Methods Review

In this method, teachers hope to accelerate the process by which students learn to use another language for everyday communication by desuggesting the psychological barriers learners bring with them to the learning situation.

• Communicative Language Teaching

• Total Physical Response

• Desuggestopedia

• Community Language Learning

In this method, teachers want their students to learn how to use the target language communicatively and to learn about their own learning, to take increasing responsibility for it, and to learn how to learn from one another.

• Community Language Learning

• Total Physical Response

• Desuggestopedia

• Communicative Language Teaching

Teachers who use this method believe in the importance of having their students enjoy their experience of learning to communicate in another language. The method was developed in order to reduce the stress people feel when they are studying other languages and thereby encourage students to persist in their study beyond a beginning level of proficiency.

• Total Physical Response

• Community Language Learning

• Desuggestopedia

• Communicative Language Teaching

The goal of teachers who use this method is to enable students to communicate in the target language. To do this, students need knowledge of the linguistic forms, meanings, and functions. They must be able to choose from among these the most appropriate form, given the social context and the roles of the interlocutors. Communication is a process; knowledge of the forms of language is insufficient.

• Desuggestopedia

• Community Language Learning

• Total Physical Response

• Communicative Language Teaching

In this method, the classroom is bright and cheerful and it has posters displaying grammatical information about the target language in order to take advantage of students’ peripheral learning. The texts are handouts containing lengthy dialogues in the target language. Next to the dialogue is a translation and some notes on vocabulary and grammar which correspond to boldfaced items in the dialogue. The teacher presents a dialogue during two "concerts".

• Communicative Language Teaching

• Total Physical Response

• Community Language Learning

• Desuggestopedia

Some characteristics of this method are: The teacher helps students express by giving them the target language translation in chunks. These chunks are recorded, and when they are replayed, it sounds like a fairly fluid conversation. A transcript is made of the conversation, and native language equivalents are written beneath the target language words. The transcription of the conversation becomes a ‘text’ with which students work.

• Desuggestopedia

• Community Language Learning

• Total Physical Response

• Communicative Language Teaching

The main characteristics of this method are: "Modeling": the teacher issues commands to a few students, then performs the actions with them; students demonstrate that they can understand the commands by performing them alone. The teacher next recombines elements of the commands. After learning to respond to some oral commands, the students learn to read and write them. When students are ready to speak, they become the ones who issue the commands.

• Desuggestopedia

• Community Language Learning

• Total Physical Response

• Communicative Language Teaching

The main characteristics of this method are: almost everything is done with a communicative intent. Students use the language a great deal through communicative activities such as games, role-plays, and problem-solving tasks. Activities that are truly communicative, purposeful and they have three features in common: information gap, choice, and feedback.

• Communicative Language Teaching

• Total Physical Response

• Community Language Learning

• Desuggestopedia