A look at teaching methodology over the last 30 years

Posted on January 3, 2005 Updated on August 28, 2026

(8160 Words)

Second language teaching can be employed in many ways and is born from many theories hypothesizing how we acquire language through the process of first or second language acquisition. Central to these theories of language acquisition was the emergence of the concept of “methods” of language teaching. It is this language teaching coupled with its methodology I will discuss in this paper notwithstanding that teaching methods can not be applied if we do not understand how students gather all the information for their language acquisition. Methodology can be fundamentally sound but if we (the teachers) do not understand the minds of our students that much clearer, all the hard teaching work will be fruitless. Methodology in teaching in all it forms originates from questions the teacher asks himself about the students and learning environment such as: Who are the learners? What exactly do they do? For what purpose are the students learning the language? In what setting are the students learning?,  With what kinds of language?, In what patterns of social interaction? , and also what are the particular outcomes in terms of quantity/quality of language use, attitudes, and motivation? This is not forgetting the teacher who must consider the design features of his lesson that might include such points as: stated objectives, syllabus specifications, and type of activities, roles of teachers, learners, and materials. These are the sort of questions and ideas that are congruent with referring to a methodology for teaching and will help with answering the question for this paper; what is teaching methodology? I will also generally try to focus on teaching methodology over the last thirty years.

To begin with, teaching methodology in all its forms helps the students in their acquisition of language. Our knowledge of the student and his learning is fundamental with respect to a proficient teaching method. We only need to look at one of the most influential researchers in the language field of developmental psychology. [1]Jean Piaget (1896-1980) explains this point a bit more. He helped posit many theories (which are discussed later in this paper). Piaget became interested in how children think. He recognised that the children’s answers were qualitatively different from the older children’s. This, of course, he recognised, did not mean the younger ones were less smart. The children answered the questions differently because they thought differently. Influential research like Piaget’s is the kind of recognition of students’ learning and capabilities that a teaching methodology has to adapt to. It is a focus like this, that I hope to put across in this paper. Teaching methodology works in many ways and has to deal with a myriad of learning styles and ages.

A must for furthering our teaching knowledge are studies in language that help to advance acquisition. Over the last 30 years, there have been and continue to be studies throughout the teaching field. Studies like Jean Piaget mentioned above, have helped broaden our focus of instruction over these years. These sorts of people have made advances in cognitive science and educational psychology that have assisted teaching ideas. Methodology has gone away from rote learning and memorised facts and professes to a more communicative base these days. The communicative base learners learn a language through using it to communicate; this is allied with authentic and meaningful communication in the classroom. Teachers use a methodology that is more typical of natural language acquisition. There are no more structural drills and repetition of set phrases as was the audio-lingual method. For the audio-lingual method, we could also say the same about the grammar translation method which looked at individual words existing in isolation. Thankfully, students these days are encouraged to play an active part in their learning. Children are made to work together in groups. With the rise of the computer, sound labs have now been replaced by computers offering multimedia. Teaching and methodology is an ever-changing subject and has seen significant changes in the ways that languages have been taught over a rather short space of time. This is not forgetting those people who have made these changes occur. For every new theory or approach, there is a person who owes his or her name to it.

One person, Noam Chomsky, who is one of the most famous linguists, helped in the teaching world by creating better teaching and learning habits. He claimed that we are constructed to develop language as much as we are constructed to walk and do other human things. Chomsky ideas were that we have an innate structure and naturally learn a language. Chomsky’s ideas and theories of language are what the communicative approach is based on. In 1957, he changed the face of linguistics when he published Syntactic Structures. He theorised that children acquire their first language with no formal education. Chomsky’s ideas were opposed to Psychologist [2]B. F. Skinner’s formal ideas for acquisition. Chomsky’s more natural approach looked at the fact that children spontaneously utter sentences they have never heard, much less practiced, before, while Skinner’s approach suggested that language was a form of conditioned behaviour. Chomsky thought it seemed so unnatural to be taught so formally at such a young age. With Chomsky’s view, there was a certain consensus that viewed mistakes as just part of learning in the classroom.

Behavioural psychologists such as B. F. Skinner conceived of language learning as a habit formation. Both the grammar translation teaching method and the audio-lingual teaching method (popular from the 1940s through the 1960s) are based on a behavioural model of learning. The methods of behavioural teaching with the students were dialogues and pattern drills. These were designed to condition the learners to produce automatic, correct responses to linguistic stimuli. This is the practice that now seems so formal and serious and not wholly beneficial to the students in their use of language in the real world. The theory behind behaviorism (behavioral model) concentrates on the study of overt behaviors that can be observed and measured (Good & Brophy, 1990). Behaviorism focuses on a new behavioral pattern being repeated by the student until it becomes automatic. The behaviorists believed you should only study those things that you can see and document. In educational settings behaviorism implies the dominance of the teacher with the learner as a passive recipient of knowledge. Skinner’s behavioral view holds that learning takes place through a process of operant conditioning, or more generally, habit formation. From this view, mistakes were seen by the teacher as bad habits which were to be unlearned

From Skinner and Chomsky’s opposing views in the 1950s to those many people who have maintained the progression and arguments of the aspects of teaching methodology, they all have radically looked at language in different perspectives that have come to profess some answers to our acquisitional traits and how best to progress them further. Within this focus on teaching methodology to help language acquisition, we find that methods and approaches have a clear difference between them. Methods are held to be fixed teaching systems with prescribed techniques and practices, whereas approaches represent language teaching philosophies that can be interpreted and applied in a variety of different ways in the classroom. Approaches can be loosely described as techniques while there can be highly prescribed methods. From approaches, methods, and theories, in the field of linguistics and second language learning, language researchers who query language acquisition are further categorized by their named ideas such as Chomsky’s innatist theory or Skinner’s behavioural theory.

Starting with the theories by Chomsky and Skinner starting in the 1950s, we find that it really wasn’t until the 1960s and more prominently in the 1970s when applied linguistic research started to change the views of classroom methodology. The increased research and new models of learning in the 1970’s resulted in the creation of a host of new ideas for second language teaching.  Two such ideas were generally thought of, these approaches were informed by cognitive and humanistic models of learning which still have prevalence today in researcher’s theories. One of the recognized people in the development of cognitivism (cognitive model) is Jean Piaget the Swiss psychologist/epistemologist (mentioned earlier). Although he developed the major aspects of his ideas in the 1920s, his ideas were not really recognized until the 1960s. Some of the key concepts in cognitivism, for example, involve schema; the internal knowledge structure. Cognitivists view the learner as an active participant in the learning process. This active involvement is allied with a communicative teaching base. Within a cognitive method of teaching is the role of language awareness and consciousness-raising activities in promoting language learning. The Cognitivists want to study what is going on inside the learner’s head. Cognitivism concentrates on the growth of knowledge as a progressive construction. This cognitive output from the students lets the teacher comprehend the students’ ongoing acquisition and his teaching methods. Cognitivism attempts to study the mental processes of the learner while studying for their new second language. When we look at trying to unlock the cognitive intelligence in every student, we can use Howard Gardner’s learning theory as an example, from his book Frames of Mind (1983). This theory was a turning point for teaching methods. He proposed that a student’s intelligence was actually much more varied, that rather than there being one intelligence in a student, multiple intelligences existed. These intelligences were only activated when various teaching methods were used for the students to practice, for example, songs, games or pictures are used. This, in turn, highlights how one student may be more cognitively aware in a certain area but not so much in another. Teachers use different teaching methods to highlight intelligences in students and thus viewed every student as being able to be cognitively capable although not in every area of intelligence. Therefore the teacher, with this teaching method, becomes more aware of his student’s capabilities. This view was in keeping with the cognitivist paradigm.

Moreover, cognitivism figures that the student already has some knowledge/concept of something and this is then combined and extended to accommodate new information. This learning involves associations established through contiguity and repetition. Piaget theories also emphasized a scaffolding approach towards teaching.  This meant that the teacher uses teaching methods that build language during his lesson(s). This, of course, furthers the student’s language education onto their preexisting levels of knowledge and experience. This method of teaching also notices a three-stage cognitive information processing model. This is shown when the teacher shows new information to the students, this is then first inputted into the sensory resister in the brain and processed into the short-term memory and then into the long-term memory for storage and retrieval. It is the teacher’s awareness of the student’s learning and his methods that help this storage and retrieval. Cognitivists place greater interest in knowledge, meaning, intentions, feelings, creativity, expectations, and thoughts. For example, Lucksinger (2001) recognized cognitive structures and processes such as memory, perception, problem-solving, comprehension, attention, and concept- learning as prevalent in the student’s language learning.  Cognitivism can be further explained by Good and Brophy:

“Cognitive theorists recognize that much learning involves associations established through contiguity and repetition. They also acknowledge the importance of reinforcement, although they stress its role in providing feedback about the correctness of responses over its role as a motivator. However, even while accepting such behavioristic concepts, cognitive theorists view learning as involving the acquisition or reorganization of the cognitive structures through which humans process and store information.” (Good and Brophy, 1990, pp. 187).

The humanist view on education on the other hand still had cognition as an aspect of the cognitivist’s ideas but looked at the divergent aspect of cognition which helps develop creativity in every student. Researchers with humanistic views such as Jean Piaget and [3]Lev Vygotsky not only influenced the language teaching theory in the first half of the 20^th century but also in the 1960s and 70s. Lev Vygotsky was a Soviet psychologist whose work was suppressed after his death in the 1930s and was not discovered by the West until the late 1950s. Some of his and Piaget’s humanist language theories, with reference to the classroom, put a greater focus on the learner and on classroom social interaction with the emphasis on everybody involved. We find that the Humanistic approach does not exclude cognition: “it is not a question of lowering standards for students’ cognitive development, but of recognizing that it can be very beneficial for teachers to choose to focus at times on affective matters also” (Arnold, 1998:8).  A teaching example of a humanist method, is to have students participate in group work, especially cooperative learning, in order to develop social and affective skills to help their learning. This makes the teacher more of a facilitator while the students work together. Cooperative learning expresses a need for understanding of the students more than accuracy in language. In this type of learning the students can take control of their learning. While the students are learning together, the humanistic approach refers to the respect the teacher has for his students’ personalities. The teacher has to observe their learning styles, their personalities, if they are shy or extroverts and get these different learning styles to gel. He has to take into consideration whether error correction is embarrassing to the students, as well as never putting them in a position of feeling ridiculed. A central assumption out of the Humanistic approach is that human beings behave out of intentionality and values (Kurtz, 2000).  In the classroom the humanistic approach can encourage the students to be observant of others, to encourage creativity in their responses. This will help others to feel less inhibited. Therefore, the humanistic model also places importance on the role of affective factors in the classroom.  In general, the goal is to reduce anxiety and create a safe place where students can feel comfortable taking the risks necessary to communicate in a second language.  For instance, some approaches to the humanistic idea favor playing soothing music in the background to help students relax. Under a humanistic model, the teacher’s teaching methods use the students as active participants in language education process with communicative desires and purposes. The teacher is not only teaching but also observing the students learning traits. This can help the students by using teaching material they are mostly interested in. This way the students are encouraged to become independent, self-guided learners.

Moreover, this participation and control of the direction of their (students) learning was theorized by Carl Roger. His theory of learning evolved as part of the humanistic education movement (e.g., Patterson, 1973; Valett, 1977). He proposed that learning is facilitated when the student participates completely in the learning process and they have control over its nature and direction. Drawing on Carl Roger’s ideas of the students not as a class but as a group, Charles Curran, in the 1970s, developed a new teaching model. The new way of teaching he called counseling-learning.  For the learners to achieve, they had to communicate within a group format using their interpersonal skills to build relationships and their second language. As much as the humanistic saw students as communicators with feelings and language needs, the community language learning idea was to encourage teachers to see their students as whole persons, where their intellect, interpersonal relationships, protective reactions as well as feelings. This addressed and balanced the students desire to learn the language. This process would have the students sitting around in a circle with the teacher on the outside. The students were allowed to say anything they wanted in their first language this was then translated back to them by the teacher in the second language. This process of using language built their skills up over time until the student felt a certain independence with their acquired newly language. This laid a foundation for learning that spontaneity and regular communication was practiced.

Within this group work structure, allowing students creativity, we can also refer to a project-based approach. This approachmay be taken in which students are required to work independently or in groups on language-related projects of their own choosing. This approach has the teacher becoming more of a facilitator in the student’s learning. One approach is to have the students take responsibility for their learning by producing a seminar that is on a chosen subject of their own. The students can also help in the process of planning lessons, the teacher may ask students to provide ideas for topics or situations of interest. These lessons main focus is to have the students as actively involved with each other as possible. In summary, the purpose of humanistic learning is to provide a foundation for personal growth and development so that learning will continue throughout life in a self-directed manner. This is linked with the Cognivists point of view where they feel as if the learner’s thoughts and background need to be considered when developing lesson plans.  ” By building on the child’s experiences and providing moderately challenging tasks teachers can provide the ‘intellectual scaffolding’ to help children learn and progress through the different stages of development.” (Conway, 1997)

Development of the students is the highest priority in teaching. The environment and the culture the learner is in, and the interactions the learner has in the classroom, play a fundamental part in their language acquisition. Of course, the teachers are the main part of this interaction. These are the working of a teaching methodology that has the student’s development as their number one thought in the teacher’s mind. This collaboration of all involved in the class highlights the idea of classroom culture. This communal view can serve as a basis for the new natural-communicative approaches that the teacher can develop. The classroom interaction of teacher-students, as well as students-students, is what builds rapport. This rapport, in turn, helps their language progression. For example, Piaget studied children and their effects from interaction with adults. This focused and how they develop with aid of someone of higher intelligence who can advance their learning. This development of communication, was theorized in the 1980’s by Michael Long’s (1983). His interactionist theories highlighted communication in the classroom. Language essentially is interaction and it is an interpersonal activity. The concept of Interaction is at the core of many theoretical approaches to explaining language acquisition. Long says that much second language acquisition takes place through conversational interaction, the people in the classroom have. This is the communication between everybody in the class working together to achieve a context and meaning to the lesson with the teacher at the forefront. This interactionist view is based on the communicative approach to learning. The interactionist’s view supports interaction in language learning. From the view of interactionists, the learning strategies for the students are where they use their teacher to further their language acquisition. This interaction can be vastly beneficial to the students’ natural acquisition. This means that the students take control of their learning. Yule and Tarone (1991) allied with the interactionist theory. They proposed that if learners can use communication strategies as a way to negotiate meaning, not only their comprehension will improve, but also they can learn new words. They then have an opportunity to talk in their second language. Therefore, this highlights a teacher’s teaching methodology which should provide more chances for students to interact with each other as well as the teacher. These interactions, in the classroom through communication, were theorized by Stephen Krashen, an applied linguist. His views showed that while communication is beneficial this input at a right level is more important for language acquisition. He thought that the teacher should make sure that he speaks at a level the students can comprehend. Micheal Long (1983) also suggested that modified interaction, similar to the child-directed speech in first language acquisition is essential to second language learning.

Moreover, this interaction within language learning was theorized by Vygotsky (1978) who also professed that language develops entirely from social interaction. The focus is the collaboration in the classroom setting. Vygotsky said that any person will benefit more from conversation, than learning on their own without any guidance. As a teaching methodology, these interaction ideas mirror a more collaborative and co-operative theory of learning and teaching in the classroom. These were the ideas posited by Vygotsky. The term cooperative learning seems to date back to the 1970s when a lot of research was done. In the classroom the students are viewed as problem solvers. Through collaborative and cooperative methodology, the students perform problem solving and inquiry that stresses their cognitive skills. The teaching concept of collaborative method pertains to the grouping and pairing of students for the purpose of achieving an academic goal. On the other hand the cooperative method still has the students in groups although there can be many mechanisms for group analysis. We find that cooperative learning is closely controlled by the teacher while collaborative learning is more student centered. With reference to this, Vygotsky viewed cognitive developments as a result of a dialectical process, where the student learns through shared problem and solving experiences with someone else, such as parents, teacher, siblings or a peer.

Communicative teaching methods where everybody partakes in the education process has been associated with a higher level of thinking, self-esteem and the students liking the subject matter. The teacher builds his lesson through methods, on the students working together to discover meaning. The teacher through his teaching finds that he must trust the peer interaction to do many of the things he has felt responsible for himself. As for a teaching theory, referring to this collaboration of persons in the classroom, the type of theory referred to, is sociocultural. This theory shows how much students benefit from assistance in their learning. This sociocultural theory proposes that social interaction plays a fundamental role in the development of cognition. Of course, this interaction must include sociocultural features of second language. The teacher has to show that language and social interaction are used by many groups of people around the world that speak the language the students are learning. The teacher’s teaching has to show within this interaction, while using their second language, socially-determined cultural codes are used in meaningful ways. These cultural codes are often termed ‘appropriacy’. The teacher must show and also the students recognize; how is the language used, when, why, and by who (or whom)? The teacher has to show the students language etiquette (e.g. formal or informal ways of greeting, language used in discussions, presenting different viewpoints, formal language in business meetings). With reference to this, we find that three key pedagogical principles that developed around communicative language teaching were: the presentation of language forms in context, the importance of genuine communication, and the need for learner-centered teaching.

Moreover, there is a clear relationship between communication and society. Vygotsky viewed language learning as coming from a social context. Of course, within this language teaching we must remember that language is primarily a tool of communication. The student needs to be stimulated by others to achieve. An implication of this theory in teaching is that a learner learns under the guidance of an expert. The language classroom can be considered as a social environment for the students. The teacher provides assistance and support by adjusting the difficulty of the task. The individual’s language development at school/ college is heightened by the result of this culture in the classroom. Vygotsky’s social-interactionist theory serves as a strong foundation for modern ideas. It lends support to less structured and more natural, communicative and experiential approaches. It points the teacher to the importance of real-world human interaction in foreign language learning.

As much as one theory leads to another, Vygotsky’s theories mirror another famous linguist [4]Stephen krashen, as they both find that the environment that we learn in, adds many factors to our acquisition. Krashen has had a large impact in all areas of second language research and teaching since the 1980s. Krashen (1982) looks at the innatist view in his theories. This innatist view follows Chomsky’s ideas. The innatist theory shows that many speakers unconsciously are fluent in language without ever having learned rules. This, of course, is referring to our first language acquisition method without formal instruction. The students can learn from interactions with others. His theories look at first language acquisition and how it relates to second language acquisition. Should we model our lesson when teaching students on how children acquire their first language? With this in mind, we could refer to the Direct Method of teaching language. This is the method that became very popular during the first quarter of the 20^th century. This method has the students using only their second language in the classroom. It excludes the student’s native language from the classroom environment. The teacher has the students completely immersed in their new second language. This brings us back to the innatist idea that the process of learning the new language should almost mimic the progression of a child learning their first natural language.

Understanding acquisition of second language can be through the recognition of how we acquire our first language. The Natural Approach to teaching refers to this. The Natural approach was born out of communicative language teaching. This approach was theorized by Tracy Terrell, a teacher of Spanish in California, in 1977.  He designed “a proposal for a ‘new’ philosophy of language teaching which he called the Natural Approach (Terrell 1977; 1982: 121). He joined forces with Stephen Krashen, in elaborating a theoretical ra­tionale for the Natural Approach. This drew on Krashen’s influential theory of second language acquisition. As for a teaching method Krashen’s and Terrell’s Natural Approach in the 1980s was the latest trend in language teaching. Krashen and Terrell’s combined statement of the principles and practices of the Natural Approach appeared in their book, The Natural Approach, published in 1983. Terrell stated that “acquisition can take place only when people understand messages in the target language (Krashen and Terrell 1983: 19). As part of the Natural Approach, students listen to the teacher using the target language communicatively from the very beginning. Class time is committed to providing input for acquisition. This, of course, showed that language is not grammar but a lexcicon that works on meaning. For the classroom, it places less emphasis on teacher monologues, direct repetition, and formal questions and answers, and less focus on accurate production of target language sentences. There is also a focus on activities including games, role-plays, dialogs, group work, and discussions. They posited the ‘input hypothesis’ (Krashen & Terrell, 1983) that states that we acquire a language as we comprehend meaning in that language in the form of written or spoken words. They also stressed the importance of comprehensible input. This challenges students to stretch their understanding. Krashen and Terrell (1983: 32) expressed this as the ‘input hypothesis’. They also advocated the need for a “silent phase”, waiting for spoken production to “emerge” of its own accord, and emphasizing the need to make students as relaxed as possible during the learning process. This, of course, had a major focus not only on teacher’s methods but also how they taught those methods.

The teacher plays a major part in creating a relaxed classroom environment that has a hand in students being productive. The students’ understanding of the language during this time in the classroom is paramount. Dell Hymes, an American sociolinguist, and Michael Halliday, a British linguist, highlighted the point that language is not just something we have knowledge of. They highlighted that language is constructed by interaction in the social environment. This is the social interaction between the people in the classroom. In the 1970s, the concept of communicative competence was originally thought of by Hymes (1972). His thoughts were a response to his perceived limitations in Chomsky’s competence/performance model of language. At that time (1970s) Halliday showed that language teaching only really focused on structural content as was the audio-lingual method. This didn’t really help for real-world situations that the students needed their language for. He emphasized that language has to be appropriate for the language situation. Hymes drew attention to the importance of knowledge of the rules of language use (i.e. communicative competence). He said that in order to speak a language correctly, one needs not only to learn its vocabulary and grammar, but also the context in which words are used. This gives more meaning and understanding for language as a productive output not just a knowledgeable, in the head, fact. Hymes put emphasis on real data going on in the world. This includes the society and the culture we live in, wherever we are in the world. Language is certainly not black and white. For example, a teacher telling a story to the class can add colour to it by adapting it and use; different characters (be an animal, be an old person), different voices (angry, sad, scary story), get the children to join (sing together, be different characters), make it a comedy, make it factual. Language has many more facets than just words on a board. Hymes emphasized that “There are rules of use without which the rules of grammar would be useless” (Hymes, 1971, p. 10).

Of course within communicative teaching, rules are not just completely forgotten. Krashen’s (1982) ideas related this point where he said that learning” is seen as a conscious activity that proceeds by formal instruction and results in conscious knowledge about the language’. Krashen and Terrell saw communication as the primary function of language.  Deductive learning of grammar rules is a good example of language learning in Krashen’s terms. Deductive teaching methods progress from the general concept to the specific use or application. This learning helps students articulate their mental processes. It is an approach to language teaching in which learners are taught rules and given specific information about a language. Then, they apply these rules when they use the language. Learning deductively is one of the communicative approaches that encourage students to communicate fluently. Krashen believes that it is the subject matter itself, the study of grammar, that is responsible for the students’ progress, but in reality, their progress is coming from the medium and not the message. Krashen also suggests that natural communicative input is the key to designing a school syllabus, ensuring in this way that each learner will receive some    ‘i + 1′ input that is appropriate for the students’ current stage of linguistic competence. This is where the teacher modifies his language and the lesson, to make it easier for the student to understand. Cooperative learning follows along the lines of the ‘i+1’ input, as working with a quantity of comprehensible input that peers in the classroom can help each other take in. This input has to be comprehensible to the students and not above their level for acquisition. Of course, language output can only be shown by the content of the different tasks/methods the teacher uses. Krashen (1984) established the importance of context by suggesting that language learners understand material more efficiently when it is presented in a comprehensible context, rather than in fragmented examples of sentences and words lacking connections.

Moreover, a teacher can still follow a Natural Approach while still prevailing to some sort of teaching structure in the class. The fact is that the teacher can have a certain social interaction (Natural Approach) in the class but how does the teacher follow from this? This means that the teacher should have a teaching methodology that builds the next layer of education on the students’ preexisting levels of knowledge and experience. With reference to this, Wood & Middleton, 1975; Wood. Bruner, & Ross (1976) looked at the active role the teacher plays in interacting with children to support their development. They called this structure of teaching and learning ‘scaffolding’. This idea describes the effective intervention by a peer or teacher in the helping of other students. Teachers scaffold students’ development in language by providing structures that support the students, to stretch their understanding beyond the level at which they’ve been functioning on their own. Vygostky’s sociocultural theory viewed humans as culturally and historically situated.  Student are not as isolated individuals, they work and relate off other people. Vygotsky described this concept as the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1986). The teacher plays a pivotal role by using scaffolding strategies that support the children’s efforts in specific ways. It is the teacher’s job to put forward ideas that are at a level for the students involved. The process works by way of an expert (teacher) who models an activity, provides the learner with advice and examples, guides the student in practice and then tapers off support until the student can do the task alone. This teaching method includes proposing a form of the act to be performed; raising and maintaining the learner’s interest during the class. The teacher may also have to simplify the task while correcting their results. The teacher’s priority is to reduce the stress during the learning process to heighten acquisition. For example, cooperative learning overlaps with the sociocultural theory by attempting to build an environment that fosters mutual aid. We find that the term scaffolding originated in the socio-cultural theory and was developed by later theorists. A related idea within the method of learning and teaching claim that sequencing of the teacher’s instruction should be based on a hierarchical progression from simple to complex learning outcomes. Related to this, Gagné developed a technique of constructing learning hierarchies for analyzing (students’) skills. For example, the teacher shows a skill for the students to learn, this is rationally decomposed into parts and sub-parts; then instruction is ordered from simple sub-skills to the complete skill. Also, ID. Newman, Griffin, and Cole (1989) characterized traditional design methods. First, the tasks are ordered from simple or easy to complex or difficult. Second, early tasks make use of skills that are components of later tasks. Third, the learner typically masters each task before moving onto the next.

As much as we see scaffolding as the building of the students’ knowledge through stages, it could be coupled the ‘multiple intelligences’ theory. This theory was named in 1983 by Howard Gardner. He looked at children Intelligences and how each student can excel in different area of knowledge. In many ways, the teacher needs to look at every skill the student can use in learning a language. This varies the class and broadens the creative aspect. This use of the students’ skills is shown through the teacher using different teaching methods. Creative self-expression in teaching is seen to be valued. We can say that David Beckham excels in sport but give him a political science question, he may well be confused. As much as Tony Blair, the Prime minister of England can not kick a football perfectly, he is the leader of a country. This fact also alludes to the cognitive model that also emphasizes the fact that not all students learn in the same way. Of course, we find that within communicative, humanistic, and natural teaching models peer help is intrinsic. Thus many skills are learnt by all. Scaffolding can work with multiple intelligences and be used in the lesson plan to build students cognitive knowledge and skills. Through ‘multiple intelligences teachers understand how students learn in different ways. For example, knowing which students have the potential for strong interpersonal intelligence will help the teacher create opportunities where the strength can be fostered in others.

From people like Howard Gardner with his multiple intelligence theory, we find in the 1980s what was needed to be taught was ‘no longer just linguistic competence but also sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence, and strategic competence’ (Canale, 1983; Canale and Swain, 1980). The 1980s for language teaching saw it maturing in its growth and starting to encompass a broad approach to language teaching. During this time more interactive views of language teaching were used which collectively came to be known as Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). This, of course, means the lessons must be authentic for the students’ real needs. The focus of the communicative process in the classroom became as important as the linguistic product, and instruction became more learner-centered. Certain factor became more prominent in learning, for example, the communicative approach put greater emphasis on listening. This was a hard task because the students were used to listening to their teacher but not their peers in the class. A major factor was the student as an active listener who is challenged to interact with other speakers in order to get the supposed information and further their language skills. It was recognized that authentic and meaningful communication should be the goal of classroom activities. Gerngross & Putcha (1984 p.92) gave the example of a textbook that showed English children having a pet show. Gerngross & Putcha highlighted the fact that ‘even when the learners act out this scene creatively and enthusiastically, they do not reach the depth of involvement that is almost tangible when they act out a short text that presents a family conflict revolving around the question of whether the children should be allowed to have a pet of not’.

The use of meaningful texts helps students’ studies, therefore for them to further themselves there must be output from them. This is the use of their acquired language so far. This will show their language aptitude which will become clearer to themselves as well as the teacher. In light of this, many researchers gave an importance on the role of two-way communication (Ellis, 1997; Lightbrown and Spada, 1999; Long, 1996). These researchers claim that interaction between learners will facilitate acquisition, such as via negotiation of meaning and feedback. This method of teaching puts a focus on the learner’s education. This functional language use where the students show their ability to express their own ideas, feelings, needs, etc highlights communicative teaching. The fact is that comprehensible output helps learners to test their hypotheses concerning this language aptitude. Carroll (1981, as cited in Larsen-Freeman & Long, 1991) defined language aptitude as “a concept corresponds to the notion that in approaching a particular learning task or program, the individual may be thought of as possessing some current state of capability of learning that task.” Students were seen as having to learn the language not just as a classroom exercise but as authentic material that would be beneficial to them outside of the class. Some researchers saw the way to achieve this kind of learning through various types of teaching methods. For example, task-based learning had the teacher getting the student engaged in authentic tasks and projects.

Furthermore, task-based learning steers the students to a context in which they need to produce output which others can understand while making the classroom situation resemble real life. In task-based learning, language forms are ‘not prescribed in advance and so learners’ are ‘free to use any of their second language they can’ in completing the required task (Willis and Willis 2001: 174). An example of task based learning could have two students with a card with pictures that have been mixed. The students, without looking at each others card, have to describe their pictures to one another. After that, they need to put together a logical story by finding and agreeing on the sequence of the pictures. Of course, after this, the problem for most students in classroom learning is the question of relevance: “How does this relate to my life and goals?”. Task based learning and moreover the situated learning approach attempts to place the learning activity in an environment that allows the students to resemble the lesson to a real-world situation. This major factor in these approaches is an authentic context that reflects the way that knowledge will be used in real-life.

As an educational philosophy constructivism follows the path of task-based learning as it includes the importance of contextualized learning. This includes the need for learners to make sense of their environment by drawing on their acquired knowledge and ideas that are used in their learning of new contexts. The constructivist approach assumes that the learners can build their own knowledge, so the student is viewed as an autonomous learner and inquirer, although I must say at this juncture this way of learning seems to favor more complex learners. All the same through constructivism, the task of the teacher is to provide material and guide the learner in ways that encourage students to use their own knowledge and integrate it onto a higher learning plane. This gives the students a chance to solve the problems within the framework that the teacher has set. Constructivist approach has the learner discovering knowledge in his own way. Constuctivism also allows the learner’s knowledge to go above and beyond the original intent of the instruction at times when the learner is motivated to learn more. The constructivist approach allows the learner to discover knowledge in his own way.

Moreover, on the subject of authentic teaching, in the late 1980s, Brinton, Snow and Wesche (1989, p. 2) defined content-based teaching. This method of teaching was seen as viableteaching theory that used content and language. Content-based teaching was seen as “the concurrent teaching of academic subject matter and second language skills.” This type of instruction allows the students to focus upon the substance or meaning of the content that is being taught. A particular advantage of this method was that content-based teaching had obvious applications in the area of English for Specific Purposes. There are a lot of English classes that the learners have to focus on English relevant to a particular field of work or study.

In light of all the new teaching methods, we find the predominant modern idea to teaching still comes from a communicative approach which is used in most prominent methods, that have been mentioned earlier, such as content and task-based learning. These two particular versions of learning, already mentioned, are recognized in communicative teaching because the teacher has a less dominant role. The fundamental ideas within these methods show that communicative classroom activities allow learners to actively learn for themselves. This modern idea puts more emphasis on the learner. This, of course, encourages the students to be ‘more responsible managers of their own learning’ (Larsen-Freeman 1986: 131). This focus recognizes that a more communicative approach proposes a way for the learner to internalize their new second language and to use this with effect in the classroom. The teacher’s methods are trying to bring forth this language use. We find that within the sphere of the communicative approach there are certain methods that are used in order to encourage meaningful language, for example: elements of puzzle-solving, role play, or simulation which is aligned with skills to do things such as: guessing, searching, matching, exchanging, collecting, sharing, combining, and arranging. All theses factors are used to have the students as active communicators in the classroom.

Furthermore, on the theme of communicative teaching while bringing this paper more up to date, it is recognized that language lessons that use communication activities still have to be engaging. These lessons have the students interacting together as well as with the instructor/teacher to achieve a language goal. Within this language goal, we have to recognize that is not just methodology that has to work in the classroom. For example, Shulman (1994) and Woods (1996) highlighted the fact that the teachers’ language, as well as methodological knowledge/skills, is what makes the teaching. The opinion is that of the teachers’ knowledge, skills and attitudes have more of an influence than teaching methods. This has an influence on observable teaching behaviors (Karavas-Doukas, 1996) We also find that there is also the fact, of the teachers’ intelligence, self-awareness, and rapport with the students which has a factor in a productive class (Bridges, 1993; Prodromou, 1998).

Of course, communicative approaches have been mentioned as beneficial, but these methods have to have the teacher being able to contextualize the task, so the students interpret it properly. Therefore we see a theory where development “involves changes in knowledge and beliefs and not simply changes in skill” (Elliot & Calderhead, 1995). The teacher-student relationship in this theory is paramount. The trust between them is a mutual quality and must flow between people in the classroom. The lesson can only flow if effective filters (Krashen, 1981) are successfully disabled, and teaching/learning is to be efficient and effective. These are fundamental ideas because with all the teaching methods old and new there are still language classrooms that often continue to be threatening environments (Finch, 2001), with teachers imposing their opinions of life and language learning.

As much as we have just mentioned the teacher’s manner and teaching methodology that helps language acquisition, it is also the student’s motivation to learn that has to help in their language acquisition. Student’s motivation to learn comes from their desire to communicate in meaningful ways about meaningful topics. We see that in the structure of a teaching methodology, it is also the change in students’ general perception and valuation, of the issues related to language teaching and learning during the course, that helps (Karavas-Doukas, 1996). The students’ perception of their learning highlights the fact that the teacher’s methods have the students enter a cycle of reflection during their learning. Of course from a teacher’s point of view, this is likely to empower both himself and the student. This is not forgetting, it is teachers who control the class. Stevick’s asserts that “success depends less on materials, techniques, and linguistic analysis, and more on what goes on inside and between the people in the classroom” (Stevick 1980). The teacher is trying to have a climate of cooperative social interaction which “produces new, elaborate, advanced psychological processes that are unavailable to the organism working in isolation” (Vygotsky 1986, p. 61). Reid also points to the responsibility of teachers to “provide the scaffolding for more effective and efficient learning” (Reid 1999) by raising student awareness of effect, and then listening to the students as they express their needs, beliefs, and perceptions.

Within the study of language teaching there certainly is the push for the students to be active learners while the teacher actively contributes to the process. A student-centered approach presupposes a learning climate of trust and clarity. Legutke & Thomas (1991, p. 64) see trust as an indispensable goal, governing teachers’ choices and preceding the learning process. This modern idea in the classroom has a leaner-centered environment which provides plenty of opportunities for interaction. This helps the teacher support learning awareness. The group can move towards the language goal. There is a need for trust in the learning climate which is generally seen as more facilitating than innovative tasks, techniques, or principles. As a whole, the communicative turn in language teaching represented by CLT has clearly highlighted the importance of the broader discourse and sociocultural features of language. Communicative approaches to teaching challenge the teacher’s understanding of the goals of instruction. There is an emphasis on meaningful use over form. This means that accuracy and acquisition of the formal features of the second language are less a measure of successful language learning than are fluency and an ability to get something across comprehensibly to a native speaker

To conclude, I feel as though during my research into this paper and through the writing of it, I have acknowledged that there are many methods and theories out there for the teacher to try. This paper has shown that language teaching ideology has progressed over the last thirty years or so. It is accepted that there are many methods that influenced and gave birth to other methods and approaches. This, of course, does not say which is the best method. Individual teachers have to find that out for themselves. I have also recognized that there have been major developments in teaching. This is highlighted by a great emphasis on individualized instruction as well as more humanistic approaches to language learning. We also find a greater focus on the learner, and greater emphasis on development of communicative, as opposed to merely linguistic, competence. I feel with this paper and the research I have done has led me down a path that I come to see communicative learning as a viable method and thus has affect on the students’ language acquisition. This type of learning I also feel has valuable insight into getting the students learning for themselves. I also feel that even though this paper was about methodology I have also shown that other major factors have come to the surface; those being the student’s attitude to learning as well the teacher’s attitude to his methodology and his student’s learning. These are the factors that work in line with a successful teaching methodology and hopefully get a teacher to see the wider picture that teaching methodology has to offer.

References

Bernhardt, E. B. (1991). Reading development in a second language: Theoretical, empirical, and classroom perspectives. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Bruner, J. (1985). Vygotsky: An historical and conceptual perspective. Culture, communication, and cognition: Vygotskian perspectives, 21-34. London: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Schütz, Ricardo. “Stephen Krashen’s Theory of Second Language Acquisition.” English Made in Brazil <http://www.sk.com.br/sk-krash.html&gt;. Online. 28 de março de 2005.

Banaszynski, Joe, (2000). Teaching the American Revolution: Scaffolding to Success. Education World: The Educator’s Best Friend. Retrieved November 1, 2002, from http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/curr218.shtml.

http://www.georgejacobs.net/methodology.htm

Spada, N., & Lightbown, P. (1993) Instruction and Development of Questions in the L2 classroom. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 15:205-224.

Long, M.H. (in press). Task-based language teaching. Oxford: Blackwell.

Long, M.H., & Crookes, G. 1987. Intervention points in second language classroom processes

Gagné, R. M., & Driscoll, M. P. (1989). Essentials of learning for instruction (2nd ed.). Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Hymes, D. 1972. “On communicative competence.” In Pride, J.B. & J. Holmes (eds.), Sociolinguistics.Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books.

Larsen-Freeman, D. (2000). Techniques and principles in language teaching. Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.

Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of mind. New York: Basic Books.

Stevick, E.W. (1980). Teaching Languages: a Way and Ways. Rowley, M.A.: Newbury House.

Schumann, J.H. (1975). Affective factors and the problem of age in second language acquisition. Language Learning.

Reid, J. (1999). Affect in the classroom: problems, politics and pragmatics.

---

[1] Jean Paiget (1896-1980) was one of the most influential researchers in the area of developmental psychology during the 20th century

[2] B. F. Skinner, an American psychologist (1904-1990)

[3] Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934). – Vygotsky was born in Russia in the same year as Piaget.  Vygotsky was not trained in science but received a law degree from the MoscowUniversity. He went on to study literature and linguistics and became his Ph.D

[4] Stephen Krashen (University of Southern California) is an expert in the field of linguistics, specializing in theories of language acquisition and development.