ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING

A BRIEF HISTORY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING

Learning another language apart from the mother tongue has always been importantfor people, because of the reasons such as knowing other cultures, travelling, trade, religionand even need of being a spy in the others. If we examine where and when second languageeducation started, we cannot give a precise answer; however, it is a fact that bilingualism hasalways been the norm instead of monolingualism. Another point is that this second languageeducation has changed through languages. Romans were trying to learn Greek, and then Latin became popular. Finally, English has the importance now. So, we know why people want tolearn other languages, but the question is this. How can they learn these languages? Thisquestion has always got the attention of pedagogues, linguists and scientists. The answer tothis question has also changed according to reasons why people want to learn languages andwhat the pedagogues, linguists and scientists understand from teaching language. For example, we can see a trend from written language to oral language. Furthermore, manyapproaches methods, and techniques have been developed for the needs of language teaching.When we look at them, we can divide the second language teaching to four periods. Althoughthere are not exact names of these periods, we will call them as Classical Period, AlternativePeriod, Current Communicative Period, and Post-method Era.The first era is the Classical Period as we mentioned above. If we want to understandwhat happened in the Classical Period, we must look at the historical background of it. WhileLatin was the popular language in Europe in the 16

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century, main objectives of learning itwere to understand the classical text, grammar of Latin and translation. In addition, Latin was believed to develop intellectual abilities. Then Latin turned into a “dead” language from aspoken language and English got the popularity. Although it got the popularity, the same wayto teach Latin was used to teach English. This is how the Grammar Translation Methodemerged. It is not true to say when it was used, because it can be still used somewhere.However, we can say it was the trend between 1840s and 1940s. As it emerged from theteaching of Latin, it focused on the teaching of the grammar of English, too. Reading andwriting were more important than listening and speaking. Maybe the only listening-speakingactivity was reading sentences aloud that would be translated. Memorization of the words wasvery important. The aim is to learn a language to learn its literature or to benefit from themental discipline and intellectual development which result from foreign language study

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It was not a method to teach the language, as William H.D. Rouse said it was “

to knoweverything about something rather than itself 

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As it is the first method of the languageteaching, it has many inefficient sides. For example, it doesn’t give importance to oralcommunication. However, oral communication is as important as written language. Even itcan be said that oral communication is more important than written language communication.So, classical period passed with its only method which was very inadequate.Because of the failure in educational system in public schools and some other factors,validity of the Grammar Translation Method was started to be questioned. Moreover, interestin language teaching started to move toward oral proficiency. Some individual specialistssuch as C. Marcel, T. Prendergast, and F. Gouin tried to find some ways of language teaching.The Frenchman C. Marcel focused on the connection between child learning his/her languageand foreign language. He emphasized the importance of reading and believed reading must betaught before other skills. The Englishman T. Prendergast made the observation that childrenuse contextual and situational cues to interpret utterances and he proposed the first “structuralsyllabus”. The Frenchman F. Gouin emphasized that teaching new items in a context thatmade meaning clear is important. Because of the fact that there was no organizationalstructure in language teaching, their attempts couldn’t be successful.This situation began to change toward the end of the 19

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century. Linguistics wasrevitalized as a branch of science. Linguists such as Henry Sweet, Wilhelm Viëtor and PaulPassy led reformist ideas. There were some common beliefs that all reformers defend likespoken language is primary, translation should be avoided, help of phonetics can be taken andgrammar should be taught inductively. But apart from these beliefs put forward by reformists,there was an interest in developing principles for language teaching out of the naturalistic principles of language learning such as which are seen in the first language acquisition. Thiswas the beginning of the Natural Approach and Direct Method. This method was introducedin the United States by Savuer and Maximilian Berlitz and they became very successful intheir commercial schools. Direct method has some opposite ideas to Grammar TranslationMethod apart from its new ideas. For example, grammar is taught inductively, target languageis the medium of classroom interaction, and accuracy in grammar and pronunciation isemphasized. Direct Method is, of course, better than Grammar Translation Method. At least, it gives more importance to oral communication, and the usageof objects and realia in the class was a good progress for language teaching. However,obsession with the accuracy of pronunciation is seemed to be a handicap for learners, becaus

learning process must be natural and fluent. It can be said that Alternative Period was like a passage from Grammar Translation to more influential approaches and methods.As we started to our essay, we mentioned that learning a language has many purposes.When the U.S. entered to World War II, they needed to have personnel who had fluency andaccuracy in other languages than English. It was necessary to establish special languagetraining programs. So the Audio-Lingual Method came into being. We can say for ALM thatit requires drill, drill and drill and only vocabulary to make such drills possible.

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It wasaffected by behaviorism. For example, structural patterns were taught by using drills andsuccessful responses were reinforced. Then, for some reasons like students’ being unable totransfer skills acquired to real communication outside the classroom and procedure’s being boring and unsatisfying, ALM lost its reputation. In addition to ALM, we haveCommunicative Language Teaching in the current communicative period. It takes its originfrom the British language teaching tradition. It has some principles such as language is for expression of meaning and its primary function is interaction and communication. Althoughwe can count principles of it, there are many interpretations of what CLT actually means andinvolves. In communicative period, there has been development in various ways such asemphasis on individualized instruction, humanistic approaches to language learning, greater focus on the communication, in contrast to linguistic and competence. The silent way is themethod devised by Caleb Cattegno. In this method, sounds are coded to colors. Maybe, themost important feature of this method is the teacher’s silence. Although it can be usefulsometimes, teacher’s silence is not always an effective way. It can be disturbing or confusingfor learners. Another method in this period is community language learning. It uses thecounseling-learning theory to teach English. Teacher is more like a guide-counselor thanauthority to students.Furthermore, we have the method of Bulgarian psychiatrist-educator GeorgiLozanov’s Suggestopedia. The decoration of the class, furniture, the use of music and theauthoritative behaviors of teacher are the main characteristics of Suggestopedia. Peripherallearning is a very original idea in the language teaching. While approaching to post methodera, we have Task-Based Language Teaching and Content-based Instruction. In TB languageteaching, aim is to teach language by giving a task that will urge students to communicate inthe target language while dealing with it. As for the CBI, it is the main goal that teachingsomething in the target language rather than teaching the language. However, this method canonly be used with learners who have high level of proficiency in the target language. Another method that we mustn’t forget is the Multiple Intelligence method. It has a very different way

of looking to human intelligence. It aims to teach language by using every person’s dominantintelligence. As you see, most of the methods and approaches is in the current communicative period. We can say that there was a fight of showing who has the best way of teachinglanguage. It was like a brain-storming of language teaching history.After all of these searches for best method, some questions like why we are always bound to only a method have aroused. Then a scientist called Kumaravadivelu came up withthe idea that “

as long as we caught up in the web of method, we will continue to get entangled in an unending search for an unavailable solution.”

He suggests that we must find “

analternative to method, rather than finding and alternative method.”

If we think in the sameway with Kumaravadivelu eclecticism may be the answer or result of these ideas. It claimsthat we must use every useful element of the methods and approach rather than obsession withone of them. So, the post method era is a very different way in language teaching in terms of its looking to methods.In conclusion, we tried to give a brief history of English language teaching. Each of the methods we examine above is another step in language teaching. Even though some of them are less important than others, each of them is important to understand the difficultiesand problems of teaching another language. It can be said that it is better to benefit from everymethod, approach and technique when it is necessary rather than being stuck on one of them.More flexible you are, more efficient is your teaching.