What's the best way to teach languages?
According to academic research, linguists have demonstrated that there is not one single best method for everyone in all contexts, and that no one teaching method is inherently superior to the others.
Each method has a different focus or priority, so let’s look at what this means in practical terms in the classroom.
- Grammar Translation: Translate from English into your native language. This method grew from the traditional method of teaching Latin and Greek. The method is based on analysis of the written language using translation exercises, reading comprehension and written imitation of texts. Learning mainly involves the mastery of grammatical rules and memorization of vocabulary lists.
- Direct Method (also called Natural Method): Student learns by associating meaning directly in English. It’s based on the active involvement of the student in both speaking and listening to the new language in realistic everyday situations. The process consists of a gradual acquisition of grammatical structure and vocabulary. The learner is encouraged to think in the target language rather than translate. They hears and uses the language before seeing it written.
- Audio-Lingual Method (This self-teaching method is also known as the Aural-Oral method.): Listening and speaking drills and pattern practice only in English. The learning is based on repetition of dialogues and phrases about every day situations. These phrases are imitated, repeated, and drilled to make the response automatic. Reading and writing are both reinforcements of what the learner practices.
- Cognitive Code Approach (Grammar rules): English grammar rules deduced and then understood in context
Comparing the Language Training Methods
The Direct Method gives the student the ability to communicate quickly because she is encouraged to be creative during practice. It gives, by far, the widest range of capability to understand what another person says to you and in developing your capability to speak. This is the method of choice for instruction with a live trainer and where speaking and listening are most important.
The Grammar-Translation method requires the learner to spend a lot of time understanding the language structure. Listening and speaking suffer because of this. Understanding the structure is helpful in reading and particularly in writing. In grammar–translation classes, students learn grammatical rules and then apply those rules by translating sentences between the target language and the native language. Grammar and vocabulary are emphasized throughout. This is the method of choice when the student’s goal is to achieve a high level of writing and reading ability in a foreign language, versus speaking and listening.
The Audio-Lingual Method also allows the learner to communicate quickly but within the limited range that the repetition allows. It improves comprehension only if the speaker uses phrases that the learner has studied. Reading is limited, and an understanding of how to use the language is very limited. This is the method that is used when a live trainer is not available.
Misconceptions
Communicative Method: Learning a language is interactive, co-operative, learner-centered and content-based, but the approach does not mean that learning a second language involves just ‘conversation‘.
The Audio-lingual Method: This extensive memorization, repetition and over-learning of patterns was the key to the method’s success, as students could often see immediate results, but it was also its weakness. The method’s insistence on repetition and memorization of standard phrases ignored the role of context and knowledge in language learning. As the study of linguistics developed, it was discovered that language was not acquired through a process of habit formation, and that errors were not necessarily bad. It was also claimed that the methodology did not deliver an improvement in communicative ability that lasted over the long term.
Grammar Translation Methods: There is not usually any listening or speaking practice, and very little attention is placed on pronunciation or any communicative aspects of the language. The skill exercised is reading, and then only in the context of translation. Because speaking or any kind of spontaneous creative output was missing from the curriculum, students would often fail at speaking or even letter writing in the target language.
Modern Teaching Methods – Fitting the method to the learner, not vice versa
The modern language teacher doesn’t follow one rigid method, but applies the Principled Eclecticism approach – fitting the method to the learner, not vice versa.
This means choosing the techniques and activities that are appropriate for each particular task, context and learner, with a focus on motivation and helping learners become independent and inspired to learn more. Through guided discovery, language learners should not expect the teacher to deliver everything to them neatly packaged, wielding some new magic teaching method, but should take charge of their own learning and jump in.
Self-directed: This style is selected by students who make independent decisions, have a good understanding of how they learn and who are self-motivated. These students are beginning to individualize their learning and to compact the curriculum. They usually complete the unit several periods before the Command and Task students which results in their having Earned Time.
Traditional education focuses on teaching, not learning. However, most of what one learns before, during, and after attending schools is learned without it being taught to us. A child learns such fundamental things as how to walk without being taught. Adults learn most of what they use at work or at leisure while at work or leisure. Most of what is taught in classroom settings is forgotten, and much or what is remembered is irrelevant.