This document discusses several approaches to teaching English as a foreign language. It describes student-centered, teacher-centered, grammar-translation, direct method, reading, audio-lingual, community language learning, silent way, communicative, functional-notional, total physical response, and natural approaches. For each approach, it provides details on the methods used and advantages and disadvantages.

1. SOME APPROACHES
IN TEFL
By
Fatmatul Aisyah (16108810001)
English Department
Faculty of Teacher Training and
Education
Islamic University of Balitar
Teaching English as Foreign Language
Dian Fadilawati, M.Pd

2. Student Centered Approach
Both students and teachers are working together
with the same goal in mind and share the same focus.
Group work is encouraged, and students are encouraged to
work and communicate with each other.
As Thomas Shuell has said, student centered
teaching is built on the assumption that “what the student
does is actually more important in determining what is
learned than what the teacher does” (T. J. Shuell, Cognitive
Conception of Learning” (1986), 429)”.

3. Teacher Centered Approach
When the students pay attention solely to the
teacher. The instructor will teach the class in lectures.
Group activities are discouraged. A teacher centered
classroom creates a quite, orderly work environment.

4. Grammar-translation Approach
This is the classic way of teaching language. It began as a method to teach
Latin and Greek and was generalized to teach any second language. The
Grammar-translation Approach uses the students’ native language to teach
the target language.

5. Method, Advantages, and
Criticism
Method
a. Use of mother tongue.
b. Vocabulary items are taught in the form of word lists.
c. Elaborate explanations of grammar, etc.
Advantages
a. Translation is the easiest and shortest way of explaining meaning of words and phrases.
b. Learners have no difficulties to understand the lesson as it is carried out in the mother tongue
c. It is a labor-saving method as the teacher carries out everything in the mother tongue.
Criticism
a. What the method is good at is “teaching about the language” , not “teaching the language”.
b. Speaking or any kind of spontaneous creative output was missing from the curriculum.
c. Students lacked an active role in the classroom.

6. The Direct Method
The direct method of teaching was developed as a response to the Grammar-
Translation method. It sought to immerse the learner in the same way as
when a first language is learnt. All teaching is done in the target language,
grammar is taught inductively, there is a focus on speaking and listening,
and only useful ‘everyday' language is taught.

7. Advantages and Disadvantages
Advantages
• It makes the learning of English interesting and lively by establishing direct bond
between a word and its meaning.
• It is an activity method facilitating alertness and participation of the pupils.
• Psychologically it is a sound method as it proceeds from the concrete to the abstract.
• Through this method, fluency of speech, good pronunciation and power of expression
are properly developed.
Disadvantages
• There are many abstract words which cannot be interpreted directly in English and
much time and energy are wasted in making attempts for the purpose.
• This method is based on the principles that auditory appeal is stronger that visual. But
there are children who learn more with visual than with their oral- aural sense like
ears and tongue.
 There is dearth of teachers trained and interested in teaching English in this method.
 This method may not hold well in higher classes where the Translation Method is
found suitable.

8. Reading Approach
Reading approach is a reaction to the impracticality of the Direct
Approach as few teachers could use the target language in a native-like
manner to apply Direct Method successfully.

9. Advantages, and Disadvantages
Advantages
1. Reading approach can be used in a big class.
2. In reading approach, students can know much vocabulary because they have
to read the passage.
3. Students focus what they are studying because they only learn grammar.
Disadvantages
1. Since reading approach is only focused on written skill, this approach is lack
in speaking skill.
2. Reading approach is oppressive approach because the vocabularies and
grammar are controlled.

10. Audio-lingual Approach
The theory behind this method is that learning a language
means acquiring habits. There is much practice of dialogues of
every situations. New language is first heard and extensively
drilled before being seen in its written form.
Unlike the Reading Approach, the Audio lingual Approach
gives higher priority to the spoken form than the written form.
Classes are generally held using the target language.

11. Advantages and Disadvantages
Advantages
1. Learners be able speaking the target language comunicatively.
2. Learners have no difficulties to understand the lesson as it is carried
out in the mother tongue.
3. Learners are able to give correct response directly.
Disadvantages
1. Speaking or any kind of spontaneous creative output was missing
from the curriculum.
2. Students lacked an active role in the classroom.
3. Process of learning only focus in speaking.

12. Community Language Learning
Communicationis essentially the rationale for language and the
Communicative Approach seeks to develop those skills that enable
students to meaningfully engage with each other. Interactive activities
are the hall mark of this approach. In this method attempts are made to
build strong personal links between the teacher and student so that
there are no blocks to learning. There is much talk in the mother tongue
which is translated by the teacher for repetition by the student.

13. Advantages and Disadvantages
Advantages
1. It is an attempt to overcome the threatening affective factors in EFL and ESL.
2. The teacher allow the learners to determine type of conversation and to analyze
the language inductively
3. The student centered nature of the method can provide extrinsic motivation and
capitalize on intrinsic motivation.
Disadvantages
1. The teacher can become too non directive. Students often need directions
2. The method relies completely on inductive learning. It is worthwhile noting that
deductive learning is also a viable strategy of learning.
3. Translation is an intricate and difficult task. The success of the method relies
largely on the translation expertise of the teacher.

14. The Silent Way
This is so called because the aim of the teacher is to say as little
as possible in order that the learner can be in control of what
he wants to say. No use is made of the mother tongue.

15. Advantages and Disadvantages
Advantages
1. The use of the Silent Way enables a very high degree of interaction as
well between the teacher and the students as between the students
themselves and additionally raises the participation of the students in
class.
2. It embodies a new approach to education in general, a respect for the
individual and an awareness of the individual’s extraordinary cognitive
powers.
Disadvantages
1. The Silent Way is a very abstract way of learning a language, the learners
have to engage themselves with the artificiality of the approach, which is
extremely different from more commonly used methods of language
learning.
2. This method can be benefited by the teacher only in small groups of
students. The teacher can gain ability in this method by trying. The
teacher is expected to enrich the materials on his/her own.

16. The communicative approach
The communicative approach is based on the idea that learning
language successfully comes through having to communicate real
meaning. When learners are involved in real communication, their
natural strategies for language acquisition will be used, and this will
allow them to learn to use the language.

17. Advantages and Disadvantages
Advantages
1. Communicative approach is much more pupil-orientated, because it is based on pupils’ needs and
interests.
2. Communicative approach seeks to personalize and locale language and adapt it to interests of pupils.
Meaningful language is always more easily retained by learners.
3. Seeks to use authentic resources. And that is more interesting and motivating for children.
4. Children acquire grammar rules as a necessity to speak so is more proficient and efficient.
Disadvantages
1. It pays insufficient attention to the context in which teaching and learning take place.
2. The Communicative Approach often seems to be interpreted as: “if the teacher understands the student
we have good communication” but native speakers of the target language can have great difficulty
understanding students.
3. Another disadvantage is that the CLT approach focuses on fluency but not accuracy. The approach does
not focus on error reduction but instead creates a situation where learners are left using their own
devices to solve their communication problems. Thus they may produce incoherent, grammatically
incorrect sentences.

18. Functional Notional Approach
The major characteristic of the functional-notional approach to
language teaching is a sensitivity to the individual needs of
students. Based on the idea that the ability to use real,
appropriate language to communicate with others is the primary
goal of most foreign language learning, the design of a functional-
notional curriculum contributes to the goal of communication
and interaction from the first day of study.

19. Total Physical Response (TPR)
TPR works by having the learner respond to simple commands
such as "Stand up", "Close your book", "Go to the window and
open it." The method stresses the importance of aural
comprehension.

20. Advantages and Disadvantages
Advantages
• It is fun and easy.
• It does not require a great deal of preparation on the part of the
teacher.
• It is a good tool for learning vocabulary.
Disadvantages
• It is not a very creative method. Students are not given the
opportunity to express their own views and thoughts in a creative
way.
• It is easy to overuse TPR.
• It is limited, since everything cannot be explained with this method. It
must be combined with other approaches.

21. The Natural Approach
There is no correction of mistakes. Learning takes place by the
students being exposed to language that is comprehensible or
made comprehensible to them. In addition, the Natural Approach
sees a difference between “learning” and “acquisition.”Learning a
language requires text books, grammar lessons and rote
memory. Acquiring a language only requires an immersive
process of repetition, correction and recall.

22. Advantages and Disadvantages
Advantages
• Students acquire the target language in a natural and easy way.
• Teaching materials are designed very well. Students can acquire
language from easy to difficult, from simple to complex, and from
concrete to abstract.
Disadvantages
• Students may use the target language fluently, but they cannot use it
accurately.
• Teachers should collect various teaching aids and use them
appropriately. Special teaching designs are necessary for the
students with better.

23. Summary
So those are approaches that could serve as guides to teaching
English . They do overlap and there is not one method for the
language teacher.

24. References
https://www.myenglishpages.com/blog/community-language-
learning/ accesed on april 16, 2019 at 20.00
http://www.preservearticles.com/201105216930/advantages-
and-disadvantages-of-direct-method-of-teaching-
english.htmlaccesed on april 16, 2019 at 20.00
https://elisaarandilla.wordpress.com/advantages-and-
disadvantages-of-tpr/accesed on april 16, 2019 at 20.00
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:
//ekayantipt.wordpress.com/2012/06/07/natural-
approach/amp/&ved=2ahUKEwjrqdON0dnhAhWhguYKHdU4D
6sQFjACegQIAhAB&usg=AOvVaw2WRbidj1a5QvdKIUJhxt3A&a
mpcf=1accesed on april 16, 2019 at 20.00
https://www.fluentu.com/blog/educator/language-teaching-
approaches/ accesed on april 20, 2019 at 19.40