Didactics 3rd Year English

Lesson Three : Approach, Method, Technique, and Principle

1. A Short Historical Background to FLT

The history of language teaching has been categorized by a pursuit for more operative ways of
teaching second or foreign languages. For more than ages, discussion and debate within the
teaching occupation have often pinpointed on matters like the role of grammar in the language
programme, the development of accuracy and fluency in teaching, the selection of curriculum
outlines in course design, the role of terminology in language learning, teaching productive and
receptive skills, learning theories and their applications in teaching and learning, memorization,
motivating students, effectual learning strategies, techniques for teaching the four skills, and the
role of materials and technology. Even though much has been managed to elucidate these and
other significant interrogations in language teaching, the teaching occupation is constantly
discovering new possibilities for lecturing these and other principal matters and the efficacy of
dissimilar instructional strategies and methods in the classroom.

The most primitive European printed books of language teaching approaches and methods are
from the 5th century AD, denoting definitely to Latin. For many centuries the language of the
Romans was the first foreign system in Europe, operating as the language of sciences, business,
and leadership. The establishment of universities in the last Middle Ages resulted in emerging the
Grammar Translation Method, founded on the centuries of extended customs of reading Latin and
Greek learned discourses. In the 15th century, Europeans started fluctuating from Latin to tackling
the continent’s modern codes more broadly. By the 19th century, the Direct Method was fostered,
demonstrated on first language acquisition and lecturing the larger demand for speaking skills in
e.g., French, German, and English. In the early 20 century, studies predominantly in educational
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psychology resulted in optimizing the Audio-lingual Method in the 1940s. Maintaining that
language use was a subject matter of stimulus and response, teaching approaches and methods
accentuated repetition and dialogue memorization. After centuries, Chomsky’s revolutionary
research about cognitive characteristics of language acquisition documented that those children do
not acquire a stock-taking of linguistic stimuli and responses. On the contrary, deep-rooted
processing in the brain allows them to produce infinite number of sentences from finite number of
rules that they have never heard before. This resulted in revolutionizing the Direct Method by
integrating cognitive proportions of language learning. Since the 1970s, language is further
documented as a social event that integrally involves communicating, rendering, and exchanging
and negotiating meanings. To nurture such aptitude, the current course of Language Teaching
emphasizes having learners go deeper through the didactic units for grasping and exchanging new
information.
Teaching any subject matter is usually grounded on an investigation of the nature of the subject
itself and the function of teaching and learning standards extracted from research and theory in
educational psychology. The upshot is commonly raised as a teaching method or approach, by
which we convey a variety of central teaching and learning norms together with a body of
classroom rehearses that are originated from them. The arena of teaching methods has been a very
vigorous one in language teaching since the 1900s. Innovative approaches and methods thrived all
the way through the twentieth century. Some attained comprehensive stages of approval and
popularity at different times but then were swapped by methods established on fresher and more
alluring thoughts and theories. Example of this genre comprise the Direct Method,
Audiolingualism, and the Situational Approach. Also, Communicative Language Teaching, was
approved almost globally and accomplished the standing of methodological orthodoxy and
conventionality. Simultaneously, replacements to conventional approaches have always obtained
some levels of support within language teaching, though often this has not directed to broader
recognition or application. Methods in this sort contain those from the 1970s such as the Silent
Way, counselling Learning, Suggestopedia, and Total Physical Response, in addition to that
newer different methods and approaches such as Multiple Intelligences, Neurolinguistic
Programming, and the Lexical Approach.
2. A Concise History of English Language Teaching Approaches
and Methods
Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching search for delivering an inclusive and
understandable interpretation of the main and minor movements in language teaching methods
from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present-day. To highlight the similarities and
differences between approaches and methods, the identical expressive outline is applied
throughout the paper. It designates approaches and methods in accordance with their inherent
theories of language and language learning; the learning purposes; the syllabus pattern
manipulated; the roles of teachers, students, and materials within the method or approach; and the
classroom procedures and techniques that the approach/ method operates. Where a method or
approach has comprehensive and recognized associations to a specific subject matter in a second
or foreign language teaching, this historical background is considered to demonstrate relations
between the approach, method, technique and procedure.
2.1. The Approach
An approach is a variety of prevalent conventions about what language is and how it is cultured. It
is the aggregate of our philosophy and attitudes on both language and learning theory. Otherwise
stated, a language teaching approach describes:
1. Language nature,
2. How knowledge of a given language is acquired,
3. And the circumstances that boost language acquisition.
An approach is a degree of confidence. In this area, expectations and principles about language
and language learning are itemized. wherefore, theoretical philosophies are pronounced in an
approach. Accordingly, we will explore that both language and learning theory are the concerns of
an approach. The language theory symbolises a standard of language competence and a version of
the essential features of linguistic system and language use. Alternatively, the learning theory
shapes ‘a description of the dominant process of learning and a description of the conditions
supposed to encourage successful language learning’ (Richards and Rodgers, 2001,
p.24). No approach stipulates any practice of teaching a language. It is a project which ties an
approach with a scheme. A precise interpretation of language and theory of learning will support
an instructor to frame her/his own teaching scheme. Anthony (1963, pp.63- 67) avows that ‘an
approach is a group of reciprocal assumptions coping with the nature of language teaching and
learning. An approach is axiomatic. It designates the nature of the subject matter to be taught’,
cited in Richards and Rodgers (2001, p.19). Once more, we find almost an analogous opinion in
Richards and Rodgers (2001, p.20) where they keep that ‘approach hints at theories about the
nature of language and language learning that assist as the basis of performs and principles in
language teaching.’ But there is no approach brings about ‘a definite set of prescriptions and
systems to be applied in teaching a given language’, (Richards and Rodgers, 2001, p.245).
An approach to language teaching and learning epitomzes a framework concept of the mode in
which hypotheses should persist, ‘a seedbed from which an approach springs, but is not yet a
policy postulating details of classroom practice’, (Johnson and Johnson, 1998, p.11). There must
be a reasonable match between an approach and a method. Within one approach, there must be
several methods. Approaches may be reviewed and modernized if any context requires. Therefore,
it is the context that should have been the first contemplation of the language teacher during the
application of an approach. It should be worth noting that we will see how a language teaching
method is meticulously connected with the context where a language is imparted.
2.2. The Method
A method is a practical and functional implementation of an approach. In the field of a method, a
theory is put into action. It comprises verdicts about:
 1. The specific skills to be taught (LSRW),
2. The roles of both teachers and learners in language teaching and learning,
3. The needed procedures and techniques,
4. The content to be tackled,
5. And the order in which the content will be organized.
It also entails a comprehensive curriculum organization, material selection to increase the quality
of education, and methods to evaluate learners and assess teaching and learning processes. It is a
form of systematizing an arrangement that is founded on the philosophical motives of an
approach. A method is a mode of teaching a language by following organized standards and
procedures. A method contains the authentic activities the learner and the teacher are preoccupied
with when teaching and learning a given language. Davies and Pearse (2000, p.208) view that a
method is the ‘way of teaching constructed on thoughts about language, learning, and teaching,
with definite indications about activities and techniques to be applied. A theory of language is put
into action in a method. A method is more theoretical than teaching activities. Recognition of
methods is a unit of the stock of knowledge of teaching. It sustains to broaden a teacher’s
repertoire of procedures. Anthony (1963, pp.63-67) states that ‘method' is a general plan for the
orderly demonstration of language material, no part of which opposes, and entirely is based upon
the selected approach. An approach is “axiomatic, a method is procedural”, cited in Richards and
Rodgers (2001, p.19). Methods ‘designate a firm model, constructed on certain principles. They
cope with what, how and why interrogations. They state little or nothing about who/ whom, when,
and where,’ (Larsen-Freeman, 2000, pp.181-182). Social connections, sorts of thinking and
policies of learning are the manifestations of methods. From the above-mentioned discussion we
are influenced that the appropriate evaluation of context is a necessity when a method is used.
Language teachers should evaluate the context of a specific institution or an area when they
implement a method to teaching.
2.3. The Procedure
On the word of Harmer (2001), procedures are "a prearranged set of techniques." They are the
stepby-step procedures for functioning a method. In the Grammar Translation Method, for
instance, a shared procedure is to start by clearing up the grammar rules and presenting these rules
through sentences that learners should then translate into their mother tongue. A procedure,
consistent with Harmer, is "smaller and slighter than a method and larger than a technique."
Richards and Rodgers (2001) tackled the notion procedure to incorporate “the real moment- to
moment techniques, practices, and behaviours that function in teaching a language along with a
specific method” (p.26) Procedures from this characterization, embrace techniques. So, for
Richards and Rodgers, this seems to be a universal conception, an item for keeping many small
matters or account that comprises different things and that does not state plainly what is involved
or not.
2.4. The Technique
Applying a procedure involves definite performs and behaviours which work in the teaching of a
language in line with meticulous methods. These performs and behaviours are named as
techniques upon which all procedures hinge on. In this fashion, techniques are a section of
procedures. They are the genuine classroom stages that give rise to an explicit outcome. Each and
every single procedure is conducted by means of a variety of techniques. They possibly will take
the form of exercises and other different activities needed to achieve a certain task.
For example, once playing videos, instructors often apply a technique named “silent viewing” that
is made up of using the video without sound and requesting undergraduates to work out what the
figures are discussing. Consequently, the notion of technique is an “application which essentially
materializes in a classroom. It is a specific scheme, policy, or contrivance accustomed to complete
an instant purpose. Techniques must be in line with a method, and so in conformity with an
approach as well” (Anthony, 1963. P. 96).