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Approach, Method, Procedure and Technique

An approach refers to the overall philosophy of language teaching, including theories of language and learning. A method provides a practical implementation of an approach through determining skills, roles, procedures, content, and assessment. Procedures are ordered sets of techniques that execute a method through step-by-step measures. Techniques are the specific classroom practices and behaviors used to implement procedures as part of a method.

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709 views

Approach, Method, Procedure and Technique

An approach refers to the overall philosophy of language teaching, including theories of language and learning. A method provides a practical implementation of an approach through determining skills, roles, procedures, content, and assessment. Procedures are ordered sets of techniques that execute a method through step-by-step measures. Techniques are the specific classroom practices and behaviors used to implement procedures as part of a method.

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الشارع الانكَليزي - English Way
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Approach, Method, Procedure and Technique

Dr. Munthir Shakir


The difference between approach, method, procedure, and technique
English Language Teaching (ELT) terminology can be sometimes
confusing. This post tries to describe the difference between approach,
method, procedure, and technique. It is important, for us teachers, to be
informed about what exactly each of these terms means.

Methodological organization of teaching practices


Methodology informs teachers about different ways to organize teaching
practices. Harmer (2001), for example, suggests that there are four levels of
organization at the level of methodology, namely, approach, method,
procedure, and techniques. The following description is inspired by this
framework. Many elements of this framework are also discussed by Anthony
(1963) and Richards and Rodgers (1986).
• Theory of language
Approach • Theory of language

• An overall plan for the orderly presentation of


language material, no part of which
Antony’s model Method contradicts, and all of which is based upon, the
selected approach

• The actual implementation in the language


Technique classroom
• Theory of language
Approach • Theory of language
• Objectives
• Syllabus type
• Activity types
Richards and Rodgers Design
model
Method • Learner Roles
• Teacher Roles
• Role of materials
• Techniques

Procedure • Practices
• Behaviors
• For the sake of the simplification of the above models, approach, method, procedure, and
technique are viewed in the following description as flowing in a hierarchical model.
Approach
An approach refers to the general assumptions about what language is and about how learning a
language occurs (Richards and Rodgers, 1986). It represents the sum of our philosophy about
both the theory of language and the theory of learning. In other words, an approach to language
teaching describes:
The nature of language,
How knowledge of a language is acquired,
And the conditions that promote language acquisition.
Method
A method is a practical implementation of an approach. A theory is put into practice
at the level a method. It includes decisions about:
• The particular skills to be taught,
• The roles of the teacher and the learner in language teaching and learning,
• The appropriate procedures and techniques,
• The content to be taught,
• And the order in which the content will be presented.
It also involves a specific syllabus organization, choices of the materials that will
boost learning, and the means to assess learners and evaluate teaching and learning. It
is a sort of an organizing plan that relies on the philosophical premises of an
approach.
Procedures
Jeremy Harmer (2001) describes ‘procedures’ as “an ordered set
of techniques.” They are the step-by-step measures to execute a
method. A common procedure in the grammar-translation
method, for example, is to start by explaining the grammar rules
and exemplifying these rules through sentences that the students
then had to translate into their mother tongue. According to
Harmer, a procedure is “smaller than a method and larger than a
technique.”
Technique
Implementing a procedure necessitates certain practices and behaviors
that operate in teaching a language according to a particular method.
These practices and behaviors are the techniques that every procedure
relies on. Techniques, in this sense, are part and parcel of procedures.
They are the actual moment-to-moment classroom steps that lead to a
specified outcome. Every procedure is realized through a series of
techniques. They could take the form of an exercise or just any activity
that you have to do to complete a task. For instance, when using videos,
teachers often use a technique called “silent viewing” which consists of
playing the video without sound and asking students to figure out what
the characters were saying.

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