Universidad Católica de Ilobasco
Bachelor of Arts in English
Didactics of the English Language I
In the century spanning the mid- 1880s to the mid 1980s, the language – teaching profession was involved in a search. That search was for what popularly called “methods”, or ideally, a single method, generalizable across widely varying audiences that would successfully teach students a foreign language in the classroom. Historical accounts of the profession tend therefore to describe a succession of methods, each of which is more or less discarded as a new method takes its place.
What is a method? About four decades ago Edward Anthony (1693) gave us a definition that has admirably withstood the test of the time. His concept of “method” was the second of three hierarchical elements, namely approach, method, and technique.
An approach, according to Anthony, was a set of assumptions dealing with the nature of the language, learning and teaching. Method was described as an overall plan for systematic presentation of language based on upon a selected approach. Techniques were the specific activities manifested in the classroom that were consistent with a method and therefore were in harmony with an approach as well.
A teacher may, for example, at the approach level, affirm the ultimate importance of learning in a relaxed state of mental awareness just above the suggestopedia. Techniques could include playing baroque music while reading a passage in the foreign language, getting students to sit in the yoga position while listening to a list of words, or having learners adopt a new name in the classroom and role- play that new person.
A couple of decades later; Jack Richards and Theodore Rodgers (1982, 1986) proposed a reformulation of the concept of “method”. Anthony’s approach, method and technique were renamed, respectively, approach, design and procedure, with a subordinate term to describe this three- step process, now called “method”. A method, according to Richards and Rodgers, was “an umbrella term for the specification and interrelation of theory and practice” (1982:154). An approach defines assumptions, beliefs, and theories about the nature of the language learning.
- Procedures are techniques and practices that are derived from one’s approach and design.
Through their reformulation, Richards and Rodgers made two principal contributions to our understanding of the concept method:
1- They specified the necessary elements of language- teaching designs that had heretofore been left somewhat vague.
2- Richards and Rodgers nudged us into at least relinquishing the notion that separate, definable, discrete methods are the essential building blocks of methodology.
- Methodology: Pedagogical practices in general (including theoretical underpinnings and related research). Whatever considerations are involved in “how to teach” are methodological.
- Approach: Theoretically well- informed positions and beliefs about the nature of language; the nature of language learning, and the applicability of both to pedagogical settings.
- Method: A generalized set of classroom specifications for accomplishing linguistic objectives. Methods tend to be concerned primarily with teacher and students roles and behaviors and secondarily with such features as linguistic and subject- matter objectives, sequencing, and materials. They are almost always thought of as being broadly applicable to a variety of audiences in a variety of audiences.
- Curriculum/ syllabus: Designs for carrying out a particular language program. Features include a primary concern with the specification of linguistic and subject- matter objectives, sequencing, and materials to meet the needs of a designated group of learners in a defined context. (The term syllabus is usually used more customarily in the United Kingdom to refer to what is called a “curriculum” in the United States)
- Technique (also commonly referred to by other terms): * Any of a wide variety of exercises, activities, or tasks used in the language classroom for realizing lesson objectives.
*There is currently quite an intermingling of such terms as “technique”, “task”, “procedure”, “activity” and “exercise”, is often used in somewhat free variations across the profession. Of these terms task has received the most concerted attention, viewed by such scholars as Peter Skehan (1988) as incorporating specific communicative and pedagogical principles. Tasks, according to Skehan and others should be thought of as a special kind of technique and, in fact, may actually include more than one technique.
