a brief history of language teaching, 1853 – 2003

a brief history of language teaching, 1853 – 2003

Below is a potted history of the most well-known approaches and attitudes to language in the

second language classroom over the last hundred years or so. As you will notice, many of the

themes get recycled in different forms, but each time a ‘new’ approach develops it adds a slightly

different perspective and expands our understanding. All of these approaches were seen to work at

some point, and so none can be discounted. It is my absolute conviction that every one still has its

place in the grand pantheon of language-teaching approaches, and that aware experienced teachers

will be able to utilise all of them in an intuitive, and yet consciously integrated way, in their

classrooms.

1850s – 1950s: Grammar Translation

How language was taught in most schools; grammar was taught as a set of rules (e.g. verb

conjugations) after the classical languages, Latin and Greek; practice was done through written

exercises; the medium of instruction was the mother tongue; vocabulary was learnt via translated

lists, often related to the comprehension of written texts; written text was seen as the ‘real’

language, superior to the spoken version; written texts were translated and composition in L2 was

regarded as the apex of language ability; speaking and listening were seen as less important, and

mediated via ‘conversation classes’ which were tagged on as extras to the main course.

1890s – now: Direct Method

Specific to the Berlitz chain of schools, started in the USA; the brainchild of the entrepreneur

himself; speaking and listening were the most important skills; the medium of instruction was

English; students learnt sequences of strictly-chosen (i.e. centrally-scripted) grammatical phrases

by listening and repetition; grammar ‘rules’ were avoided, and replaced by phrases (which of

course had grammar disguised in them); vocabulary was learnt either incidentally, as part of the

phrases being taught, or via lists grouped under types of situation; its modern incarnation survives

in the omnipresent language phrasebooks, and the method is still the basis of lower-level teaching

in Berlitz’s ubiquitous and successful language schools.

1960s – 1970s (USA): Audio-lingual method + Structuralist view of language

A ‘scientificised’ version of the direct method; the new science of linguistics suggested that

language was a set of ‘structures’ (e.g. ‘this shirt needs + washing, mending, ironing, etc’; ‘he has

+ washed, ironed, folded, etc the clothes’); grammar rules were an illusion, so it was more

important to focus on these ‘structures’; vocabulary was seen as an adjunct to the structures;

speaking and listening were the most important skills; the learning method was based on

behaviourist psychology – stimulus-response learning; language exercises for speaking were

mostly listen and repeat (i.e. drilling), and repeat and extend; language exercises for writing were

multiple choice and gapfill; thinking was discouraged, automaticity of response was favoured; the

language laboratory epitomised the audio-lingual approach and was meant to revolutionise

language teaching – the reason that it did not do so was simply, as with computers nowadays, that

most learners need people as teachers, not machines; a lasting legacy of this approach is the muchloved

substitution table.

This was a pragmatic (i.e. UK) version of audio-lingualism; the key difference from the audiolingual

approach was that the language presentation and practice was situationalised and so was

always given social meaning; speaking and listening were the most important skills; this approach

gave rise to the idea of PPP (presentation, practice, production) – here, a given language point, say

the Present Simple Tense for routines (called the target item), was presented (P) and given

controlled practice (P) and then given further semi-controlled practice (P) (often called ‘free

practice’) in say a role-play; it all took place in one lesson; all the techniques of audio-lingual

method were used, but the famous ‘situation’ was added (mimes, pictures, sounds); it was

assumed that what we taught during these three stages was what the students should learn, and

pundits remained focused for decades on how to optimise this process; this equation of teaching

and learning is now seen as a false goal; PPP has been rubbished recently by proponents of taskbased

methodology, a criticism in my view based on a deliberately false characterisation of PPP

1970s – 1980s: Humanistic approaches

Emanating from the USA, and particularly championed by Earl Stevick, this movement was based

on the assumption that language classes were places of fear for language learners; specifically

associated with: the Silent Way, Community Language Learning, Suggestopaedia, and Total

Physical Response; many in the UK questioned Stevick’s basic assumption, as the UK’s

pragmatic teaching tradition had long taken account of so-called ‘affective’ factors in language

teaching, and UK language teaching was famous for its engaging and ‘fun’ qualities; however, the

philosophy of the humanistic approaches was valuable, and since then, it has become an essential

precept of language teaching that students assimilate things best when they are talking about

themselves, something now called ‘personalisation’; strangely, it was my experience that

proponents of humanistic approaches were often rather dictatorial in their conference

demonstrations!

1970s –1990s: Functional syllabuses – Communicative Language Teaching

communicative 'revolution' was based on the idea of grouping bits of language according to

communicative functions (in the USA called ‘speech acts’) like apologising, requesting, and

advising; it was rare for a direct relationship between function and language to be established

because functions can be expressed by a vast range of expression and non-verbal cues; however,

where a clear direct relationship could be found (e.g. ‘my apologies’ for apologising, ‘do you mind, for asking permission), it was regarded as a matter of convention only, to be

if I’ + pres simple

used for teaching purposes, not for authentic linguistic description; these ‘bits’ were called

‘exponents’, so a number of ‘conventional exponents’, covering the range from formal to informal,

could be related to each key function; students were taught these exponents, often, misguidedly, at

the expense of grammar!; no obvious method was suggested by defining language in this way, so

the listen-and-repeat and repeat-and-extend methods persisted, and rightly so, because, as such

phrases depended for their usefulness on accurate rhythm and intonation, various forms of drill lent

themselves well.
1975 – now: Communicative methodology – Communicative Language Teaching

The second tranche of the communicative ‘revolution’ really took off by the early 80s, mostly

radiating out from the UK; the key principle was the separation of classroom work into ‘accuracy’

work and ‘fluency’ work; accuracy work was for concentrating on learning new bits of language

(grammar patterns, functional exponents, vocabulary, etc); fluency work was for getting the

students to speak freely (say in discussions); much confusion was caused when teachers were

trained to see these as closely linked together, with accuracy work leading to fluency work (see

PPP above), which is actually not possible (see below); the basic principle of all communicative

activities in the classroom, whether accuracy-based or fluency-based, was the ‘information gap’,

which has remained with us ever since; the ‘communicative revolution’, via the information gap,

has been very profound and real, and has coursed through every aspect of method, whether

accuracy or fluency oriented; as an example of the accuracy-oriented information gap, we can

have ‘communicative drills’ (e.g. students interview each other about their daily routines to get

controlled practice of Present Simple for routines); and as an example of a fluency-oriented

information gap, we can have free discussion, where the students discuss a real thing without

interruption and the teacher takes notes of the mistakes and feeds these back afterwards.

In the US in the late 70s, an influential version of second language learning theory was developed

by Stephen Krashen, which postulated that learners ‘acquired’ language if fed a diet of genuine

communication (as does the child acquiring the first language), but they only ‘learnt’ language if

fed a diet of classroom exercises; the result was that many teachers started to believe that

(unconscious) ‘acquisition’ was profounder, more real, and therefore better, than (conscious)

‘learning’; these teachers decided that the classroom had to become an immersive ‘bath’ of

authentic communication; this attitude persists today in many classrooms, at the expense of

conscious learning; in fact, many variations of the learning-acquisition model have since emerged

(including those of Bialystok, Long, and Rutherford), and a combined processing model seems to

be the current favourite, which is to say that the classroom learner probably operates both

mechanisms – learning and acquisition – all the time, with some interchange between the two; it is

now thought, increasingly, that teachers cannot strongly influence how these mechanisms are used

by their students.
1980 – now: Test-Teach-Test

‘Test-teach-test’ was an inventive variation of traditional PPP, particularly appropriate to teaching

functional exponents but also adaptable to grammar points and lexis; the students are given a task,

such as a role-play, without any prior teaching of the relevant language points, and this is the first

TEST phase; if the students have problems and make mistakes, the teacher knows that they have

to teach the biggest errors, and this teaching (also known as ‘Presentation’) is the TEACH phase;

this is followed by the students doing further practice exercises of these target items, which is the

second TEST phase; all in all, this is a popular and resilient piece of methodology which brings

together a number of principles, and has stood the test of time.
1985 – now: Negotiated syllabus

Mostly relevant to executive and Business English students where needs are specific and focused;

it has become the norm for many professional language training organisations; based on the

principle that we first find out what students want and test them to find out what they need, and

then negotiate the syllabus with them; it has recently had a big impact on general English classes

too; it is especially good when the syllabus is emerging and flexible and is being negotiated on a

regular basis during the whole course; because it is diametrically different from school-set

syllabuses and exam-oriented syllabuses, it has to be applied carefully, depending on whether it is

appropriate to the specific context.
1985 – now: Task-based approaches

This is very relevant to business English teaching, and has been solidly part of Business English

teaching since the late 80s; since the mid-90s it has become much more established in General

English teaching; it is a methodological idea which attempts to get away from PPP altogether;

students are not taught language points in advance, but rather are given communicative ‘tasks’ to

prepare for; these tasks require them to ask the teacher to ‘give’ them whatever language bits they

might need in order to fulfil the task; an example would be ‘have the students in groups plan a

recreational weekend in London for a visiting friend coming to London’; here, the language they

need will be: discussion exponents, telephoning language, arrangement language, lexis of

sightseeing, etc; each group would be given what language they need by the teacher as they askin the final phase, the students actually do the complete task and they ‘use’ the language

for it;

they have asked for and been given.

The best place to find a clear outline of this approach is Willis (1996); the best General English

textbook series using this approach is the 'Cutting Edge Series' by Peter Moor and Sarah

Cunningham; in the Business English context, teachers tend to use the task-based approach as a

matter of course, with telephone role-plays, meetings, negotiations, and presentations; a big

question still being widely discussed is whether the students, on being ‘given’ the language they

need for their task, then need some controlled practice so that it becomes more assimilated – in

other words, do students need some form of rapid PPP?; since it appears to have gained

ideological popularity especially in the UK, there may be a danger that the task-based approach

dominates teaching to the detriment of the other methodologies which have equal validity.
1990 – now: Lexical views of language

As early as the 1970s, academic linguists noticed that the language was full of set phrases (e.g. you

don’t say!, onwards and upwards, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, the knock-on effect of,

it’s a good job (that) . . ., etc, etc); in 1986, a famous duo, Pawley and Syder (1983) showed that

these set phrases are actually part of a memorised store of pre-fabricated ‘chunks’ which, once

learnt, each native speaker has automatically at their disposal; when speaking, they said, we

appear to use these chunks like single vocabulary units; since then, notably through the writings of

Michael Lewis in the early 1990s, the Lexical View of Language has become a central plank of

both Business and General English teaching; it particularly affects what we teach – lexical chunks

rather than single items of vocabulary, (e.g. to make an appointment, to do business with, toetc) – and, some

penetrate the market, market forces, healthy competition, an absolute disaster,

have argued, lexical chunks in place of grammar (e.g. should + infinitive is seen by some as a

lexical chunk not as a piece of grammar); nowadays, it is normal to see lexical expressions as the

main lexical content of a textbook unit; a big challenge which still remains is how to prevent the

lexical approach dominating teaching to the detriment of the other components of the language

1995 – now: Output - Feedback
Again originating mainly in the Business English field, this is less an approach, more an attitude of

mind, based on the idea of an immersive bath of communication from which useful language focus

then arises – if we simply set our students off in authentic communicative activities in the

classroom, we can use the ensuing language ‘output’ as data for feedback (or ‘reformulation’);

this feedback is one form of language focus, and can take many forms (see Article 4 on language

focus) such as individualised feedback sheets, overhead slides full of errors for class discussion,

full-scale remedial presentations, etc.

A really interesting extension of this idea is ‘Reformulate Output Lightly but Often’ - ROLO

(Emmerson 1999); the teacher listens to the students discussing something, notes the problems

down, and then goes through a sequence involving eliciting, concept questions, and guiding

questions, so that the students come to a reformulated version of the selected language errors from

their discussion; these corrected errors get recycled in a similar way, lightly but often, over the

next few lessons.
1995 – now: Noticing (also known as 'consciousness-raising')

Some studies into the psychology of classroom language learning showed that there is little

relationship between what the teacher teaches in one lesson and what students learn in that lesson

as conscious learning; at the same time, William Rutherford in the mid 80s put forward the idea of

using the classroom to gradually raise students’ awareness about the target language rather than

imagine that teachers can teach it for active reproduction by endless practice; what this means is

that when we do presentation and practice work with students on any language item, all we are

actually doing is raising the noticeability of that language in the minds of the students; in other

words, we are helping the student to notice it the next time and the next time, and little by little to

take it on board in a process of ‘successive approximation’, or ‘layered noticing’; we are not

teaching it for immediate active accurate production; this awareness-raising is therefore only the

first stage of a series of stages by which the language item, and the language awareness

surrounding it, passes into the unconscious of the student; the concept of ‘reformulation’

(reflective correction) is very much connected with the idea of raising noticeability; the process ofso we don’t need to concern

assimilation by the student is an unknowable and invisible process,

ourselves with it; my thought on this is that PPP (i.e. one out of many types of accuracy work) has

an important place in language teaching, not to teach language points but to raise their

noticeability in the minds of the students.

As a matter of note, the place of fluency work (e.g. free role-play) in the noticing model has two

functions (i) to provide free-speaking scenarios in which we can assess the students’ current state

of progress and assimilation (ii) to show what language points still need more focus and practice

i.e. language focus via reformulation (see Output-Feedback above); these activities are a form of

informal testing; they do not function as the ‘production’ phase of a PPP approach, because that is

by definition a semi-controlled, and therefore accuracy-oriented, phase.

Recently, very much in the 'noticing' mould, there has been a growth of interest in classroom tasks

which help the student to see grammar in its global, and truly communicative context; some

modern academic linguists’ take the view that language is 'grammaticalised lexis' (rather than the

view from the last 100 years that it is 'lexicalised grammar'); using this principle for language

syllabuses, some schools have dispensed with grammar, and give the title ‘lexis’ to many language

‘bits’ which once might have been called grammar; as for language exercises, we can use global

text exercises (using semi-authentic and authentic texts) in which the 'grammar' has been taken out

(i.e. the inflections, the articles, the infinitive markers, etc), and which the students have then to

put back, e.g. "Federal Reserve Bank expect lower interest rate today eleven time this year, drive; this is very motivating for the learners, it is very individualised, and

them low level four decade’

it is very efficient for the teacher, who only has to spend time clarifying the language items which

are causing problems; the ‘grammaticisation’ approach is becoming increasingly popular (see

Thornbury 2001, for an extensive discussion of the idea), but it is important to keep it in

perspective with the other approaches to teaching grammar, which all have their relevance (see

Article 4 on Noticing).

2002: The Modern Integrated Language Teacher

We use translation when it is quick and efficient to get across meaning; we still teach grammar,

even though we no longer assume it to be a starting point, but more a reference point; we use
drilling

sounds and rhythm of a useful expression; we use practice exercises (e.g. gap-fills) to raise

students’ awareness of common lexical expressions; we use focus on functional expressions

when students listen to a tape model of a telephone call; we use information gaps almost all the

time, in accuracy as well as fluency work; we use personalisaton all the time, whether the

students are practising language, preparing for a role-play, or reading the newspaper; we use a

task-based approach

positions in groups, asking for language help from the teacher as they go along; we use outputfeedback

when the teacher uses a conversation activity to produce student ‘output’, and then feeds

back on language errors; we use test-teach-test when students are set a short telephone-call roleplay

without time to prepare, and this is taped and followed up with focus on (i.e. introduction and

practice, or PP, of) telephone phrases, which is then followed by another telephone role-play (the

third P); we use noticing activities practically all the time, because any activity in which the

students are being invited to put their attention on an aspect of language is a noticing activity; we

use grammaticisation activities when we want to see how each student’s individual internal

grammar is progressing.

It has been a curious tendency in ELT for both the perpetrators of new ideas, and for many

teachers, to want to dispense with the old to make way for the new. This cannot be right. The

modern teacher is able to use any approach from the past as long as it is appropriate and useful.

You may have heard the term ‘principled eclecticism’. I prefer the term ‘principled integration’,

because ‘eclecticism’ suggests picking separate things from the selection available, whereas

‘integration’ forces us to remember that everything has come from what has been before, and that

everything that has gone before remains relevant today.