the Direct Method continues to enjoy a popular following in private language school circles, and it was one of the foundations upon which the well-known Audio-lingual Method expanded from starting half way through the 20th century.
1.3 Audio-Lingual Method
next revolution in terms of language teaching methodology coincided with World War II, when America became aware that it needed people to learn foreign languages ??very quickly as part of its overall military operations. The Army Method was suddenly developed to build communicative competence in translators through very intensive language courses focusing on aural/oral skills. This in combination with some new ideas about language learning coming from the disciplines of descriptive linguistics and behavioral psychology went on to become what is known as the Audio-lingual Method (ALM) .new method incorporated many of the features typical of the earlier Direct Method , but the disciplines mentioned above added the concepts of teaching linguistic patterns in combination with habit-forming raquo ;. This method was one of the first to have its roots firmly grounded in linguistic and psychological theory (Brown 1994: 57), which apparently added to its credibility and probably had some influence in the popularity it enjoyed over a long period of time. It also had a major influence on the language teaching methods that were to follow, and can still be seen in major or minor manifestations of language teaching methodology even to this day.factor that accounted for the method's popularity was the quick success it achieved in leading learners towards communicative competence. Through extensive mimicry, memorization and over-learning of language patterns and forms, students and teachers were often able to see immediate results. This was both its strength and its failure in the long run, as critics began to point out that the method did not deliver in terms of producing long-term communicative ability.study of linguistics itself was to change, and the area of ??second language learning became a discipline in its own right. Cognitive psychologists developed new views on learning in general, arguing that mimicry and rote learning could not account for the fact that language learning involved affective and interpersonal factors, that learners were able to produce language forms and patterns that they had never heard before. The idea that thinking processes themselves led to the discovery of independent language rule formation (rather than habit formation ) and that affective factors influenced their application paved the way toward the new methods that were to follow the Audiolingual Method.
. 4 Silent Way
addition to affective theories relative to language learning, another challenge to the Audio-lingual Method was under way already in the sixties in the form of the Cognitive Code and an educational trend known as Discovery Learning. These concepts most directly challenged the idea that language learning was all about mimicry and good habit-formation. Raquo; An emphasis on human cognition in language learning addressed issues such as learners being more responsible for their own learning - formulating independent hypotheses about the rules of the target language and testing those hypotheses by applying them and realizing errors. When students create their own sets of meaningful language rules and concepts and then test them out, they are clearly learning through a discovery/exploratory method that is very different from rote-learning. This appears to have much more in common with the way people learn their native language from a very early age, and can account for the way children come out with new language forms and combinations that they have never heard before. The underlying principles here are that learners become increasingly autonomous in, active with and responsible for the learning process in which they are engaged.Gattegno founded The Silent Way as a method for language learning in the early 70s, sharing many of the same essential principles as the cognitive code and making good use of the theories underlying Discovery Learning. Some of his basic theories were that teaching should be subordinated to learning and the teacher works with the student; the student works on the language raquo ;. The most prominent characteristic of the method was that the teacher typically stayed silent most of the time, as part of his/her role as facilitator and stimulator, and thus the method's popular name. Language learning is usually seen as a problem solving activity to be engaged in by the students both independently and as a group, and the teacher needs to stay out of the way in the process as much as possible.Silent Way is also well-known for its common use of small colored rods of var...
