The Silent Way is a language teaching method developed by Caleb Gattegno that focuses on student discovery and autonomy. The teacher remains mostly silent, using visual tools like color-coded charts and rods to guide students in deducing pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar without direct instruction. Learning occurs through problem-solving and creating hypotheses about the language rather than repeating what the teacher says. The goal is for students to take responsibility for their own learning and to learn the language by relying on their own resources and testing their understanding.

1. What is The Silent Way?
• 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.

2. 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)

3. 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.

4. • 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: )

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. • 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.

8. 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”

9. • 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.

10. 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.

11. • 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:

12. 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.

13. • 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.

14. 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.

16. • 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.

18. • 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.

20. • 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.

21. 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.

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