’s career falls into two quite distinct phases.

The first, which ended with his departure for Japan in 1922, was primarily concerned with general principles of language teaching method and course design rather than the specific problems of English language teaching.

The second phase of his life was almost exclusively devoted to English as a foreign language.


For pedagogical purposes, Palmer interpreted langue as ‘language’, i.e. the linguistic system, the grammar; and paroles ‘speech’, i.e. genuine acts of spoken communica-tion.

Coleman shared Michael West’s conviction that reading was the only realistic objective for learners with only a limited amount of study time.

He iden-tified four tone-groups which he related to functionally distinct variants of basic sentence types: statements, questions, commands, and so on.


Palmer’s methodology he constructs a descriptive apparatus that distinguishes

between form and function in an astonishingly modern way His form classes are called miologs (i.e. morphemes),

monologs (word forms), and polylogs (collocations or phrases).

These form classes enter into functional, or, as he calls them, ergonic relationships with each other to create sentences.


At the end of the book he provides an ‘ergonic chart’ for French which, he says, ‘teaches us (1 ) to classify the units of a given language according to their function in the sentence (and) ( 2 ) to build up original (i.e. unknown) units from the smaller known units from which they are composed’.

The learner’s task is to acquire these ‘known units’ (or ‘primary matter’) as the data-base from which an infinite set of sentences (‘secondary matter’) can be generated.


Palmer called his data-base ‘The Microcosm’ and it was in some ways a restatement of Prendergast’s ‘Mastery System’.

the ‘sentence patterns’ had to be presented to the learner in the form of example sentences, sometimes laid out in substitution tables, and sometimes illustrated in specially construct.il teaching texts. In inexpert hands, these ‘illustrative texts’ became so over crammed with examples of the new ‘pattern’ that, as Sweet had warned, they turned into ‘monstrosities’.


The heart of the Scientific Study is the organization of the curriculum or syllabus, the ‘Ideal Standard Program’ as Palmer called it.

He proposed three stages over a four-year school period. First there should be a short Introductory Stage lasting about one school term during which the pupils would learn how to learn a foreign language, and follow a detailed program of pronunciation teaching.


He also had the very interesting notion of starting learners off with what he called ‘subconscious comprehension’.

This was not listening practice in the ordinary sense, but a form of interaction without any pressure for reciprocity. If the learners wanted to participate, they could, but there was no need to do so.

Stage Two, which he called Intermediate , began with the memorization (‘catenization’ as he labelled it) of the basic ‘primary matter’ in the form of oral exercises, drills, and Direct Method speech work activities.


Stage Three, Advanced, was devoted to the use of language in reading, composition, conversation, and other practical skills.

Although the central idea of habitualized speech patterns derived from the Direct Method, many of Palmer’s other views were closer to the Reform Movement. His support for the extended use of phonetic transcription is a case in point.

translation. He did not follow the Berlitz line of ‘never translate’ but took the moderate view that the whole question was a pragmatic one


‘that the withholding of an “official” or authentic translation does not prevent the students from forming faulty associations, but that, on the contrary, such withholding may often engender them.

Habit-formation was, as we have seen, Palmer’s core methodological principle.

Real language-teaching consists, therefore, of building up in the pupil those associative habits which constitute the language to be learned.’ Despite the use of the ubiquitous term ‘habit’, associationism was not a form of ‘behaviorism’, which has much more to do with the status of psychology as a science.


In The Principles of Language-Study Palmer put forward nine fundamental principles of good language teaching and learning, of which habit formation is the most important.

Palmer insisted, a basic difference between the spontaneous capacities of the human being to acquire language naturally and unconsciously on the one hand, and, on the other, the trained or ‘ studial’ capacities of classroom learners which allow them to organize their learning and apply their conscious knowledge to the task in hand.


spontaneous capacities are brought into play in the acquisition of spoken language whereas studial capacities are required in the development of literacy.

Of his eight remaining principles, three relate to habit-formation (accuracy, interest, and the importance of initial preparation ), while the other five have more to do with course design and classroom teaching.

Initial preparation is obviously of basic importance if good speech habits are to be established early in the course, and accuracy must be maintained for the same reason.


Today we should probably call the interest principle ‘motivation’.

Palmer made four points: first is the essential importance of progress. Secondly, the learner ought to understand what is

happening in a language class. The other two points are the importance of a

good relationship between teacher and learner, and the value of games and a variety of class-room activities.


Palmer’s five course-design and teaching principles: ( gradation, proportion, the. multiple line o f

approach, and a rational order o f progression) follow logically from his earlier analysis of the learning process.

‘gradation means passing from the known to the unknown by easy stages’. ‘In the ideally graded course, the student first assimilates a relatively small but exceedingly important vocabulary.’ Only later on does he combine the words into sentences and longer stretches of language.


To Palmer, however, the starting point in acquiring a new language was lexical and not grammatical.

His principle of concreteness was a restatement of the direct method notion of giving examples rather than rules, and trying to teach a foreign language as far as possible through experience as opposed to intellectual discussion—‘teach the language, not about the language’ as a later slogan (not Palmer’s) had it.


Proportion and the multiple line of approach imply a balanced eclecticism but not merely in choosing a bit of this and a bit of that.

Both intensive and extensive reading are needed, for example, both drills and free work, and so on, for different purposes at different times.


Palmer’s rational order of progression: 1. Become proficient in recognizing and in producing foreign

sounds and tones, both isolated and in combinations. 2. Memorize (without analysis or synthesis) a large number

of complete sentences chosen specifically for this purpose by the teacher or by the composer of the course.

3. Learn to build up all types of sentences, both regular and irregular, from ‘working sentence-units’, i.e. ergons, chosen specifically for this purpose by the teacher or by the composer of the course.

4. Learn how to convert ‘dictionary words’, i.e. etymons, into ‘working sentence-units’, i.e. ergons.2


His apparent abandonment of the Reform Movement principle of the connected text in favour of sentence patterns introduced and practiced orally by the teach i tin the classroom meant, as he discovered in Japan, an additional burden on the non-native teacher.

Michael West and the teaching of reading



It seemed to West that there were two main ways in which the reading text' could be improved in order to help the children to achieve more.

The first was to simplify the vocabulary by replacing old-fashioned literary words by mi ire common modern equivalents. This principle, which could be called a ‘lexical selection’ principle (though West did not use the term), was to become a dominant one during the next twenty years.

West’s second and perhaps more important principle of readability could be called a ‘lexical distribution’ principle. Not only were there too main new words overall, but they were packed too closely together. Almost even sentence contained a new item, with the result that both teacher and pupils became frustrated and none of the new words was ever properly practiced,


West’s scheme for a full-scale reading development programme is of particular interest as it envisaged the training of three distinct types of reading strategy.

The first stage, was a vocabu-lary stage in which each new word was introduced carefully and deliberately up to a maximum of about 1,500 words, the figure he decided on for the new Method English Dictionary which defines the meanings of 24,000 entries within a vocabulary of 1,490 words.


The second stage was to concentrate on the development of skills, holding the vocabulary level more or less constant.

At the third stage the student would move on to strategic reading, in particular the use of skimming and scanning techniques.


The Basic issue BASIC (British American Scientific International

Commercial), It is not merely a simplified form of English but a language in its own right. Basic consists of 850 words, as the Richards’ quote says, and a small number of standard grammar rules.

The 850 Basic words are composed of 150 items representing Qualities, 600 representing Things, and 100 representing Operations.


Ogden into devising a kind of ‘notional grammar’ of English in which every-thing could be expressed by translating it into terms of relationships between Things (with or without modifying Qualities) and Operations. The principal practical benefit was to reduce the number of lexical verbs to a small handful of operational items. In the end he decided on only fourteen (come, get, give, go, keep, let, make, put, seem, take, do, say, see, and send)plus two auxil-iaries (be and have) and two modals (will and may). The propositional content of any statement can be expressed in a sentence containing only these operators. This allows the total number of items to be learnt to be reduced to 850. Or so it would seem.


Secondly, Ogden permits his Operator verbs to collocate with his Operator prepositions to form compounds such as get in/on/ off, etc.

The Basic system depends on the principle of reducing the number of different dictionary items to a minimum and extending their use to a maximum.

The strongest argument against Basic by English language teachers was that it produced ‘unnatural’ English.


The Carnegie General Service List (GSL) In its final published form the GSL contained

frequency statistics, but these were added later. The Criteria of GSL: 1 Word frequency 2 Structural value (all structure words included) 3 Universality (words likely to cause offence locally excluded) 4 Subject range (no specialist items) 5 Definition words (for dictionary-making, etc.) 6 Word-building capability 7 Style (‘colloquial’ or slang words excluded).


The practical application of word-frequency counts to the production of language teaching materials rested on the assumption that common words must also be useful words.


Starting from the situations in which adult students were likely to use the foreign language they were learning, the project team identified a set of predictable needs up to a level described as the ‘threshold’, after which needs become increasingly personal and therefore unpredictable. The ‘Threshold Level’ was limited mostly to pub-lic contexts like shops, entertainment centers, travel facilities, etc. which provided ‘settings’ in which the foreign language would be encountered. In a setting such as a petrol station, for instance, the main event would be buying fuel and vocabulary items like petrol, oil, litre, full, etc. would be useful to know.

The Audiolingual Method (1950’s)

Outbreak of the World War IIHeightened the need to become orally

proficient “the Army Method” (an oral-based approach

to langauge learning)Charles Fries and Leonard Bloomfield

(structural linguist) İdentify the grammatical structures and the basic

sentence patterns Practice these patterns by systematic attention to

pronounciation and intensive oral drilling

Features of ALM

New material is presented in dialogue form There is dependency on mimicry, memorization of set

phrases, and overlearning. There is little or no grammatical explanation. Grammar

is taught inductively. Great importance is attached to pronunciation. Very little use of the mother tongue by teachers is

permitted. Successful responses are reinforced. There is great effort to get students to produce error-

free utterances.

How ALM differs from the Direct method

ALM- grammar or structure is the starting point. Language was identified with speech and speech was approached through language

DM- No basis in applied linguistics learners are exposed to the language, use it and gradually absorb its grammatical structures

ALM differs from the Direct Method in that vocabulary

and grammar are carefully selected and graded, and it’s based on behaviorist habit-formation theory.

Structural-situational Language Teaching (1960’s-1080’s)

Pragmatic version of Audiolingualism (UK) Language presentation and practice was

situationalized All techniques of ALM + situation (use of concrete

objects, pictures, and relia together with gestures and actions)

Speaking and listening (most important) Gave rise to the idea of PPP (presentation, practice,

production) PPP Target item presented

Semi-controlled practice Free practice (role-play)

The Designer Method of the 1970’s

Chomsky- drew the attention to the “deep structure” of language

Earl Stevick- take account the affective and interpersonal nature of language learning and teaching

Designer Methods (Humanistic Approaches) 1970’s 1980’s

Suggestopedia (Lazanov)Used relaxation as means of retaining

knowledge and materialMusic plays a pivotal role (Baroque music

with its 60 beats per minute and its specific rythm created “relaxed concentration” which led to “superlearning)

The Silent Way (Caleb Gattegno)

Characterized by a problem-solving approach. Develops independence and autonomy and

encourages students to cooperate with each other. Learning is facilitated if the learner discovers or

creates rather than remembers and repeats what is to be learned.

Learning is facilitated by accompanying (mediating) physical objects).

Learning is facilitated by problem solving the material to be learned.

Humanistic Approaches

Community Language Teaching (developed by Charles A. Curran) Applies psychological counseling techniques to learning

Learners in a classroom were not regarded as a “class” but as a “group” in need of certain therapy and counseling.

Basic procedures of CLL derives from counselor-client relationship

Open interpersonal communication and the role of supportive community was emphasized

CLL can also be linked to language alternation used in bilingual education (lesson presented first in NL and again in the SL)

Total Physical Response (James Asher)

Adult second language learning as a parallel process to child first language acquisition

Undemanding in terms of linguistic production

Attempts to teach language through physical motor activity (by the use of imperatives)

1980’s Interactive views of language teaching

Communicative Language Teaching Learners learn a language through using it to

communicate Authentic and meaningful communication should be

the goal of classroom activities Fluency is an important dimension of

communication Communication involves the integration of different

langauge skills Learning is a process of creative construction and

involves trial and error

Spin-off approaches of CLT

These approaches share the same basic set of principles of CLT, but which spell out philosophical details or envision instructioanl practices in somewhat different waysThe Natural ApproachCooperative Language TeachingContent- Based Language TeachingTask-Based Language Teaching

Language Teaching Methodology


Theories of Language and Learning

Instructional Design Features

Observed Teaching Practices

ObjectivesSyllabusActivities

Roles of TeachersRoles of Learners

Materials


Nature of language Structural View of

Language Functional View of

Language Interactional View of

Language

Nature of Language Learning Process-oriented theories

What are the psychological and cognitive processes involved (habit formation, induction, inferencing, generalization)

Condition-oriented theories

What are the conditions that need to be met for these learning processes to be activated?

Your understanding of what language is and how the learner learns will determine to a large extent, your philosophy of education, and how you teach English: your teaching style, your approach, methods and classroom technique.

Language is a system of structurally related elements for the coding of meaning.

What dimension of language is prioritized?

Grammatical dimension

What needs to be taught? Phonological units Grammatical units and oprations Lexical items

Language is a vehicle for the expression of functional meaning.What dimesion of language is proritized?

semantic and communicative dimension of language

What needs to be taught? functions, notions of language

Language is a vehicle for the realization of interpersonal relations and for the performance of social transactions between individualsWhat dimension of language is prioritized?

Interactive dimension of language

What needs to be taught?Patterns of moves, acts negotiation and

interaction found in conversational exchanges.


Nature of language Structural View of

Language Functional View of

Language Interactional View of

Language

Nature of Language Learning Process-oriented theories

What are the psychological and cognitive processes involved (habit formation, induction, inferencing, generalization)

Condition-oriented theories

What are the conditions that need to be met for these learning processes to be activated?




Instructional Design Features

Observed Teaching Practices

ObjectivesSyllabusActivities

Roles of TeachersRoles of Learners

Materials

Elements and Subelements of Method

Approach Assumptions and beliefs

about language teaching and learning

Design Objectives Syllabus Activities Roles of Teachers Roles of Learners Materials

Procedure Implementational Phase

A method is theoretically related to an approach, is organizationally determined by a design, and is practically realized in procedure

Definition of language: A language is considered to be a

system of communicating with other people using sounds, symbols and words in expressing a meaning, idea or thought.

History of language teaching by Howatt

Education

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