This document discusses the history and nature of approaches and methods for teaching English as a foreign language. It covers the major developments in language teaching from the 19th century reform movement to modern methods. Key topics include the rejection of grammar translation, the rise of the direct method focusing on spoken language, and the methods era where different teaching procedures were established. The document also examines the distinctions between approaches, which are based on theories of language and learning, and methods, which provide specific teaching designs, procedures and roles for teachers and learners.

1. TEACHING ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN
LANGUAGE
The Brief History of Language Teaching
 The Nature of Approaches and Methods

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The Brief History of Language Teaching
• Language teaching innovations in the nineteenth
century
• The Reform Movement
• The Direct Method
• The methods era
• Approaches and methods in teacher preparation
programs

3. Kelly (1969) and Howatt (1984) have
demonstrated that many current issues
in language teaching are not particularly
new. Today’s controversies reflect
contemporary responses to questions
that have been asked often throughout
the history of language teaching.

4. Language teaching innovations
in the nineteenth century
Toward the mid-nineteenth century several
factors contributed to a questioning and
rejection of the Grammar-Translation
Method.
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5. The Reform Movement
In general the reformers believed that
• The spoken language is primary and that this
should be reflected in an oral-based technology
• The findings of phonetics should be applied to
teaching and to teacher training
• Learners should hear the language first, before
seeing it in written form
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6. • Words should be presented in sentences, and sentences
should be practiced in meaningful contexts and not be
taught as isolated, disconnected elements
• The rules of grammar should be taught only after the
students have practiced and grammar points in context-
that is, grammar should be taught inductively
• Translation should be avoided, although the native
language could be used in order to explain new words or
to check comprehension
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7. The Direct Method
• Among those who tried to apply natural principles to
language classes in the nineteenth century was
L.Sauveur (1826-1907), who used intensive oral
interaction in the target language, employing questions
as a way of presenting and eliciting language. He
opened a language school in Boston in the late 1860s,
and his method soon became referred to as the Natural
method.
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8. The Methods Era
• An approach or method refer to a theoretically consistent
set of teaching procedures that define best practice in
language teaching.
• Particular approaches and methods, if followed
precisely, will lead to more effective levels of language
learning than alternative ways of teaching.
• The quality of language teaching will improve if teachers
use the best available a approaches and methods
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9. Approaches and methods in
teacher preparation programs
• The study of approaches and methods provides teachers with a
view of how the field of language teaching has evolved.
• Approaches and methods can be studied not as prescription for how
to teach but as a source of well-used practiced, which teachers can
adapt or implement based on their own needs.
• Experience in using different teaching approaches and methods can
provide teachers with basic teaching skills that they can later add to
or supplement as they develop teaching experience.
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10. The Nature of Approaches
and Methods in Language
Teaching
• Approach and Method
• Conclusion

11. Approach
Approach refers to theories about the nature
of language and language learning that serve
as the source of practices and principle in
language teaching. We will examine the
linguistic and psycholinguistic aspects of
approach in turn
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12. Design
• What the objective of method are;
• How language content is selected and organized within
the method, that is, is syllabus model the method
incorporates;
• The types of learning tasks and teaching activities the
method advocates;
• The role of learners;
• The roles of teachers;
• The role of instructional materials3/10/2015 12

13. Procedure
• The use of teaching activities ( drill, dialogues, information-gap
activities, etc) to present new language and to clarify and
demonstrate formal, communicative, or other aspect of the target
language.
• The ways in which particular teaching activities are used for
practicing language
• And the procedures and techniques used in giving feedback to
learners concerning the form or content of their utterances or
sentences.
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14. Conclusion
• The model presented in this chapter demonstrates that any language
teaching method can be described in term off the issues identified
here at the levels of approach, design, and procedure. Very few
methods are explicit with respect to all of these dimensions, however.
In the remaining chapters of this book we will attempt to make each of
these features of approach, design, procedure explicit with reference
to the major language teaching approaches and methods in use today.
In so doing, we will often have to infer from what method developers
have written in order to determine precisely what criteria are being
used for teaching activities, what claims are being made about
learning theory, what type of syllabus is being employe, and so on.
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