Alternative approaches and methods

The period from the 1970s through the 1980s witnessed a major paradigm shift in language teaching. The quest for alternatives to grammar-based approaches and methods led in several different directions. Mainstream language teaching embraced the growing interest in communicative approaches to language teaching. The communicative movement sought to move the focus away from grammar as the core component of language, to a different view of language, of language learning, of teachers, and of learners, one that focused on language as communication and on making the classroom an environment for authentic communication. This “communicative movement” and related approaches are discussed in Part III. However, other directions for language teaching also appeared during this period, and these are the focus of Part II. Whereas Audiolingualism and Situational Language Teaching were mainstream teaching methods developed by linguists and applied linguists, the approaches and methods described in this section were either developed outside of mainstream language teaching or represent an application in language teaching of educational principles developed elsewhere. The former case is represented by such innovative methods of the 1970s as Total Physical Reponse, Silent Way, Counseling Learning, Suggestopedia, and more recently Neurolinguistic Programming and Multiple Intelligences. Rather than starting from a theory of language and drawing on research and theory in applied linguistics, these methods are developed around particular theories of learners and learning, sometimes the theories of a single theorizer or educator. These methods are consequently relatively underdeveloped in the domain of language theory, and the learning principles they reflect are generally different from theories found in second language acquisition textbooks.