A “Methodical” History Of Language Teaching

A “Methodical” History of Language Teaching

The first step toward developing a principled approach to language teaching will be to turn back the clock about a century to learn from thehistorical cycles and trends that have brought us to the present day. Above all, you will come to see how our profession is now more aptly characterized by a relatively unified, comprehensive “approach”rather than by competing, restricted method.
Approach, Method, and Technique
For the century spanning the mid-1800s to the mid-1980s, the language-teaching profession may be aptly characterized by aseries of methods that rose and declined in popularity. The ultimate method is one that would be generalizable across widely varying audiences, contexts, and language.
Edward Anthony (1963) gaveus a definition of method: the second of three hierarchical elements, namely approach, method, and technique. An approach, according to Anthony, was a set of assumptions dealing with the nature oflanguage, learning, and teaching. Method was described as an overall plan for systematic presentation of language based upon a selected approach. Techniques were the specific activities manifested inthe classroom that were consistent with a method and therefore were in harmony with an approach as well.
To this day, for better or worse, Anthony´s terms are still in common use among languageteachers. For example, at the approach level, a teacher may affirm the ultimate importance of learning in a relaxed state of mental awareness just above the threshold of consciousness. Techniques couldinclude playing baroque music while reading a passage in the foreign language, getting students to sit in yoga position while listening to a list of words, or having learners adopt a new name in theclassroom and role-play that new person.
Jack Richards and Theodore Rodgers (1982) proposed a reformulation of the concept of “method”. Anthony´s approach, method, and technique were renamed,...