A short history of approaches to TEFL

1) Classroom instruction exclusively in the L2

2) Only everyday vocabulary

3) Development of communication skills organized around question-and-answer exchanges

4) Inductive grammar teaching

5) Oral introduction of new teaching points (IPA invented)

6) Concrete vocabulary: demonstration, objects and pictures; abstract vocabulary: association of ideas

7) Emphasis of correct pronunciation and grammar

1. Dialogue memorization: through mimicry, students repeat the lines until they memorize them

2. Use of minimal pairs: pairs of words that are different only in one sound (ship/sheep). Teacher chooses words to work on their pronunciation after doing a contrastive analysis between L2 and L1 to locate the difficulties.

3. Grammar games: games in this method are used to practice a grammar point. However it inclues repetition rather than creativity in using the language.

1) Draws on the idea of habit formation (based on the learning theory ‘Behaviourism’)

2) Draws on language as a formal system (based on ‘structural linguistics’)

3) Focus on listening and speaking

4) Classroom instruction exclusively in the L2

5) Major aim is to be able to correctly respond, not to understand language

6) Deductive grammar teaching

7) Emphasis on correct pronunciation and grammar

• Mechanical and formalistic nature of exercises

• Form-oriented exercises tend to kill learning motivation (drill and kill) • Free production phase is often neglected

• Often avoidance of new forms in production

• Lack of cultural context

• First „scientific“ method: rational view of learning & a systematic way of teaching, both derived from the linguistic and psychological knowledge available

• PPP: easy to organize & multiply (teacher training)

• Learners were not equipped to use L2 for communication outside the classroom

– No transfer of isolated items of grammar & vocabulary to real life communicative situations

• „total rejection of behaviouristic theory is not more reasonable than total acceptance“ (Widdowson 1990: 11)

• Language learning does involve learning individual items (e.g. pronunciation, intonation)

• At a particular point in their acquisition of the target language, explicit teaching of forms and structures is beneficial to learners

• A repitition-reinforcement instructional procedure may be adequate at the early stages of second and foreign language learning