Methods and approaches for grammar
A history of teaching approaches
People have been learning additional languages through formal education for a long time, and the methods and approaches used have changed many times over the years, especially in the last century.
What is it that has an impact on these changes? Well, people know more now about the psychology of learning than before.
Basic assumptions about how and why people learn have been developed and adapted, and this affects the way languages are taught.
Read about four different language-teaching approaches made popular in the last century, answering the two questions that follow each approach.
Approach 1: Audio-lingual method
The theory behind this is that learning a language means learning habits.
The new language is heard and drilled repeatedly before the learner sees it in its written form.
Learners mimic, repeat and memorise set phrases and grammar structures.
Approach 2: Direct method
The theory behind this method is that second-language learning is similar to how we learn our first language in terms of the order of skills.
All teaching is done in the target language, and the learner is not allowed to use his or her own language.
Approach 3: Communicative language teaching
This method focuses on helping learners to communicate well and appropriately in different real-life situations.
There is a focus on all skills, grammar and vocabulary.
Approach 4: Grammar translation method
This comes from the classical method of language learning, which used to be associated with learning Latin and Greek.
The aim of this method was to produce learners who could read literature in Latin and Greek.
While methods and approaches to teaching have changed over time and there's more focus on communicative language teaching these days, it's not unusual to see all four of these approaches still used in one context or another.
Over the years a number of popular approaches have emerged. You'll look at some of these in this unit and in Unit 2.
Over the years, several popular language teaching approaches have surfaced. This unit, as well as Unit 2, will delve into some of these methodologies.
Let's begin with the PPP approach. Have you ever wondered what PPP stands for?
PPP stands for Presentation, Practice, Production.
Now, let's explore each stage:
Presentation:
This marks the initial phase where the teacher establishes context and draws out or emphasizes meaning, form, and pronunciation.
During this phase, the teacher constructs context and draws out or emphasizes meaning, form, and pronunciation. Realia, flashcards, or brief stories may be employed to facilitate this process.
Duration: Approximately 15 minutes
Practice:
In this stage, learners engage in controlled practice, dedicating time to drills and activities that emphasize accuracy in using the target language.
In the controlled practice stage, learners engage in targeted language exercises, including drills and restricted-use activities that emphasize precision. Examples of such activities encompass gap-fills, substitution drills, split sentences, picture dictations, and matching exercises. The teacher actively corrects phonological and grammatical errors during this phase.
Duration: Approximately 20 minutes
Production:
Moving to the freer practice stage, learners personalize the language, engaging in less controlled activities that focus on fluency.
Shifting to the free practice stage, learners strive to personalize and apply the language in a less constrained activity, with a primary focus on fluency.
Duration: Approximately 25 minutes.
Advantages
PPP is more suitable for lower-level learners. The benefits for the teacher are that it's an easy approach to set up, formulaic and highly structured.
Teachers also feel confident that they have done their job, i.e. presented the language to all the learners (although this doesn't mean that all the learners understand or are able to use it).
Learners know what to expect because there is a clear structure to the lesson.
Disadvantages
The negatives are that it's a top-down approach, teacher-led and predictable. Some learners may find this approach too boring or too passive and 'switch off'.
Language structures tend to be isolated and unnatural. This can be problematic for learners trying to relate the grammar to the language they already know.
Inductive and deductive approaches
Another approach is to help learners discover the rules themselves.
These two approaches are:
- deductive approach: teacher tells learners the rules
- inductive approach: teacher helps learners discover the rules.
Deductive approach
With a deductive approach, there's very little exploration done by the learners. It's quite teacher-centred.
Some learners really do prefer it, maybe because they're more familiar with it or sometimes because it's less work for them.
The deductive approach is definitely time-saving and allows more time for practising the language items, which means it's an effective approach with lower-level learners.
Inductive approach
An inductive approach to teaching, on the other hand, involves asking learners to work to discover language.
It's more beneficial for learners who already have a base in the language, as it encourages them to use their existing knowledge to work things out.
A teacher in an inductive lesson may be heard saying some of the following things:
- Is this correct or not?
- Why did you use that tense?
- Is this formal or informal?
- Check with your partner.
Even though the PPP approach is generally considered a deductive approach, there are still ways to make it as learner-centred as possible, for example using real contexts, checking comprehension regularly throughout the lesson and giving learners opportunities to ask questions.
Jim Scrivener, in Learning Teaching (2011), suggests that all grammar teaching and clarification falls on a continuum from explanation to guided discovery to self-directed discovery.
Where do you think PPP falls on the continuum? Think about it, then open the heading to check your answer.
Where PPP falls on the continuum
The more the teacher talks and explains, the farther left it is. The more opportunities you give learners for discovering and exploring language, the farther right your approach is.
As you look at more approaches in the rest of this module, try to keep this continuum in mind. As always, think about how this is relevant to your own teaching.
Task-based learning
A task-based approach to learning (TBL) offers an alternative to PPP for language teachers.
A task-based lesson is usually based around the completion of a task.
The teacher doesn't decide what language will be studied and used.
The language comes from what happens while the learners complete a task.
What is a task?
Tasks in a TBL approach aren't like those you find in coursebooks, such as Fill in the gaps or Match these words and pictures.
True TBL tasks should be things you do in real life, like planning a journey, finding out about a subject to give a presentation or writing a leaflet.
Many teachers learn about the TBL approach through the books and websites by Dave and Jane Willis.
Willis and Willis offer the following criteria in the form of questions. The more confidently you can answer 'yes' to each of these questions, the more your activity is like a task.
- Will the activity engage learners' interest?
- Is there a primary focus on meaning?
- Is there a goal or an outcome?
- Is success judged in terms of outcome?
- Is completion a priority?
- Does the activity relate to real-world activities?
Task-based learning generally follows three stages:
- Pre-task activities
- The task cycle: completing the task and planning a report
- Reporting, analysing language and post-task activities.
- Will the activity engage learners' interest?
- Is there a primary focus on meaning?
- Is there a goal or an outcome?
- Is success judged in terms of outcome?
- Is completion a priority?
- Does the activity relate to real-world activities?
- generating ideas
- forming opinions
- narrowing ideas for a specific goal
- committing to an opinion
- defending choices.
- problem solving
- ordering/classifying
- brainstorming
- comparing
- being creative
- sharing personal experiences.