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TEFL

TEFL: Teaching English as a Foreign Language – a term that refers to teacher training programs in EFL.
TESL: Teaching English as a Second Language, Canada - national federation of teachers and providers in
Canada. A term that refers to teacher training programs in ESL.

Why people learn languages ?

Here are some reasons why people learn a foreign language.

1. It is a whole lot of fun. So why not?

2. With different languages you get to interact and connect with more people.

3. Experiences and people are unique depending on the language they are experienced in. I think
people have different personalities when they speak in different languages.

4. Get a better understanding of foreign culture and history as explained through their own language.

5. Enjoy foreign music. I dance salsa and most salsa music is in Spanish.

6. Experience travel on a different level. Experiences of foreign countries, cultures and people is vastly
different depending on whether you speak the local language. You miss out on so much by not
understanding and communicating in the local language.

7. Develop unlikely friendships. As a native English speaker who speaks other languages, I have friends
who do not speak English.

8. Challenge my mind. Learning languages and learning to play a musical instrument are considered
one of the most useful activities you can do to keep your mind active as you age.

9. Broaden my horizons and open my mind to a whole new world. Some ideas cannot be translated
into other languages and gets lost in translation.

Reasons for learning language

People who wish to learn a foreign language may have any one of the great number of reasons for
doing so. If we take English language so we connotative the list of reasons, it will not be complete, but at
least show the great variety of booth the needs and desire of student of English.
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Target language community

Students want to compare him with other languages or they targeted language for promotion
of our own. When opportunities come out in foreign countries so the native speakers try to make the
country language important for him, and targeted them. Other ways the individual want to make these
language is own language.

ESP (Teaching English for specific purposes)

The English language is put to many uses, but one branch of TEFL that is increasingly common
is ESP – a generic term meaning English for Specific Purposes. This ranges from specific vocational
purposes (such as the language of the tourist industry, or that of the financial industry etc.) to, arguably,
academic English in any discipline. ESP is very much focused on the learners needs for the English
language.

ESP vs. General English

Is there a difference between ESP and general English? Surely any linguistic improvement – whether
classified as generic or specific – contributes to the learners understanding of the language? Laurence
Anthony of Okayama University wrote a very interesting article on this subject which explains the issues
more clearly than I can, but in summary teaching ESP is based largely on the goals and requirements
that the students have. Many companies sponsor their employees to learn English specifically to
facilitate English communication in their trade, so it is necessary to have specific targets in mind when
teaching ESP. However, when students have little or no basic knowledge of English, teaching it for a
specific purpose is almost impossible. This is when general English and ESP really cross paths.

ESP as a career choice

ESP has really taken off as an individual subject in the world of TEFL in recent years. In fact, many
institutions offer courses in training teachers purely for ESP. If you want to develop your career as an EFL
teacher, ESP seems like a highly relevant way to go. The University of Birmingham offers an MA in ESP,
as does the University of Warwick.

School curriculum

Many students study English only because they have to English is the part of school
curriculum , because a decision has been taken by someone in authority that it should be.

Culture
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Some students study the foreign language, because they have attracted by culture of one of the
target language communities. They learn the language because they want to know more about the
people who speak it and the place which is in spoken.

Advancement

A process of promotion, cause or plan which the individual want to promote and make
advancement with English people. Some people study English because they think it offer, in some
general way, a chance of advancement, in their daily life, and it’s possible which the person get
knowledge for better job and they know a native language and other languages.

Miscellaneous

There are number of reasons for learning language which for possibly less important than those above.
We could mention the student who goes to English classes just for fun for something to do. A student
might will go to class because he like a particular person in the class, or in general likes the atmosphere
of the class perhaps the students has simply heard that English classes at a certain school are enjoyable
or prestigious etc.

It will be clear above the possible reasons for studying the language. What will also be clear
that not all the students mentioned above and necessarily be treated in the same way? The student
who’s interested in only in some form of ESP may be thought in a very different way from the students
who is learning English for fun. The student who is studied English because it is in the curriculum should
be treated in a very different light from the students who voluntarily goes to a language teaching
institute.

Success in learning

Success in Learning, located in the Shopping town Mall, provides tutoring sessions in both group and
individual settings. Give your students the skills they need to succeed.

Our New York State Certified Teachers will help structure sessions that are focused on improving your
student’s success.

We offer tutoring in all the major subjects, as well as in comprehension skills, test preparation, critical
thinking and study skills. These sessions are specifically designed around your student’s needs.
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Success In Learning offers tutoring sessions in both group and individual settings. We offer tutoring
sessions in the 4 major school subjects (English, Math, Science, Social Studies) as well as test preparation
and study skills.

Motivation

Motivation in language-learning plays a vital role. It is motivation that produces effective

second-language communicators by planting in them the seeds of self-confidence. It also successfully
creates learners who continuously engage themselves in learning even after they complete a targeted
goal. In order for English instructors to motivate them, a number of methods are needed both in and
outside of class. According to Hussein, Maarof, and D’Cruz, “positive self-concept, high self-esteem,
positive attitude, clear understanding of the goals for language learning, continuous active participation
in the language learning process, the relevance of conductive environment that could contribute to the
success of language learning” (2001). They state that six factors influence motivation in language
learning: attitudes, beliefs about self, goals, involvement, environmental support, and personal
attributes (2001). Above all, three specific elements are strongly believed to build motivation towards
language-learning: self-confidence, experiencing success and satisfaction, and good teacher-learner
relationships as well as relationships between learners. All three factors are believed to be correlated to
each other in the process of motivation development.

These are three factors for motivation

Self confidence

Experience of success and satisfaction

Good Relationships Among Learners and Between Teacher and Students

Motivation are two main types

Intrinsic motivation

Extrinsic motivation

Intrinsic motivation
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Intrinsic motivation is a motivation to learn that comes from an internal force such as
interest in language learning or the desire for further personal development in general. It compares with
extrinsic motivation, which is motivation from external pressures such as the need to speak English for
work or because a parent has sent a learner to class.

For Example

Often high level learners show a high degree of intrinsic motivation as they continue to
study a language beyond any practical need.

In the classroom

Sometimes learners join a class because of extrinsic motivation and become motivated intrinsically as
learning becomes enjoyable and rewarding. Getting feedback from the learners on the teaching and
learning process through simple questionnaires about aspects of class can help a teacher identify what
students find most useful and enjoyable.
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How can teacher motivate the students?

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Role of teacher
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List of teaching method

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Motivational difference

As a language teacher as well as a language learner I know that motivation plays a vital role when
learning a foreign language. In 2013, I was able to explore some of the issues around its importance as I
was fortunate to have two language classes where I was able to compare and contrast studentsʼ
motivations towards foreign language (FL) learning. For purposes of comparison, as you will see below, I
divided the students into two groups: those who have studied two or more foreign languages besides
their mother tongue (Group 1), and those who have studied only one foreign language besides their
mother tongue (Group 2). I then used a questionnaire to assess the characteristics of and differences
between these two groups (see Appendix). In particular, I examined the extent to which motivational
factors influence learning—a key question being why some individuals are motivated to learn several
languages but others are not.

How can we motivate our students for study?

10 ways to motivate children’s

If you want your child to be a stellar student, don't limit learning to the walls of his classroom. Although
the skills he's learning there are crucial to his intellectual and social growth, your child needs your help
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to open up the world of ideas. His renewed joy in discovery will transfer to his schoolwork, so you'll
boost his academic achievement too!

Fill your child's world with reading. Take turns reading with your older child, or establish a family reading
time when everyone reads her own book. Demonstrate how important reading is to you by filling your
home with printed materials: novels, newspapers, even posters and placemats with words on them.

Encourage him to express his opinion, talk about his feelings, and make choices. He can pick out a side
dish to go with dinner and select his own extracurricular activities. Ask for his input on family decisions,
and show that you value it.

Show enthusiasm for your child's interests and encourage her to explore subjects that fascinate her. If
she's a horse nut, offer her stories about riding or challenge her to find five facts about horses in the
encyclopedia.

Provide him with play opportunities that support different kinds of learning styles — from listening and
visual learning to sorting and sequencing. Supplies that encourage open-ended play, such as blocks, will
develop your child’s creative expression and problem-solving skills as he builds. He'll need lots of
unstructured play time to explore them.

Point out the new things you learn with enthusiasm. Discuss the different ways you find new
information, whether you're looking for gardening tips on the Internet or taking a night class in
American literature.

Ask about what he's learning in school, not about his grades or test scores. Have him teach you what he
learned in school today — putting the lesson into his own words will help him retain what he learned.

Help your child organize her school papers and assignments so she feels in control of her work. If her
task seems too daunting, she'll spend more time worrying than learning. Check in with her regularly to
make sure she's not feeling overloaded.

Celebrate achievements, no matter how small. Completing a book report calls for a special treat;
finishing a book allows your child an hour of video games. You'll offer positive reinforcement that will
inspire him to keep learning and challenging himself.

Focus on strengths, encouraging developing talents. Even if she didn't ace her math test, she may have
written a good poem in English class. In addition to a workbook for math practice, give her a writing
journal.
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Turn everyday events into learning opportunities. Encourage him to explore the world around him,
asking questions and making connections.

What a native speaker knows

Native speakers and non-native speakers can both succeed as ESL teachers.

It’s true, but there has always been some controversy in the ESL community over the difference
between having one or the other teach language courses. Obviously the situation varies from place to
place but there are definitely pros and cons for both sides of this debate. Let’s take a look at just a few
key points.

Pronunciation

It has been argued that only native speakers should teach English because they have the best
pronunciation. On the one hand, this is has some validity. In Japan, Japanese English teachers often have
very little experience speaking English so their pronunciation can sometimes be quite poor. Assistant
Language Teachers from English speaking countries have easily found work in Japan because the Boards
of Education are trying to improve student pronunciation and native speakers have encouraged more
pronunciation practice in Japanese public schools. However, an Assistant Language Teacher from
Jamaica could be replaced after a year with an instructor from Scotland. It seems like this may not be
ideal because obviously people from these two English speaking countries sound entirely different so
the model pronunciations they give will not be the same. When teaching a language, consistency is
important so there are some problems with this approach.

On the other hand, in countries such as the Netherlands, English teachers often have very good English
pronunciation and therefore students do not really need a native speaker to model sentences for them.
Good English pronunciation does not mean using a British or American accent; if a teacher is Italian, an
Italian accent is perfectly acceptable as long as the words are being pronounced correctly. Accents are
not an indication of poor teaching but of where a person is from. At any rate, audio and video clips
demonstrating proper English pronunciation are readily available and should be used by every ESL
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teacher to give students a chance to hear other voices. This does not mean that recordings can replace
native English speakers or teachers with good pronunciation; it is simply another tool that teachers can
use in their classrooms.

See our previous articles “How to Teach Using Songs”, “Classroom Songs: 16 Creative Ways” and
“English Video Lessons: Winning Strategies for the ESL Class” for more information on using audio and
video in your English classroom.

Communication

In most school systems, the immersion method is not used to teach English but the goal of ESL teachers
should be to speak English in the classroom whenever possible. While this is a good rule for teaching a
language, this approach can be frustrating for students especially those who are older and beginners. It
is often helpful for students to be able to ask questions in their native language or to draw parallels
between their language (L1) and English. An English native speaker may not be able to clearly
communicate more complex ideas and structures to students especially if his understanding of the local
language is limited. In contrast a teacher who is fluent in the local language will have an easier time
completing these tasks and will often be able to relate to and manage students more effectively too.

Experience

Most non-native speakers are trained teachers either in their country or the country they teach in which
means that they often will have much more teaching experience than native speakers. It seems foolish
to assume that just because someone speaks English they can teach it effectively. Without training in
classroom management and lessons in English grammar, native speakers cannot be effective ESL
instructors. They may be able to speak the language but explaining it is an entirely different matter. If a
native speaker is a qualified educator, then they will have an advantage but when teaching abroad, as
mentioned above, it is also beneficial to be able to communicate with students in their native language.
When native English speakers are paired with local teachers, students have the best of both worlds.
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It seems that both native English speakers and non-native English speakers can take steps to improve as
teachers.

Native English speakers who want to teach English as a Second Language need to study on their own or
enroll in a course to help them improve in certain areas. They should keep reference material on hand
so that they can find the answers to difficult questions when they arise and study the basics of the
native language. Non-native speakers may have to get more practice speaking English but this has
become much easier with the invention of programs like Skype. Both groups have valuable skill sets that
benefit students in different ways.

Language learning and teaching

Becoming bilingual is a way of life. Your whole person is affected as you struggle to reach beyond the
confines of your first language and into a new language, a new culture, a new way of thinking, feeling,
and acting. Second language learning is not a set of easy steps that can be programmed in a quick do-it-
yourself kit.
The teaching process is the facilitation of learning, in which you can "teach" a foriegn language
successfully if, among other things, you know something about learns or fails to learn a second
language. Where does a teacher begin the quest for an understanding of the principles of foreign
learning and teaching? By asking some questions.

Who? Who does the learning and teaching?

What? No simpler question is one that probes the nature of the subject matter itself. What is
communication? What is language?

How How does learning take place? How can person can ensure success in language learning?

When When does second language learning take place?

Where Are the learners attempting to acquire the second language within the cultural and linguistic
milieu of the second language - that is , in a "second" language situation in the technical sese of the
term?

Why Finally, the most encompassing of all questions: Why are learners attempting to acquire the second
language?

These questions have been asked, in very golbal terms, to give you an inkling of the diversity of issues
involved in the quest for understanding the principles of language learning and teaching. And while you
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cannot hope to find final answers to all the questions, you can begin to achieve some tentative answers
as you move through the chapters of this book and additional information which we added to these
pages. Thomas Kuhn(1970) referred to "normal science" as a process of puzzle solving in which part of
the task of the scientist, in this case the teacher, is to discover the pieces, and then to fit the pieces
together. Many of the pieces of the language learning puzzle are not yet discovered, and the careful
defining of the questions will lead to finding those pieces.

Language

To persume to define langugae adequately would be folly. A definiton is really condensed version of a
theory, and a theory is simply - or not so simply - an extended definition. Consider the following
definitons of language found in dictionaries nad introductory textbooks:

Language is a system of arbitrary, vocal symbols which permit all people in a given culture, or other
people who have learned the system of that culture, to communicate or interact (Finocchario 1964:8)

Language is a system of communication by sound, operating through the organs of speech and hearing,
among members of a given community, and using vocal symbols possessing arbitrary conventional
meanings (Pei 1966:141)

Language is any set or symbols of linguistic symbols as used in a more or less uniform fashion by a
number of people who are thus enabled to communicate intelligibly with one another (Random House
Dictionary of the English Language 1966:806).

Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication (Wardhaugh 1972:3).

[Language is] any means, vocal or other, of expressing or communicating feeling or thought ... a system
of conventionalized signs, especially words or gestures having fixed meanings. (Webster's New
International Dictionary of the English Language 1934:1390).

[Language is] a systematic means of communicating ideas or feelings by the use of conventionalized
signs, sounds, gestures, or marks having understood meanings (Webster's Third New International
Dictionary of the English Language 1961:1270)

Still other common definitions found in introductory textbooks on linguistics include the concepts of :

the generativity or creativity of language

the persumed primacy of speech over writing

the universality of language among human beings

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Many of the significant characteristics of language are capsulized in these defintions. Some of the
controversies about the nature of language are also illustrated through the limitations that are implied
in certain definitons.

A consolidation of the definitions of language yields the following composite definition:

Language is systematic and generative.

Language is a set of arbitrary symbols.

Those symbols are primarily vocal, but may also be visual.

The symbols have conventionalized meanings to which they refer.

Language is used for communication.

Language operates in a speech community or culture.

Language is essentially human, although possibly not limited to humans.

Language is acquired by all people in much the same way - language and language learning both have
universal characteristics.

Enormous fields and subfields, year-long university courses, are suggested in each of the eight
categories. Consider some of these possible areas:

Explicit and formal accounts of the system of language on several possible levels (most commonly
syntactic, semantic, and phonological).

The symbolic nature of language; the relationship between language and reality; the philosophy of
language; the history of language.

Phonetics; phonology; writing systems; kinesics; proxemics; and other "paralinguistic" features of
language.

Semantic; language and cognition; psycholinguistics.

Communication systems; speaker-hearer interaction; sentence processing.

Dialectology; sociolinguistics; language and culture; bilingualism and second language acquisition.

Human language and nonhuman communication; the physiology of language.

Language universals; first language acquisition.

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Can foreign language teachers effectively teach a language if they do not know, even generally,
something about the relationship between language and cognition, writing systems, nonverbal
communication, sociolinguistics, and first language acquisition, just to name a few items at random?
The TESOL(Teachres of English to Speakers of Other Languages) oraganiztion, in its Guidelines for the
Certification and Preparation of Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages in the United
States (1975), cited the necessity for the teacher to "understand the nature of language, the fact of
language varieties - social, regional, and functional, the structure and development of the English
language system".

Learning and Teaching

What is learning and what is teaching and how do they interact?

A search in contemporary dictionaries reveals that learning is "acquiring or getting of knowledge of a
subject or a skill by study, experience, or instruction." A more specialized definiton might read as
follows: "Learning, is relatively permanent change in behavioral tendency and is the result of reinforced
practice"(Kimble and Garmezy 1963:133).Teaching may be defined as "showing or helping someone to
learn how to do something, giving instructions, guiding in the study of something, providing with
knowledge, causing to know or understand."
Breaking down the components of the definition of learning, we can extract, as we did with language,
domains of research and inquiry:

Learning is acquiring or "getting."

Learning is retention of information or skill.

Retention implies storage systems, memory, cognitive organization.

Learning involves active, conscious focus on and acting upon events outside or inside the organism.

Learning is relatively permanent but subject to forgetting.

Learning involves some form of practice, perhaps reinforced practice.

Learning is a change in behavior.

Teaching cannot be defined apart from learning. Nathan Gage (1964:269) noted that "to satisfy the
practical demands of education, theories of learning must be 'stood on their head' so as to yield theories
of teaching." Teaching is guiding and facilitating learning, enabling the learner to learn, setting the
conditions for learning. If, like B.F. Skinner, you look at learning as a process of operant conditioning
through a carefully paced program of reinforcement, you will teach accordingly. If you view second
language learning basically as a deductive rather than an inductive process, you will probably to choose
present copious rules and paradigms to your students rather than let them "discover" those rules
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inductively.
Jerome Bruner (1966b:40-41) noted that a theory of instruction should specify the following features:

The experiences which most effectively implant in the individual a predisposition toward learning,

The ways in which a body of knowledge should be structured so that it can be most readily grasped by
learner

The most effective sequences in which to present the materials to be learned

The nature and pacing rewards and punshiments in the process of learning and teaching.

Trends in Linguistics and Psychology

While the general definitions of language, learning, and teaching offered here might meet with the
approval of most linguists, psychologists, and educators, you can find point of vast disagreemnet upon a
little probing of the components of each definition. For example, is language a "set of habits" or a
"system of internalized rules"? Differing viewpoints emerge from equally knowledgeable linguists and
psychologists.

Yet with all the possible disagreements among linguists and among psychologists, the two disciplines
themselves are not that far apart. A historical glance back through the last few decades of linguistic and
psychological research reveals some rather striking parallels in the philosophies and approaches of the
two disciplines. Psychologists in the 1940s and 1950s were perdominantly committed to
a behavioristic mode of thinking - or even "neo-behavioristic" - while more recent decades have brought
increasing attention tocognitive psychology.

In 1940s and 1950s the structural, or descriptive schools of linguistics, with its advocates - Leonard
Bloomfield, Edward Sapir, Charles Hockett, Charles Fries, and others - prided itself in a rigorous
application of the scientific principle of observation of human languages. The linguist's task, according to
the structuralist, was to describe human led to the unchecked rush of linguists to the far reaches of the
earth to write grammars of exotic languages. Freeman Twaddell(1935:57) stated this principle in
perhaps its most extreme terms. "Whatever our attitude toward mind, spirit, soul, etc., as realities, we
must agree that the scientist proceeds as though there were no such things, as though all his
information were acquired through processes of his physiological nervous system. Insofar as he occupies
himself with physical, nonmaterial forces, the scientist is not scientist. The scientific method is quite
simply the convention that mind does not exist..." Such attitudes prevail in Skinner's thought,
particularly in Verbal Behavior (1957), in which he says that any notion of "idea" or "meaning" is
explanatory fiction, and that the speaker is merely the locus of verbal behavior, not the cause. Charles
Osgood reinstated meaning in verbal behavior, explaning it as a representational mediation process,"
but still did not depart from a generally nonmentalistic view of language.
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In 1960s the generative-transformational school of linguistics emerged through the influence of Noam
Chomsky. What Chomsky was tring to show is that language (not language) cannot be scrutinized simply
in terms of observable stimuli and responses or the volumes of raw data gathered by field linguistis. The
generative linguist is interested not only in describing language or achieving the level
of descriptive adequacy but also in arriving at an explanatory level of adequacy in the study of language -
that is, a "principled basis, independent of any particular language, for the selection of the descriptively
adequate grammar of each language" (Chomsky 1964:63)

The "scientific method" was rigorously adhered to, and therefore such concepts as consciouness and
intuition were reagrded as "mentalistic," illegitimate domains of inquiry. The unreliability of observation
of states of consciousness, thinking, concept of formation, or the acquisiton of knowledge made such
topics impossible to examine in a behavorisitc framework. Typical behavioristic models were classical
and operant conditioning, rote verbal learning, instrumental learning, and discrimination learning. You
are familiar with the classical experiments with Pavlov's dogand Skinner's boxes - these too typify the
position that organisms can be conditioned to respond in desired ways, given the correct degree and
scheduling of reinforcement.

Cognitive psychologists, on the other hand, take a contrasting theoritical stance. Meaning,
understanding, and knowing are significant data for psychological study. Instead of focusing rather
mechanistically on stimulus-response connections, cognitivits try to discover psychological principles of
organization and functioning. David Ausubel (1965:4) noted:"From the standpoint of cognitive theorists,
that attempt to ignore conscious states or to reduce congnition to mediational processes reflective of
implicit behavior not only removes from the field of psychology what is most worth of studying but also
dangerously oversimplifies highly complex psychological phonomena." By using a rationalisticapproach
instead of a strictly empirical approach, cognitive psychologists, like generative linguists, have sought to
discover underlying motivatons and deeper structures of human behavior; going beyond descriptive to
explanatory power has taken on utmost importance.

Table 1-1 summarizes concepts and approaches germane to each of the two polarized theories that
have been presented here. The table may help to pinpoint certain broad ideas that are associated with
the respective positions.
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Applied Linguistics

Applied linguistics has been considered a subset of linguistics for several decades, and it has been
interpreted to mean the applications of linguistics principles or theories to certain more or less practical
matters ( Brown 1976b, Kaplan, et al. 1981). Second language teaching amd teaching of reading,
composition, and language arts in the native language are typical areas of practical application. In
studies of phonetics, nonverbal, communication, and semantics, dialectology, first language acquisition,
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the psychology of language, and second language acquisition, there is much that is theoritical - that is,
much that bears on seeking an extended definition of language. Some might argue that the devising of
explicit and formal accounts of linguistica systems is surely theoretcal; however, semantics, speaker-
hearer interaction, and communication system are important in any consideration of the nature of the
linguistic system.

Reacting to the common British usage of the term "applied linguistics" (in which case the term is almost
synonymous with "language teaching"), Corder (1973:10) differentiated applied lingusitics and language
teaching, and went on to note that "the applied linguist is a consumer, or user, not a producer, of
theories." Psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics, once very clearly considered to be "applied" areas, now
just as clearly overlap both the applied and theoretical domains.

Theory and Methods

Teaching methods are the application of theoretical finding and positions. They may be thought of as
"theories in practice."

Albert Marckwardt (1972:5) saw these "changing winds and shifting sands" as a cyclical pattern in which
a new paradigm (to use Kuhn's term) of teaching methodology emerged about every quarter of a
century, with each new method breaking from the old but at the same time taking with it some of the
positive aspects of the previous paradigm. One of the best examples of the cyclical nature of methods is
seen in the revolutionary Audiolingual Method (ALM) of the late 1940s and 1950s. The ALM borrowed
tenets from its predecessor by almost half a century, the Direct Method, While breaking away entirely
from the Grammar-Translation paradigm. Whithin a short time, however, ALM critics were advocating
more attention to rules and to the "cognitive code" of language, which, to some, smacked of a return to
Grammar Translation! Shifting sands indeed.
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The same era has seen linguists searching ever more deeply for the ansewrs to the
nature of communication and communicative competence and for explanations of
the interactive process of language. The language teaching profession has
responded to these theoritical trends with methods that stress the importance of
self-esteem, of students cooperatively learning together, of developing individual
strategies for success, and above all of focusing on the communicative process is
language learning.

In The Classroom: The Grammar Translation Method

Latin was taught by means of what has been called the Classical Method: focus on
grammatical rules, memorization of vocabulary and of various declensions and
conjugations, translation of texts, doing written exercise. Languages were not being
taught primarily to learn oral/aural communication but to learn for the sake of being
"scholarly" or, in some instances, for gaining a reading proficiency in a foreign
language.

In the 19th century the Classical Methods came to be known as the Grammar
Translation Method. Prator and Celce-Murcia (1979:3) list the major characteristics
of Grammar Translation:
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Classes are taught in the mother tongue, with little active use of the target
language.

Much vocabulary is taught in the form of lists of isolated words.

Long elaborate explanations of the intricacies of grammar are given.

Grammar provides the rules for putting words together, and instruction often
focuses on the form and inflection of words.

Reading of difficult classical texts in begun early.

Little attention is paid to the content of texts, which are treated as exercise in
grammatical analysis.

Often the only drills are exercises in translating disconnected sentences from the
target language into the mother tongue.

Little or no attention is given to pronunciation.

It is remarkable, in one sense, that this method has been so stalwart among many
competing models. It does virtually nothing to enhance a student's communicative
ability in the language. It is "remembered with distaste by thousands of school
learners, for whom foreign language learning meant a tedious experience of
memorizing endless lists of unusable grammar rules and vocabulary and attempting
to produce perfect translation of slited or literary prose" ( Richards and Rodgers
1986:4). However, in another sense, one can understand why Grammar Translation
is so popular. It requires few specialized skills on the part of teachers. Test of
grammar rules and of translations are easy to construct and can be objectively
scored. Many standardaized tests of foreign languages still do not attempt to tap
into communicative abilities, so students have little motivations to go beyond
grammar analogies, translations, and rote exercise. And it is sometimes successful
in leading a student toward a reading knowledge of a second language. But, as
Richards and Rodgers (1986:5) point out, "it has no advocates, it is a method for
which there is no theory. There is no literature that offers a psychology, or
educational theory."