The Grammar-Translation Method:

This method has unknown author. It appeared in the 20th century with a methodology
that has been the same in which Latin and Greek were taught. Students are taught to
translate from one language into another. This classical method had the purpose to help
students to read and appreciate the foreign language literature. The main goal is to
translate and to give importance to grammar. Teachers must take into account how
grammar is applied in a deductive approach: student apply a rule to examples they are
given; deductive application of a grammar rule is a useful pedagogical technique. To
know communicate is not a goal of this method, it focuses more on the translation, if
students can translate from a language into another, they are good students.

The main skills to be developed are reading and writing. This method pays little attention
to speaking and listening. Culture is viewed as consisting of literature and arts.

The students are passive learners because they have to memorize to learn some concepts,
such as, verbs, grammatical structures… their learning provides good mental exercises.
They do what the teacher says.

The teacher is the protagonist, so that, he is the authority in the classroom. The teacher
asks students in their native language and is able to decide what is correct or not. He
normally gives the rule or the concepts that students have to memorize.

According to errors, students have to know the correct answer. If they make mistakes, the
teacher will say the correct answer. For the evaluation the teacher uses written tests in
which the student has to translate from their native language into the target language,
questions related to grammar rules are also frequent.

For example, students have to read a text in English, each one reads a part, then they have
to translate that part into Spanish. The teacher asks in Spanish if they have any questions
and gives the instructions for the next exercise. Children have to write the answers in
English about comprehension questions. Then, the sentences are checking. If the student
is correct, the teacher goes on to answer another question, if the student is incorrect, or
the teacher says the correct answer or asks another pupil to supply to answer it.
The Direct Method:

The Direct Method first appeared in the 1890s as a response to the perceived inability of
the Grammar-Translation Method to teach learners to communicate. The Direct Method,
also called the Natural Method was popularized by Berlitz. The argument given by the
specialists was that the Grammar-Translation Method taught learners about the target
language but not how to speak the target-language. The Direct Method is not a translation
method, we can say that there is no translation and all communication take place directly
in the target language.

Listening and speaking skills are emphasized, they have priority, although reading and
writing have a minor important, they play their role. Grammar should be taught
inductively.

The teacher explains the new vocabulary through visual aids, miming or realia, also
imitations to demonstrate the meaning of the new context. Students learn how to
communicate in the target language, they don’t use their mother tongue and think all time
in their target language. The role of the students is less passive than in other method like
Grammar Translation-Method, but it is focus on teacher centred, that means, the teacher
presents to the students all new contents, words, phrases or grammar. The students and
the teacher are more like partners in the teaching-learning process.

According to errors, the teachers employ different techniques and try to get students to
self-correct. For the evaluation, students are asked to demonstrate their knowledge about
the language, using both oral and writing skill.

For example, the lesson is about the map of the USA, the children read the passage and
then the teacher asks if there is any doubt, some children do not understand words and
the teacher draws on the board to understand them or gives different examples of real life.
Communicative Language Teaching:

The author of the communicative language teaching method is Hymes (1971). This
method is about how to teach and acquire certain knowledge in students, since students
can understand the meaning of something in a sentence (called linguistics). This method
should be visualized as a social and non-linguistic competence, called CLT. We need to
communicate and position ourselves in a context that allows us to acquire knowledge
about our target language. The activities carried out have these three characteristics:
information gap, choice and feedback.

The main skills to be developed are reading and speaking. Culture is the everyday
lifestyle of people who use the language.

The teacher tries to help students in their possible mistakes and errors as well as intervene
with them in the activity. He usually gives instructions and respects opinion of students.
During the activities he acts as an advisor.

On the other hand, students are communicators, they have more responsible for their own
learning. They have a choice of what he will say. The environment in the classroom is
essential for them to learn in a fun and motivated way. They use games or try to use
predictions in different activities.

This method is related with affective filter. So, student security is increased by the many
opportunities for cooperative interactions because they are provided with authentic
materials and opportunities to interact with the teacher or with classmates.

According to errors, it’s are tolerated during activities and are seen as a natural part of the
communication skills. For the evaluation, the teacher evaluates accuracy and fluency. A
teacher can evaluate his students’ performance informally or formally through integrative
test about a real communication situation.

For example, the teacher gives them a newspaper article related to the last competition of
the world cup. The teacher asks them to read and underline the predictions made by the
article about the next world cup. Then, students discuss which prediction is more or less
certain.
The Audio-Lingual Method:

The audio – lingual method is an oral – based approach. This method focuses on the
students’ study of the use of grammatical sentence patterns. Fries, in 1945, was the first
to begin to make way for this method, and later, in 1957, Skinner incorporates the
principles of behaviour psychology.

In this method the new structures and vocabulary are presented through dialogues, which
are learned through imitation and repetition. For students to keep these dialogues, they
are presented in different ways, parts are repeated, they change order, etc. Each time the
students give a correct answer they will receive a positive reinforcement. In addition, a
very important feature of this method is that grammar will not be taught in theory,
students will learn grammar through examples. In short, all work done in class, written
work, reading, etc. will be done around a previous oral work.

Although all skills are worked with this method, more attention is paid to listening and
speaking skills. All other skills will be worked with things given orally.

In all these methods, teacher and students’ role is very important. One of the teacher's
roles in this method is that of the target language model. Thus, when students hear the
teacher speak, they should be able to imitate him or her. In summary, the teacher's role in
this method is to guide students through the entire learning process, serving as a role
model. The student's role would be none other than the one of an imitator. Students should
imitate and answer the teacher's questions and stimuli as quickly and accurately as
possible.

According to errors, they will be avoided, when the teacher has idea of the difficulty of
students. For the evaluation, students could be asked to distinguish between word or
supply verbs in a sentence.

For example, if you have to perform a witting on music using the past simple, this topic
will have been previously introduced orally.
The Silent Way:

No language teaching method develops directly from this approach. It was created by
Gattegno in 1963s. The silent way is a methodology of teaching language based on that
teacher should be as silent as possible during a class and learners have to speak more. The
teacher gives them what they need. Students become independent. Teacher also respects
their autonomy. The role of the students is to make use of what they know. Teacher is
very active because he is listening students, creating situations to force awareness… he
is constantly observing the students. the teacher gives them what they need to improve
their learning. All four skills are worked but there is a moment in which students learn to
read and write what they have already produced orally.

The environment of the class is enjoyable because students are coopering with one
another. Errors are seen as a natural part, that is, errors mean that students are testing their
hypothesis. Teachers works with students to self-correct. Students have to discover them
and give a solution to the problems. Learning is a process which learners learn through
imitation and repetition.

Desuggestopedia:

The creator of this method is Georgi Lozanov. According to this author, if we are not able
to learn languages more quickly, it is due to psychological barriers that we put ourselves.
These barriers make us not use all our mental capacity; therefore these barriers must be
"desuggested". One of the most effective ways, according to Evelina Gateva, to make
these barriers disappear, is through the study of the fine arts.

When teaching, teachers use this method with the intention of accelerating the learning
process. To carry out this method, teachers use some techniques, such as decorating the
classroom in a way that makes it go from being a sad place for just studying, to be a happy
place where having fun and learning (if you decorate the class with some of the things
you are going to teach children will learn without even noticing it, it is called peripheral
learning).

Teachers who use this method must also me conscious of the barriers of the students, and
have into account that maybe, if students acquire other roles, they would be more
confidence and like that eliminate some of the barriers they have. Other materials teachers
can use are for example songs; students always like these kinds of things and help them
forget they are in a class.

Finally highlight the importance of indirect positive sentences. Students will not notice
them consciously but unconsciously it will help them to delete some of the barriers they
have.

Content-based Instruction:

The author of content-based instruction method is Snow (1991) which belongs to the
Prabhú decade (1987), based his theory on how a language is taught through language;
so language is a medium that allows something new to be learned. This means that
language is used within a context to acquire it; for example, when a student is studying
body parts in English, they are studying part of the area of science and in turn learning
English. However, this method is divided into two versions, one strong and the weak. The
weak version consists of “learning to use English” (acquiring new concepts) while the
strong version focuses on “using English to learn it” (once these concepts are acquired,
we position them in a context). It is also said that a student learns to communicate by
practicing communication with other speakers, with other classmates, who allow
themselves to develop their communicative learning capacity.

On the other hand, in terms of how to teach certain content to people, it must be done so
that they can learn new and valid concepts to their field of work, introducing new
vocabulary words on a specific topic, such as, if we are talking about body parts,
vocabulary body parts will be introduced as an essential concept of what everyone wants
to consider important. Sometimes it can be done specifically and sometimes
academically.

Task-based Language Teaching:

Task-based Language teaching was popularized by N. Prabhu while working in India.

Prabhu noticed that his students could learn language just as easily with non-linguistic
problem as when they were concentrating on linguistic questions. TBLT is focused on a
type of instruction that relies on the use of authentic target language to do meaningful
tasks. TBLT is also called as task-based instruction (TBI) or can be considered a branch
of communicative language teaching (CLT). The notion of tasks is the main type of
instruction. The assessment of learning is mainly based on task outcome and not only on
the accurate use of the target language. For this reason, TBLT should be effective in order
to learn the target language fluently and to strengthen the students' trust.

Speaking is the main skill and the keystone of language acquisition: learners have to
produce and understand communicative messages, because exchanging information is
crucial to language acquisition. Tasks provide both the input and output processing
necessary for language acquisition and they attract to learners’ learning styles and may
involve physical activity, collaboration, and partnership. Learning difficulty can be
negotiated and adjusted for the learners’ level of proficiency. This is crucial to provide
the appropriate target input to facilitate language acquisition.