The Silent Way is a language teaching method developed by Caleb Gattegno that focuses on student discovery and problem solving. The teacher remains mostly silent to encourage independent learning. Key aspects include using colored charts to represent sounds and vocabulary, rods to create visual situations, and focusing first on pronunciation before more complex grammar. The role of the learner is to take responsibility for their own learning by formulating hypotheses and discovering rules through exploration, while the teacher facilitates this process without providing direct instruction or answers.

1. THE SILENT WAY
METHOD
Presented By:
Jennifer Constanza Clavijo Barrios
Meliza Rueda Alvarez
Tatiana Patricia Segura Antury
Group: 8

2. What is The Silent Way?
 It is a method of language teaching developed by Caleb Gattegno.
 Teacher while conducting a silent way class is silent most of the time.
 Focus of the method is student needs and student abilities.
 Teacher does not provide the knowledge.
 Students are supposed to make their own discoveries, gain their own
insights into the functioning of the language.

3. Learning hypotheses underlying the
method:
 Learning is facilitated if the learner discovers or creates
rather than remembers and repeats what is to be
learned.
 Learning is facilitated by accompanying (mediating)
physical objects.
 Learning is facilitated by problem solving involving the
material to
be learned (Richards and Rodgers 2001: 81)

4. Approach behind the Silent
Way
 Artificial approach to acquiring a second language.
 Natural approaches seen as misguided.
 Processes involved in learning of first language and
learning of second languages are radically different. We
cannot learn another language in the same way as the
first because we have acquired certain knowledge that
changes the situations.

5.  Gattegno: Our proposal is to apply an artificial and for some purposes a
strictly controlled approach, using materials constructed for this purpose.
We will meet our students as people who already own much of what is
needed to acquire a language and who have shown by the acquisition of
their native tongue that they are endowed with mental powers that are,
to say the least, sizeable. (Gattegno: )

6. The self of the learner and
awareness
 The self of the learner as the free creative energy which which has
different attributes like imagination, patience, concentration,
intelligence, sensitivity, action, perception, abstraction.
 Learning is successful if the self (the learner) is committed to language
and that happens through intelligent awareness.
 Awareness - learners constant testing of powers to abstract, analyze,
synthesize and integrate. The best environment for awareness is silence
because it helps students to concentrate and stay alert.

7. The Silent Way in practice
Objectives
 To give beginning-level students oral and aural facility
in basic elements of the target language.
 Near-native fluency in the target language.
 Correct pronunciation and mastery of prosodic elements
of the target language.
 To provide the learner with a basic practical knowledge
of the grammar.

8.  Phonological and suprasegmental elements as a starting point in learning a
language
 Vocabulary is the central domain of language learning and choice of
vocabulary is highly important.
 The most important is “functional vocabulary -the most functional words
of a language.

9. Syllabus
 Structural syllabus - lessons are organized around gramatical items and
related vocabulary.
 Language items are selected and arranged according to their grammatical
complexity.
 The sounds are the base for more complex elements like vocabulary,
sentences.
 Gattegno: “The system of sounds of the new language is the only common
basis for all utterances in it whatever their purpose, so it must be given
first place in the acquisition of a second language and mastered as soon as
possible”

10.  Learners grasp the meaning through perception and involvement in linguistic
situations.
 Teachers create and present linguistic situations trough the use of materials
and learners have to discover how to use new language items within these
linguistic situations.

11. The role of a teacher
 Teacher is supposed to remain silent as much as possible.
 Teacher is not there to provide the knowledge or the answers but to
facilitate discovery and alertness
 Teacher must encourage the students to pay attention, to commit to the
language and to use their language resources for initiating learning,
absorbing and reacting to objects and situations presented to them.

12.  Silence is unique aspect and probably the most demanding, because it
requires avoidance of modelling and assistance.
 Silence is a kind of pedagogical device that teacher uses to enable
students the experience of relying on themselves
 Steps that teacher is expected to follow are also unique:

13. The role of a learner
 Learners have to develop responsibility for their own learning and they
have to explore language by themselves.
 They have to concentrate on the language elements in order to formulate
independent hypothesis about the rules in which language functions.
 When students create their own sets of meaningful language rules and
concepts they test them out and learn from that experience even if they
make mistakes.

14.  Errors as natural part of the process that indicate student alertness and
attentiveness to the language.
 Learners develop their own inner criteria for correctness that enhances
learning, responsability and independence.
 Learner becomes autonomous, active and responsible person that
discovers language through exploratory, problem solving approach.

15. Materials
 Sound-colour chart: a wall chart made up of different
coloured rectangles in which each colour represents a
phoneme (sound) of the language. This chart enables
students to work on fine distinctions in the phonetics
and prosody of the language studied, both on the level
of production and of listening and recognition.

17.  Word charts: consist of words that are written with the
same colour code as the sound-colour chart, the sounds
in each word corresponding in colour to the chart. The
twelve charts display the functional vocabulary of the
language containing about 500 words.

19.  Fidel chart: spelling chart that shows all the possible
spellings for each phoneme and which uses the same
colour code as the rectangle chart. The Fidel for English
is a set of eight wall charts with lists of spellings for
each of the rectangles on the sound-colour chart,
coloured the same way as the rectangle.

21.  Rods: vary in length from one to ten centimetres, each
length having its specific colour. They are used to
create clear and visible situations that enable students
to understand how a given concept is expressed in the
language studied.. They can symbolize whatever words
are being taught and be manipulated directly or
abstractly to create sentences.

22. Typical lesson format
 First part of the lesson focuses on the pronunciation. At beginners stages
teacher will have to model the appropriate sound pointing to its symbol
and colour, later he can just point to certain symbols and words and elicit
student responses.
 After sounds they work on more complex language items. Teacher models
an utterance by using rods to create the visual representation. Students
are to discover the meaning and respond.
 When students have understood the meaning teacher has to create new
linguistic situations.

23. “I don't teach them,
I learn them.”
Gattegno