LANGUAGE TEACHING METHODS: A CRITIQUE

Language learning is a basic necessity for all humans since different people have the need to learn the grammars of languages other than theirs and acquire both grammatical and communicative competence. This imperativeness gives rise to language teaching where different methods are employed based on the different views or orientations on language teaching. Given the imperativeness of language learning, the need to formally device workable methods of teaching language becomes inevitable. In language teaching, the approach, the method and the technique are interrelated but the approach receives much more prominence because it is the approach that determines what method to be  chosen and then, the actual activity or technique to be employed to enhance the teaching of language. This paper sets out to draw a critique on the methods of language teaching, touching on their various techniques and their different theoretical underpinnings as well as their weaknesses and strengths. The work also proffers useful suggestions as to which method should be more thoroughly emphasized in teaching language without an outright condemnation of the already existing methods. Rather, the work spells out how the available methods can be meaningfully employed in the classroom based on the different aspects of the target language under study.