Last week we looked at two of the forerunners of modern language teaching. First, we looked at Comenius. We saw that he had :

• 1. A conception of language as the system by which God had named the things of the world. Modern languages are degenerate forms of an original tongue that was taken from us at the Tower of Babel.
• 2. A conception of the learning process ; we learn a second language much as we learn the first, by linking words with things in the world. Starting from the book of the world, we move on to the book of humanity, and end by reading in the Holy Books. Essentially, we learn through use rather than through learning the rules.
• 3. A theory of teaching, in which the teacher makes the link between words and things, follows the natural order of acquisition and makes learning as agreeable an experience as possible.

We then looked at Gouin's work with series. We saw that Gouin had :

• 1. A conception of language as being based on the proposition - in his view, verbs were the most important element of language.
• 2. A conception of the learning process that was once again seen as similar for both L1 and L2. The learner progresses from experience, to ordering that experience, and then to acting it out.
• 3. A conception of teaching as presenting the language in concrete, active situations, as materialized in the 'series'.

Any teaching method can be analysed in terms of these three focal points - conception of the language, conception of the learning process, and a theory of teaching - and of the relationships between them.

We shall now go on to look briefly at two traditions that were in vogue at the beginning of our century, and to which the methods and approaches that we know today have all, in one way or another, reacted.

Grammar Translation

This mode of language teaching was initially employed for the acquisition of the skills necessary to read and understand the classical languages, Latin and Greek. As neither of these languages was used for oral communication, the method was based upon the written language.

• 1. Language was conceived of as being made up of a collection of rules, and their exceptions, which were to be put in parallel with the similar collection of rules of the L1. Language was above all a formal system.
• 2. The learning process is conceived of as a process of memorizing rules and examples. The learner would learn vocabulary and conjugations off by heart.
• 3. The teacher is 'he who knows' ; he directs the classroom activities, asking questions and setting tasks, and is considered as an authority.

The grammar-translation method became the preferred approach in schools when modern languages were introduced because it carried all the prestige of the classical languages. The method was seen as not only enabling learners to consult and understand the great men of the classical period, but as also forming their minds - a form of mental gymnastics - an argument that is still invoked today.

Part of the prestige was attached to the formal teaching of grammar, which was seen as training young people in mental manipulations akin to those employed in higher maths. In the grammar-translation approach, the teaching of grammar was formal, and explicit. In most versions of the approach, the grammar was taught deductively - that is to say that the rule was announced prior to the exercises. In some cases, however, it was taught inductively - that is to say that the learners were asked to puzzle over the exercises, and were expected to figure out the rules from the examples. However, we may note that learning grammar inductively is more usually associated with more 'learner-centred' approaches.

It is to be noted that none of the basic orientations of the grammar-translation approach can be justified by recourse to any of the sciences that are normally referred to in the didactics of language teaching. The conception of language is not upheld by linguistics, the conception of the learner is not based upon any formal psychology.

This approach was confined to schools ; in the world of adult education, there were many reasons why it would not work. Adults who want to learn languages normally do so for precise reasons, they expect to be treated with a certain degree of respect, and will not submit themselves to a process which they do not understand unless they believe that there is some efficacy to it. Usually, they wish to be able to communicate in the FL, whether for business, or for pleasure, and do not come to language learning in order to sharpen up their mental skills. So it came about that, as the demand for FL acquisition outside schooling grew, so alternatives to the G/T method became more fashionable.

The Direct Method

Of these, perhaps the best known is the Direct Method. This is the basis of the approach that is still used today by the Berlitz language schools.

• 1. The language is seen as being fundamentally a means of communication. The language that is taught is ordinary, every-day language.
• 2. The theory of learning is based upon an associationist psychology ; sounds (words) are associated with objects and with actions, and then ideas are associated with other ideas. The route into the L2 is direct - the learner does not translate, but links the L2 word directly with the object that it represents. To do this properly, she must take an active role in the learning process - both asking and answering questions, reading aloud and so on. The L2 learning process is, as with Gouin and Comenius, taken to be very much the same as the L1 learning process.
• 3. The teacher should preferably be a native-speaker of the language. Her task is to present the language, and to direct classroom activities. The language is presented through the teacher's monologue, and the use of realia, or images or of representations of the objects and actions - but it is above all the personal qualities of the teacher that make or break the learning process. Sauveur, one of the pioneers of the Direct Method, at the end of the 19thC, would hold the attention of his learners on his performance, and was able to give elaborate speeches even on the very first lesson.

Whereas the material and the language of the grammar-translation class had been based upon great literature and high principle, the Direct Method based material on ordinary situations in which the learner might expect to find herself on going abroad - a lesson on the bank, the restaurant, or the hotel - or on subjects of ordinary conversation - geography, money, the weather. There was little attempt to construct a grammatical syllabus, and if there was any grammar teaching, it was inductive.

In Grammar-translation, the activities of the learners had been limited to learning by heart, and to translating, either from the L2 to the L1 or the inverse. In the Direct classroom, no translation was allowed. Instead, the learner was expected to listen, to answer questions, to work in pairs or groups on conversations, to write down dictations, once the written tongue had begun to be an object of study, and to write short passages. One of the driving ideas was to put the learner in situations in which she was expected to produce the language.

The learner was expected to become autonomous as quickly as possible, and so the teacher would train the learners to correct themselves. This could be done through offering the speaker a choice between what he had just said and another utterance. Or it could be that the mistake would be signalled by the teacher's repeating the utterance in a rising tone, or by stopping the repetition just before she got to the error.

As we shall see, the method has its limitations, particularly in schools. It is perhaps better suited to debutants than to more advanced learners - most of the adults that came into language schools were, until quite recently, absolute beginners. It is still useful when a teacher is dealing with a class in which the pupils do not possess a common L1.

The audio-lingual method

However, most teaching through the first half of the 20th C continued to be some version or other of Grammar/translation. Things were to change during WWII.

Need for American army personnel to learn a wide variety of languages. Army turned to two sources for their courses .

• 1. Descriptive linguists who had worked with American Indian languages.
• 2. Behavioural learning techniques which stressed the importance of reinforcement - repetition + rewards - language as a set of habits

The methods used appear to have been very successful - soldiers learnt to speak exotic tongues enough to communicate in a very short time.

Two sessions

1. Situation based dialogues - practised and memorized, followed by structural drills. Teaching done by a linguist or a native speaker trained by a linguist

2. Conversation sessions with a native speaker - usually no more than ten learners.

This gave rise to the Audio-lingual Method - mostly based on the ideas encapsulated in the first session. Language performance consists of a set of habits - Students do not have to understand the grammar in order to use it

Classes -

a) new material presented in situational dialogues that were supposed to represent real world situations.

b) pattern drills - manipulation of the vocab and structures, until they become unconscious habits.

c) application of the rules thus learnt in semi-guided conversation

At first, the audiolingual method insisted that students should work on only oral material

- children learn first language without writing

- the written word would cause interference - particularly in pronunciation.

- grammar/translation was overwhelmingly based on written material.

But this was resisted by students, and gradually the audiolingual approach adopted a more relaxed attitude to the written word.

Critique

• 1. habit formation takes a long time, and the drills were insufficient. Making them long enough to do the job would render them dreadfully boring.
• 2. the inductive learning - drills, then the rules - does not suit all pupils.
• 3. students just repeat the drills without understanding them - they are not communicative.

Dissatisfaction grew. This lead to a number of different approaches, most of which can be looked upon as basically communicative. That is, the fundamental idea is that a language can only be learnt if it is used in a meaningful way.