Teaching Methods

How to teach a language?

 Why learning methods?
It is important to realise that teachers need to
know different approaches so that he or she can
choose the one that makes teaching more
comfortable and the learning process easier for
the students.
 What are the methods?
Larsen-Freeman (2008) presents several teaching methods:

The grammar-translation method

The direct method

The audio-lingual method

The silent way

Total Physical Response

Communicative language teaching

 Which is the best one?
Theres no bad or good in this matter. It is good
to get to know them all to be able to choose the
best way and the best opportunity to use each
one of these methods.
 Lets start?
Now, we are going to talk about two of these
methods:

The grammar-translation method

and
The direct method
 First of all...
The author of the book uses experiments to
explain how the methods work. It is important
to try the methods in fact, not only study them.
It is important to try the methods in class,
because there are questions and answers
that the teacher will be able to see just if
he applies the method.
 Grammar-Translation Method
This first method is based in an exchange of the
knowledge of the students mother language
and the new languages one.
It is useful for literature situations, it means,
basically, for written texts, comprehension.
It allows the teacher and the students to use the
mother language to translate and create
references from one language to the other.

I was in my mothers house.

Eu estava na casa da minha me.

Like this, the students become capable of
recognizing similar constructions and built in
their heads the ones that are new.
If the student can translate a text, both from his
mother language to the target language and
also from the target language to his mother
language, then he or she is a successful
language learner.
How is the interaction in this method?
There must be much interaction from teacher to
students, a little student initiation and a little
student-student interaction.

Student

Teacher
Student

Student
What are the emphasized language
skills?

Reading
Writing
Pronunciation
 What is the role of the mother
language?
The mother language is used to make meanings
more clear to the students.
And it is the language that appears the most
time during the classes.
 When a mistake happens...

The teacher corrects students errors and

supplies them with the correct answers.
 To finish:
The most important thing about Grammar-
Translation is that the students learn about the
language (the rules of the language) but they do
not learn how to use it. They search for
understanding a text which is already written,
but they dont learn how to make their own
productions.
 The Direct Method
This second method we are about to explain,
differently from the one we have just discussed,
has one basic rule:

No translation is allowed.
 In the class,
the teacher
uses only the Knowledge
Demonstration
of the
target target
language to language
make the
explanations.
How is the interaction in this method?
There is a great student-student interaction and
a significant student-teacher one. However, the
teacher-student interaction is the biggest one.

Student

Student
What are the emphasized language
skills?

Oral Communication
Pronunciation
Reading
Writing
 What is the role of the mother
language?
It should not be used in the classroom.
The teacher has to do everything that is possible
to make the student learn from the new
language.
 When a mistake happens...
The teacher must try to get students to self-
correct whenever it is possible.
 Comparing these two methods
Grammar-
Direct Method
Translation Method
Main goal: Understanding Main goal: Communicating

Role of native language: Almost

Role of native language: Crucial
null

How? Translating. How? Speaking

Skills: Reading/ Writing Skill: Speaking

Errors: Teachers correction Errors: Self-Correction

 A similarity
One aspect that these two methods have
in common is the role of the teacher. In these
two methods, the teacher is the one
responsible for providing the knowledge (in
this case the new language) to the students.
 Reference
LARSEN-FREEMAN, D. Techniques and
principles in language teaching. 2nded.
Oxford. 2008.p.11-33.
 Group 3
Clarice Batista
Juliana Guerra
Rosana Soares
Sabrina Cotta