Approaches and
Methods in
Language Teaching
Second Edition
Jack C. Richards
Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization
Regional Language Centre, Singapore
and
Theodore S. Rodgers
University of Hawaii
Manoa
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Contents
15 The Natural Approach 178
16 Cooperative Language Learning 192
17 Content-Based Instruction 204
18 Task-Based Language Teaching 223
19 The post-methods era 244
Author index 257
Subject index 261
vi
1 A brief history of language teaching
This chapter, in briefly reviewing the history of language teaching
methods, provides a background for discussion of contemporary
methods and suggests the issues we will refer to in analyzing these
methods. From this historical perspective we are also able to see that the
concerns that have prompted modern method innovations were similar to
those that have always been at the center of discussions on how to teach
foreign languages. Changes in language teaching methods throughout
history have reflected recognition of changes in the kind of proficiency
learners need, such as a move toward oral proficiency rather than reading
comprehension as the goal of language study; they have also reflected
changes in theories of the nature of language and of language learning.
Kelly (1969) and Howatt (1984) have demonstrated that many current
issues in language teaching are not particularly new. Today’s controver-
sies reflect contemporary responses to questions that have been asked
often throughout the history of language teaching.
It has been estimated that some 60 percent of today’s world population
is multilingual. From both a contemporary and a historical perspective,
bilingualism or multilingualism is the norm rather than the exception. It
is fair, then, to say that throughout history foreign language learning has
always been an important practical concern. Whereas today English is the
world’s most widely studied foreign language, 500 years ago it was Latin,
for it was the dominant language of education, commerce, religion, and
government in the Western world. In the sixteenth century, however,
French, Italian, and English gained in importance as a result of political
changes in Europe, and Latin gradually became displaced as a language of
spoken and written communication.
As the status of Latin diminished from that of a living language to that
of an “occasional” subject in the school curriculum, the study of Latin
took on a different function. The study of classical Latin (the Latin in
which the classical works of Virgil, Ovid, and Cicero were written) and
an analysis of its grammar and rhetoric became the model for foreign
language study from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. Chil-
dren entering “grammar school” in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eigh-
teenth centuries in England were initially given a rigorous introduction to
Latin grammar, which was taught through rote learning of grammar
rules, study of declensions and conjugations, translation, and practice in
3
Major language trends
other applied linguists argued for the development of sound meth-
odological principles that could serve as the basis for teaching techniques.
In the 1920s and 1930s, applied linguists systematized the principles
proposed earlier by the Reform Movement and so laid the foundations
for what developed into the British approach to teaching English as a
foreign language. Subsequent developments led to Audiolingualism (see
Chapter 4) in the United States and the Oral Approach or Situational
Language Teaching (see Chapter 3) in Britain.
What became of the concept of method as foreign language teaching
emerged as a significant educational issue in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries? We have seen from this historical survey some of the questions
that prompted innovations and new directions in language teaching in
the past:
1. What should the goals of language teaching be? Should a language
course try to teach conversational proficiency, reading, translation, or
some other skill?
2. What is the basic nature of language, and how will this affect the
teaching method?
3. What are the principles for the selection of language content in lan-
guage teaching?
4. What principles of organization, sequencing, and presentation best
facilitate learning?
5. What should the role of the native language be?
6. What processes do learners use in mastering a language, and can these
be incorporated into a method?
7. What teaching techniques and activities work best and under what
circumstances?
Particular teaching approaches and methods differ in the way they have
addressed these issues from the late nineteenth century to the present, as
we shall see throughout this book. The Direct Method can be regarded as
the first language teaching method to have caught the attention of
teachers and language teaching specialists, and it offered a methodology
that appeared to move language teaching into a new era. It marked the
beginning of the “methods era.”
The methods era
One of the lasting legacies of the Direct Method was the notion of
“method” itself. The controversy over the Direct Method was the first of
many debates over how second and foreign languages should be taught.
The history of language teaching throughout much of the twentieth cen-
tury saw the rise and fall of a variety of language teaching approaches and
14
The nature of approaches and methods
In describing methods, the difference between a philosophy of lan-
guage teaching at the level of theory and principles, and a set of derived
procedures for teaching a language, is central. In an attempt to clarify this
difference, a scheme was proposed by the American applied linguist Ed-
ward Anthony in 1963. He identified three levels of conceptualization
and organization, which he termed approach, method, and technique:
The arrangement is hierarchical. The organizational key is that techniques car-
ry out a method which is consistent with an approach. . . .
. . . An approach is a set of correlative assumptions dealing with the nature
of language teaching and learning. An approach is axiomatic. It describes the
nature of the subject matter to be taught. . . .
. . . Method is an overall plan for the orderly presentation of language ma-
terial, no part of which contradicts, and all of which is based upon, the se-
lected approach. An approach is axiomatic, a method is procedural.
Within one approach, there can be many methods . . .
. . . A technique is implementational – that which actually takes place in a
classroom. It is a particular trick, stratagem, or contrivance used to accom-
plish an immediate objective. Techniques must be consistent with a method,
and therefore in harmony with an approach as well. (Anthony 1963: 63–67)
According to Anthony’s model, approach is the level at which assump-
tions and beliefs about language and language learning are specified;
method is the level at which theory is put into practice and at which
choices are made about the particular skills to be taught, the content to be
taught, and the order in which the content will be presented; technique is
the level at which classroom procedures are described.
Anthony’s model serves as a useful way of distinguishing between
different degrees of abstraction and specificity found in different lan-
guage teaching proposals. Thus we can see that the proposals of the
Reform Movement were at the level of approach and that the Direct
Method is one method derived from this approach. The so-called Reading
Method, which evolved as a result of the Coleman Report (see Chapter
1), should really be described in the plural – reading methods – since a
number of different ways of implementing a reading approach have been
developed.
A number of other ways of conceptualizing approaches and methods in
language teaching have been proposed. Mackey, in his book Language
Teaching Analysis (1965), elaborated perhaps the most well known
model of the 1960s, one that focuses primarily on the levels of method
and technique. Mackey’s model of language teaching analysis concen-
trates on the dimensions of selection, gradation, presentation, and repeti-
tion underlying a method. In fact, despite the title of Mackey’s book, his
concern is primarily with the analysis of textbooks and their underlying
principles of organization. His model fails to address the level of ap-
proach, nor does it deal with the actual classroom behaviors of teachers
19
6 The Silent Way
Background
The Silent Way is the name of a method of language teaching devised by
Caleb Gattegno. It is based on the premise that the teacher should be
silent as much as possible in the classroom but the learner should be
encouraged to produce as much language as possible. Elements of the
Silent Way, particularly the use of color charts and the colored Cuisenaire
rods, grew out of Gattegno’s previous experience as an educational
designer of reading and mathematics programs. The Silent Way shares a
great deal with other learning theories and educational philosophies.
Very broadly put, the learning hypotheses underlying Gattegno’s work
could be stated as follows:
1. Learning is facilitated if the learner discovers or creates rather than
remembers and repeats what is to be learned.
2. Learning is facilitated by accompanying (mediating) physical objects.
3. Learning is facilitated by problem solving involving the material to be
learned.
Let us consider each of these issues in turn.
1. The Silent Way belongs to a tradition that views learning as a problem-
solving, creative, discovering activity, in which the learner is a princi-
pal actor rather than a bench-bound listener (Bruner 1966). Bruner
discusses the benefits derived from “discovery learning” under four
headings: (a) the increase in intellectual potency, (b) the shift from
extrinsic to intrinsic rewards, (c) the learning of heuristics by discover-
ing, and (d) the aid to conserving memory (Bruner 1966: 83). Gat-
tegno claims similar benefits from learners taught via the Silent Way.
2. The rods and the color-coded pronunciation charts (called Fidel
charts) provide physical foci for student learning and also create mem-
orable images to facilitate student recall. In psychological terms, these
visual devices serve as associative mediators for student learning and
recall.
3. The Silent Way is also related to a set of premises that we have called
“problem-solving approaches to learning.” These premises are suc-
cinctly represented in the words of Benjamin Franklin:
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