Approaches and methods in language Teaching

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The Audio – lingual method

The Audio-Lingual Method Was Widely Used In The United States And Other Countries In The 1950ُs And 1960ُs But It Is Still Used In Some Programs Today.

The Structural view of language in the view behind the audio-lingual method. Particular emphasis was laid mastering the building blocks of language and learning the rules for combining them.

It is based on behaviorism and included the following principles.

Language learning is habit-formation
Mistakes are bad and should be avoided, as they make bad habits
Language skills are learned more effectively if they are presented orally first, then in written form
Analogy is a better foundation for language learning than analysis
The meaning of words can be learned only in a linguistic and cultural context
Some of the objectives of the audio-lingual method are:
Accurate pronunciation and grammar
Ability to respond quickly and accurately in speech situations
Knowledge of sufficient vocabulary to use with grammar patterns.

Audiolingualism uses a structural syllabus along with dialogues and drills. The procedures in an audio-lingual course include:

Students hear a model dialogue
Students repeat each line of the dialogue
Certain key words or phrases may be changed in the dialogue
Key structures from the dialogue serve as the basis for pattern drills of different kinds
The students practice substitutions in the pattern drills

Reading Method

This method is selected for practical and academic reasons. For specific uses of the language in graduate or scientific studies. The method is for people who do travel abroad and reading is the only usable skill in a foreign language.

The priority studying the target language is first, reading ability and second, current and/or historical knowledge of the country where the target language is spoken. Only the grammar necessary for reading comprehension and fluency is taught. Minimal attention is paid to pronunciation or gaining conversational skills in the target language.

From the beginning, a great amount of reading is done in L2, both in and out of class. The vocabulary of the early reading passages and texts is strictly controlled for difficulty. Vocabulary is expanded as quickly as possible, since the acquisition of vocabulary is considered more important than grammatical skill. Translation reappears in this method as a respectable classroom procedure related to comprehension of the written text.

The main concern of teachers is insuring that their students become fluent readers. When children are learning to read they often sound out words letter by letter, in numerable hesitation, add words not on the page, omit words altogether, or are orally dependent upon pictures as an aid to word recognition. Readers may mispronounce words and stop both to repeat words or to go back and self-correct, all in efforts to make sense of or comprehend the passages. For many, learning to read is thus an extremely difficult task, to which lack of fluency attests.

The contention is that the reading points described above are indicative of normal reading development and distinguish beginning readers from readers who are more fluent and skilled. Reading is an involved and complex process and many factors interact to inhibit and prevent reading success. It is, however, through increased understanding not only of the factors that influence reading development but also what is involved in the process of reading that the reading behaviors are placed in proper perspective.

This part, therefore, discusses both the difficulties faced by beginning readers as they acquire fluency and the complexity of the reading task.

Discussion begins with an overview of past and prevailing models of the reading process and the introduction of an interactive model of reading.

Subsequently, within the framework of the interactive model factors which influence and affect reading acquisition including the orthographical, lexical and syntactical demands text in relation to either the cultural experiences or semantic knowledge of students will be discussed, together with implications for reading instruction.

Reading Models: Bottom-Up And Top-Down

There has been extended controversy among reading authorities about the method to teach beginning reading, the essence of which centers upon whether the first emphasis in word recognition instruction should be phonics or meaning-based. In the one view of reading, learners are perceived as being almost passive decoders of visual stimuli, while in the other, learners are viewed as active participants who construct their encodings.

It is useful to think of two views or teaching reading as a dichotomy, as falling into two main camps. One camp consists of authorities who contend that the process of reading begins with letters and their sounds (phonics). These experts support what is termed a code-emphasis, text-driven or "bottom-up" model to explain the reading process. The other camp, in opposition consists of those authorities who perceive reading as chiefly "externally guided", who subscribe to a hypothesis- tests, or "top-down" model of the reading process. In the media, the implications of these two opposing views are often polarized in terms of what they mean for instruction, represented by: (1) those who advocate phonics approach to teaching beginning reading and (2) those that would prefer meaning as the base, often critics maintain, fostering a "look-say" approach.

To elaborate, a phonics-based or "bottom-up" model of the reading process portrays processing in reading as processing in serial fashion, from letters to sounds, to words, to meaning.

Taken from this perspective, the implications for reading instruction are that students need to begin reading by learning the letter names, associating the letter names with their sounds, and then be shown how to learn the sounds together into words. The reading system, from a "bottom-up" perspective, functions in sequence as follows. First, the grapheme information enters through the visual system and is transformed at the final level from a letter character to a sound that is form a grapheme representation to a phonemic representation. Second, the phonemic representation is converted; at level two, into a word. The meaning units or words then pass on to the level-TPWSGWTAU (the place where sentences go when they are understood) and meaning is assimilated into the knowledge system. Input is thus transformed from low-level sensory information to meaning through a series of successively higher-level encodings, with information flow that is entirely "bottom-up" , no higher level processing have influence on any lower level processing(Rummelhart,1977).

But other theorists disagree. For them, efficient reading does not result from the precise perception and identification of all the elements in a word, but from skill in selecting the fewest, most productive cues necessary. These authorities contend that readers have a prior sense of what could be meaningful in the text, based upon their previous experiences and their knowledge about language. Readers are not confined only to one source of information-the letters before their eyes, but have at their disposal two other important kinds of information which are available at the same time: semantic cues (meaning), and syntactic cues (grammatical or sentence sense).

Thus according to theorists in this camp, what readers bring to the text separately in terms of both their prior knowledge of the topic and their knowledge about language, assists them in predicting what the upcoming words will be. They read the print, assign a tentative hypothesis about the identity of the upcoming word and use meaning to confirm prediction. If meaning is not constructed, the reader resample's the text and forms a new hypothesis. Thus readers only briefly sample the "flutters" on the page in order to confirm word identity.

In this model it is evident that the flow of information proceeds from the top downward so that the process of word identification is dependent upon meaning first. Thus the higher level processes embodied in past experience (semantics) and the reader's knowledge of the language pattern(syntax) interact with and direct the flow of information, just as listeners may anticipate what the upcoming words of speakers might be. The reader gets actively engaged in predicting or hypothesis-testing when progressing through the text. This view identifies reading asa kind of "psycholinguistic guessing game"(Goodman, 1970).

In general, it may be said that there are two opposing theories regarding what is involved in the reading process. One theory envisions reading as a data-driven process("Bottom-up") in which: (1) letters are transformed into phonemic representations;(2) phonemic representations are then transformed into word representations;(3)words are next assigned to meaning;(4) words are combined into meaning-bearing sentences;(5)meaningful associations are formed; and(6)information is finally stored. The contrasting theory views reading as a top-down" process in which higher level of conceptual processes direct word recognition and the reader: (1) reads the print ;( 2) makes predictions as to what word might be based upon prior knowledge of the topic and sentence sense; (3) reads to confirm the hypothesis; (4) constructs meaning; and (5) assimilates new knowledge.

Audio- visual method

In the mid 1960 ُs, three new technological aids came into general use in the classroom-language laboratory, portable tape-recorder and film-strip projector. All these were greeted with euphoria in all modern language departments. Extensive use of tapes and equipment was revolutionary for language teachers. Instead of buying sets of books to equip a class, teachers were demanding most expensive boxes of film-strips and sets of tapes. Blackout facilities and electric points had to be installed.

The potential offered to language teaching by tape-recorder was enormous-now possible to bring native speaking voices into classroom.

Editing and self-recording facilities were now available. Tapes could be used with tape recorder or in language laboratory .early audio-visual courses consisted of taped dialogues, accompanied by film-strips which were designed to act as visual cues to elicit responses in the foreign language.

Most audio-visual courses consisted of short dialogues and sets of recorded drills. This method was also based on a behaviorist approach, which held that language is acquired by habit formation. Based on the assumption that foreign language is basically a mechanical process and it is more effective if spoken form precedes written form. The stress was on oral proficiency and carefully-structured drilled sequences (mimicry/memorization) and the idea that quality and permanence of learning are in direct proportion to the amount of practice carried out. But early enthusiasm for audio-visual materials and language laboratory soon cooled as teachers gradually recognized limitations of this approach.

Disadvantages of audio-visual method

This method is based on repetition, speech is standardized and pupils turn into parrots that can reproduce many things but never create anything new or spontaneous. Pupils become better and better at pattern practice but were unable to use the patterns fluently in natural speech situations.
Mechanical drills of early audio-visual approach were criticized as being not only boring and mindless but also counter-productive, if used beyond initial introduction to new structure.
Audio-visual materials were open to some sort of misuse. There was a tendency to regard Audio-visual materials as a teaching method in them, not as a teaching aid.
It soon became clear to teachers that audio-visual approach could only assist in presentation of new materials. More subtle classroom skills were needed for pupils to assimilate material and use it creatively. This final vital phase was often omitted by teachers. New technology caught publishers and text-book writers unprepared-very few commercial materials were available in the early stages. Those that did exist stressed oral and aural skills and didn’t develop reading and writing skills.
New materials necessitated extensive use of equipment with all associated problems of black-out, extension leads, carrying tape-recorders from classroom to classroom.

Some schools set up specialist-language rooms, but still had to set up projectors and find places on tapes. Equipment could break down, projector lamps explode, tapes tangle-not sophisticated equipment of today. Hardware involved extra time, worry and problems, and, for this reason alone, its use gradually faded away.

Series of classroom studies threw doubt on claims made for language laboratory. They showed that this costly equipment did not improve performance of beginners, when compared with the same materials used on single tape-recorder in classroom.

Audio-visual approach marked the start of the technological age in language teaching and it did introduce important new element and emphasized the need for visual presentation and possibility of eliciting language from visual cues. It placed far more weight on the use of foreign language in classroom by both teacher and pupil, and the language used was of far greater practicality.

More gifted and energetic teachers used new courses with great success-moved forward to open-ended question and answer work and extended dialogue, designed their own supplementary materials, exercises and worksheets. However, teachers where disillusioned and dissatisfied with the new method-at a time when secondary education was being reorganized with the advent of comprehensive schools.

The phonetic method

Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century there had been considerable linguistic "activities". Descriptive phonetics was pursued by number of scholars of the period. One linguistic issue was phonetic spelling. Advocates ranged from Lepold Bahlsen, who felt that all language should be represented phonetically, to Brigham Young in America. Who had many local books and records transcribed into a locally developed phonetic script?

This international linguistic activity resulted in the emergence of the phonetic method (or structural or New Reform Method). Wilhelm Vietor(1850-1918) and his followers such as Ripman of Great Britain and Alge of Switzerland who in the later decades of the century criticized most sharply the still-prevalent grammar translation method created this linguistically based language-teaching model as alternative to the existing system(Mackey,1967).

Some of the ideas which helped the use of this method included the following:

The demands made on children by the Prussian education system were excessive. The assumption was that if children learn through rhymes, songs, and so on by heart that would be more effective for them.
Linguistic nonsense had become endemic in the classroom through the neglect of speech.
Sounds were confused with letters.
If speech was taught at all, it was badly done by teachers whose own pronunciation was inadequate.
Retention of Latin- based paradigms was absurd.
Reform insisted that language teaching must begin with the provision of accurate descriptions of speech based on the science of phonetics and there must be a properly trained language teaching profession.
If our wretched system of studying modern languages is ever to be reformed, it must be on the basis of a preliminary in general phonetics.

With these ideas about the previous methods, the reformers came to believe that the only remedy for language teaching was to start from phonetics. That is why the new ways of language teaching is known as a phonetic method.

Although this method seems to be based on structural linguistics in the beginning, it is concerned with humanistic learning approach. Teaching procedure of this method is based on discrimination, production, inductive learning, and problem solving. In other words it concerns itself with the development of self resulting from interaction with the world through direct experience.

Krashen and Terrel (1983) believe that this method has the following characteristics:

a. The student are drilled first in the discrimination and production of the sounds of the new language using short idiomatic phrases and making liberal use of phonetic symbols orally.

b. teacher reads a passage aloud, explaining unfamiliar words as students follow along.

c. then, these phrases are turned into dialogue and stories.

d. after discussing questions on the passage, students would paraphrase the story aloud using their own intuitions.

e. grammar rules are taught inductively, that is , students are expected to discover rules through a problem-solving approach, rather than being told what they are.

f. finally, graded reading passages are assigned for the learners to read on their own in order to decipher and decode the meaning. Phonetics gives new insight into speech process. The linguists emphasized the speech, rather than the written word, which was the primary form of language.IPA International Phonetic Alphabet, developed by International Phonetic association, was designed to enable the sounds of any language to be accurately transcribed.

Some of the aspects of this method include:

The study spoken language,
Phonetic training
Use of conversation texts and dialogue to introduce conversational phrases and idioms,
Inductive approach for teaching grammar, and
Teaching new meaning through association principles of this method are based on a scientific analysis of language and study of psychology.

It was believed that this method followed careful selection of what is to be taught, arranging materials in terms of 4 skills of listening, speaking, reading, writing, and grading them from simple to complex.

This method was based on the following principles of teaching a foreign language:

Spoken language is primary
Findings of phonetics should be applied to teaching
Learning should gear to language first
Words should be presented in sentence and sentence should be practiced in meaningful contexts.
Inductive teaching. Avoiding translation.

These principles reflect the beginning of the discipline of applied linguistics, scientific study of second and foreign language learning. This method was the first anti-Grammar-Translation Method paving the way for other effective teaching methods. Krashen and Terrel(1983) believe that the first step to pick up a language is to become familiarized with the discrimination of sounds, that is, ear training which will result in improving listening skill and listening skill is the basic and the most salient one to be learned.

Bowen (1985) also describes the process of this method and says that the order of language learning skills is properly observed.

The Phonetic Method starts with discrimination of phonemes and sounds, in other words, the students should be subjected to the correct and accurate speech sounds. So a native speaker teacher is needed to put these traits across but native speaker teachers are not available in some countries and institutions.

Using this method to teach a language may first seem an easy job but finally becomes a hard task for the learners. Discrimination of sounds is very important in this method. Therefore, it seems that the learners are expected to be subjected to long-ranged repetition and this involves the presence of language labs in the learning centers, but in those places where labs are not available, this method may not work.

The learners are expected to pick up the right pronunciation unknowingly and naturally through real-life communication and not through monotonous enlarged drills.

Situational language teaching

Situational language teaching is a term not commonly used today, but it is an approach developed by British applied linguists in the 1930s to the 1960s, and which had an impact on language courses still survive in some places and used today.

The structural view of language is the view behind the Oral Approach and situation Language Teaching. Speech was viewed as the basis of language and structure as being at the heart of speaking ability. This was a view similar to American.

Structuralizes, such as fries, but the notion of the British applied linguists, that structures must be presented in situations in which they could be used, gave its distinctiveness to Situational Language Teaching.

The theory of learning underlying Situational Language Teaching may look similar to behaviorism, but it addresses more the processes rather than the conditions of learning. It includes the following principles:

Language learning needs repetition
Mistakes are bad and should be avoided
Language skills are learned more effectively if they are presented orally first, then in written form.
Analogy is a better foundation for language learning than analysis.
The meanings of words can be learned only in situations and cultural contexts.

Some of the objectives of Situational Language teaching include:

A practical command of the four basic skills of a language, through structure
Accuracy in both pronunciation and grammar
Ability to respond quickly and accurately in speech situations
Automatic control of basic structures and sentence patterns.

Situational Language teaching mainly uses a structural syllabus and a word list through the following activities and techniques:

A situational presentation of new sentence patterns
Drills to practice the patterns

The procedure in Situational Language Teaching moves from controlled to freer practice of structures and form oral use of sentence patterns to their automatic use in speech, reading and writing.

Eclectic methods

Many teachers use a mixture of different methods. They think that grammar method is easy for teacher, but too intellectual for the average pupil and may kill off his enthusiasm for language learning, gives little chance to master spoken language which would be of greater use to him, and he cannot gain true insight into grammatical rule unless he has previously mastered the spoken aspect.

Some teachers, therefore, try to veer away from specific method, hoping to reduce the intellectual content of their lessons and to give pupils some opportunity of speaking the language. Their teaching may not also supply the number of active speaking contacts required for pupil to begin to 'think' in the language, so ' eclectic' method lying between the two poles may afford some contacts. But second language also learner needs to have some knowledge of the grammatical blocks of language to help speed up the development of his oral proficiency.

The dilemma is that too much veering towards one method may increase the intellectual content of lessons (condemning those pupils whose IQ isn’t sufficiently high) and decrease the number of active oral contacts the pupils require. It is also possible that too much veering towards another method may deny the pupil the help which knowledge of comparative grammar can give him in his development towards oral proficiency which means that the teacher is unable to provide for the pupil the required number of oral contacts (thus leading to incomplete/inaccurate responses) and makes it easier for the pupil but more difficult for the teacher himself.

Any eclectic method teacher therefore falls between two stools. Either way he faces obstacles which may make teaching/learning both difficult/unpleasant. What is needed, therefore, is a completely different method, which takes into account data obtained from investigations into second language learning, uses old/new teaching/learning activities in such a way as to enable the learner to learn a language more quickly and with less effort, and gives the pupil the opportunity to reach a level whereby he can 'think' in that language.

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