HANDOUT 1

HISTORY OF LANGUAGE TEACHING

Work in groups. Read Pages 1-10 in the Book ‘Approaches and methods in English
language teaching’ (Richards, 1999) and complete the summary of history of language
teaching.

About 500 years ago, (1) Latin was the most studied foreign language. However, in the
16th century, other languages, such as (2) French, English, and (3) Italian became
popular and replaced Latin as a language of (4) spoken and written communication.
For this reason, in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, people mostly studied classical Latin,
not the ordinary Latin anymore. The teaching of classical Latin involved mainly the
teaching of Latin grammar rules and vocabulary through such learning activities as
memorization, translation, and writing practice.

In the 18th century, when other languages were introduced to school, they were taught
using (5) the same basic procedures that were used for teaching Latin. In this way, the
goal of learning a foreign language was not to be able to (6) speak it. There were almost
no (7) oral learning activities in the classroom. This method of teaching was popular
and known as the (8) Grammar Translation method. This method was dominantly
used in at the time and continues to be widely used in some parts of the world today.

In the (9) mid-19th century, The Grammar Translation method began to receive more
criticisms in several European countries. With the demand for (10) oral proficiency in
foreign languages among Europeans, secondary schools failed to fulfill its
responsibilities in teaching languages for communication. For this reason, in Germany,
England, France and other European countries, (11) new approaches were developed
by individual language teaching specialists. For example, Prendergast proposed the first
(12) ‘structural syllabus’. Likewise, Gouin developed an approach that later became
part of such approaches and methods as (13) Situational Language Teaching and Total
Physical Response. However, their ideas and methods did not receive widespread (14)
dissemination/attention/approval/implementation because in their time there were
very few teacher associations, workshops and conferences to enable new ideas to
develop into an educational movement.
Toward the end of the 19th century, teachers and linguists started to write about the need
for new approaches to language teaching. More reform-minded linguists began to make
efforts to put forward new theories. This effort was known as the (15) Reform
Movement. Sweet, Vietor, and Passy were some of the (16) leaders in this Reform
Movement. These linguists proposed ideas that were crucial for the new development of
language teaching approaches. Among these was the creation of Phonetics and (17) the
International Phonetic Alphabet, which supported the idea that speech was the
fundamental element of language. The reformers shared many (18) beliefs about the
principles on which a new approach to teaching foreign languages should be based.
Although none of these reformers’ works were developed into widely recognized
method, they inspired linguists to develop principles that later laid foundation for (19)
natural methods.

Advocates of natural methods tried to make second language learning more like (20)
first language learning. They believed that teachers should encourage learners to use
the foreign language in the classroom. The most widely known of the natural methods is
(21) the Direct Method. It was introduced in (22) France and (23) Germany, and
became popular in the United States after Sauveur and Berlitz used it at commercial
schools. However, it was difficult to (24) implement the Direct method in public
secondary school education because this method (25) overemphasized the similarities
between naturalistic first language learning and classroom foreign language learning.

For the above reason, in early 20th century, linguists started to propose other methods
and approaches. We call this period the method era. Over the century, many different
methods were put forward. Some of the earliest ones are the Audiolingual Method, the
Oral Approach, the Situational Method, Communicative Approach, Total Physical
Response, Community Language Learning, Desuggestopedia, and the Silent Way. In
1980s and 1990s, linguists proposed other methods such as Content-based instruction,
Task-based and text-based approaches, competency-based language teaching,
cooperative language learning, whole language learning. One of the most recently
proposed methods is the Content and Language Integrated Learning, also known as
CLIL.