Page 33 - Teaching English at Primary Level: From Theory into the Classroom
P. 33

2



                  Approaches to Language Teaching


                  Chapter Objectives
                   • Critically examining different approaches to teaching an FL from
                     a present-day perspective
                   • Evaluating the implications of different approaches to teaching young
                     learners
                   • Understanding the suitability of different approaches for different types
                     of learners





               What is the best way to teach a language? Different approaches and meth-
             ods, which have been developed and used over the last century, have tried
             to give an answer to this seemingly simple question. Each of them has pro-
             posed ways in which a language should be learnt and the most suitable
             teaching techniques that should be used. Some approaches, for example the
             grammar translation approach or the audiolingual approach, received wider
             acceptance for a certain period of time only to be replaced by new, more
             modern approaches. However, this does not mean that past approaches are
             today dead and buried. On the contrary, we often see evidence of their ele-
             ments in today’s language classrooms and it is one of the aims of this chapter
             to critically examine the selected approaches from the present-day perspec-
             tive. Of all the approaches which will be discussed, the most prominent is un-
             doubtedly the communicativeapproach or communicativelanguageteaching
             which has dominated foreign language teaching for decades. In the mean-
             time, several alternative methods and approaches have been developed,
             such as the Total Physical Response, multiple intelligences, the task-based ap-
             proach, the story-based approach, Content and Language Integrated Learning
             (CLIL) and several others. In this chapter, we will look closely at the meth-
             ods and approaches which we believe to be especially relevant for teaching
             young language learners.

             Basic Terms
             In the area of ELT, terms like approach, method, procedure and technique (see
             Table 2.1 on p. 34) are commonly used to refer to different aspects of teach-
             ing a foreign language (Harmer, 2007). Although the majority of these terms
             are not always used consistently (e.g. approach and method are often used
             interchangeably) and are sometimes vague to define, it is still important to


                                                                             33
   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38