The document discusses different language teaching methods including grammar translation, direct method, audio-lingual method, silent way, and communicative language teaching. It focuses on explaining the grammar translation method, which uses the native language for translation and emphasizes reading and writing skills, and the direct method, which prohibits native language use and focuses on oral communication through teacher demonstration and student interaction. Both methods rely heavily on the teacher's role in providing language knowledge but differ in their use of the native language and emphasis on specific skills.
2. 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.
3. 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
4. Which is the best one?
There’s 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.
5. Let’s start?
Now, we are going to talk about two of these
methods:
The grammar-translation method
and
The direct method
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. Grammar-Translation Method
This first method is based in an exchange of the
knowledge of the student’s mother language
and the new language’s one.
It is useful for literature situations, it means,
basically, for written texts, comprehension.
9. 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 mother’s house.
Eu estava na casa da minha mãe.
10. Like this, the students become capable of
recognizing similar constructions and built in
their heads the ones that are new.
11. 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.
12. 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
13. What are the emphasized language
skills?
Reading
Writing
Pronunciation
14. 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.
15. When a mistake happens...
The teacher corrects student’s errors and
supplies them with the correct answers.
16. 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 don’t learn how to make their own
productions.
17. 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.
18. In the class,
the teacher
uses only the Knowledge
Demonstration
of the
target target
language to language
make the
explanations.
19. 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
20. What are the emphasized language
skills?
Oral Communication
Pronunciation
Reading
Writing
21. 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.
22. When a mistake happens...
The teacher must try to get students to self-
correct whenever it is possible.
23. 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: Teacher’s correction Errors: Self-Correction
24. 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.
