Transcript for:
Second Language Teaching Approaches

Welcome back to my channel. Today we're going to discuss the approaches in teaching the second language. First is the grammar translation method. The grammar translation method is a foreign language teaching method that originated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This method is usually taught in the classical or dead language, for example, Latin and Greek.

The primary purpose of this method is to enrich their literature and language reading proficiency. And for this reason, this method is also called the classical method. However, in the 19th century, this classical method was recognized as the grammar translation method.

In grammar translation classes, students learn grammatical rules and then apply those rules by translating sentences between the target language and the native language. Advanced students may be required to translate whole texts word for word. This method has two main goals, to enable students to read and translate literature written in the target language and to further students'general intellectual development.

The characteristics of GTM or grammar translation method. Classes are taught in the mother tongue. In GTM, students translate literary extracts from the target language into their mother tongue. Much vocabulary is taught in the form of lists of isolated words. They find synonyms and antonyms for words that occur in the text.

Lil or no attention is given to pronunciation. Reading of difficult texts. is begun early.

The students read comprehensive texts and try to find information, make inferences, and relate to personal experiences. Long, elaborate explanations of the intricacies of grammar are given. They write paragraphs, essays, or summaries on a particular topic using targeted language. The learners identify cognate.

Well, what are cognates again? Cognates are languages and words that have the same origin or are related in some way similar. The learners identify cognate by learning spelling and sound patterns between mother language and targeted language.

They try to understand the grammar structure first and later apply them to examples. In GTM, students memorize bilingual vocabularies, grammar rules, and grammatical paradigms. Learners usually use to memorize vocabulary to apply them in sentences.

Now, as a teacher, why should you use this method? GTM focuses on the application of grammar and correct sentence structure. This is especially helpful in teaching students how to write and read in another language, allowing them to explore interchangeable words and phrases, for example, different words or different tenses, more effectively than a verbal teaching method.

Tests of grammar rules and translations are easy to construct. Class activities or learning games are rarely necessary as students are translating text to another language directly. Teachers who are not fluent in English but fluent in other language that the students primarily use can teach English using this approach as the emphasis is not on the spoken word but on translations.

Now, for SWOT analysis, let's see. We have the strengths. Students learn a lot of vocabulary in GTM.

Students get the opportunity to achieve maximum accuracy of targeted language. Reading and writing skills are excelled. GTM also helps students to improve the reading and writing proficiency of the targeted language.

It activates students'memory. The learners have to read the classic literature which develops their mental and intellectual ability. The learners have to memorize a lot of vocabularies which help them to make different kinds of sentences.

In addition, the teachers need a few specialized skills in particular topics. Literature also helps to enrich multiple potentials of the learner. Now for the weaknesses, we have poor listening and speaking, unnatural and inaccurate pronunciation, and the lack of communication. and gtm is not interactive and engaging for students but for the opportunities we have it gives the chance of learning a new language and using textbooks and students can learn vocabulary not only in the target language but also in their mother tongue but But as to the threats, it will be more interactive, more STT, and students might not be accustomed to translate word by word.

Although the grammar translation method has some limitations, the learners get a lot of benefits to develop their skills in their targeted language. The instructors also get the opportunity to teach many students in the classroom and they don't need to give more effort to take the class. Further, it helps the students to develop their mental and intellectual abilities. Audiolingualism Audiolingualism is a method of foreign language teaching where the emphasis is on learning grammatical and phonological structure, specifically for speaking and listening. It is based on behaviorism and so relies on formation as a basis for learning through a great deal of mechanical repetition.

The teacher spends most of the time in the class drilling the learners on grammatical and phonological structures. Error correction is also important. The approach was theoretically underpinned by structural linguistics, a movement in linguistics that focused on the phonemic, morphological, and syntactic systems. underlying the grammar of a given language rather than according to traditional categories of Latin grammar. As such, it was held that learning a language involved mastering the building blocks of the language and learning the rules by which these basic elements are combined from the level of sound to the level of sentence.

The audio-lingual approach was also based on the behaviorist theory of learning, which held that language, like other aspects of human activity, is a form of behavior. In the behaviorist view, language is elicited by a stimulus and that stimulus then triggers a response. The response in turn then produces some kind of reinforcement which, if positive, encourages the repetition of the response in the future. Or, if negative, its suppression. When transposed in the classroom, this gives us the classic pattern drill model.

She went to the cinema yesterday. The stimulus is theater. The response is, she went to the theater yesterday.

And the reinforcement is, good. In its purest form, audiolingualism aims to promote mechanical habit formation through repetition of basic patterns. Accurate manipulation of structure leads to eventual fluency. Spoken language comes before written language.

Dialogues and drill are central to the approach. Accurate pronunciation. and control of structure are paramount. The cognitive approach. Cognitive approach deals with mental process like memory and problem solving.

By emphasizing mental processes, it places itself in position to behaviorism. which largely ignores mental process. Yet, in many ways, the development of cognitive approach in the early decades of 20th century is intertwined with the behaviorist approach.

For example, Edwin Tolman, whose work on cognitive maps in rats made him a cognitive pioneer, called himself a behaviorist. Similarly, the work of David Kretsch in Hypothesis in Maze Learning was based on behaviorist techniques of observation and measurement. Today, the cognitive approach has overtaken behaviorism in terms of popularity and is one of the dominant approaches in contemporary psychology.

In cognitive theory, there is a great deal of intuitive appeal to the cognitive approach in teaching. The teachers, no matter native teacher or non-native, are ready to consider and cognitive theory as the foundation for teaching if they apply the following issues that distill the theoretical basis of cognitive foreign language. It must be noted that application of cognitive theory implies a responsibility to teach both content and process.

The learner is at center stage. The teacher, educator, or instructor becomes a facilitator of learning. carrying the task of adapting the newly learned foreign language structure to the needs of the learners. Cognitive theory acknowledges the role of mistakes. Therefore, a cognitive-minded foreign language teacher makes learners aware of the rules and should encourage students to create correct structures in applying the rules.

The theory attaches more importance on the learner's understanding of the structure of the foreign language than to the facility in using that structure. Cognitively-minded foreign language teachers pay attention to assimilation, assimilation of what has already been learned or partly learned since how new rules are presented is important. There is a fundamental relationship between language and culture.

Foreign language is at the heart of language teaching and learning. The way the teachers teach language reflects the way how much they have mastered and understood the target language as a profession. In cognitive theory, language practice drills are employed to train learners to talk and to help them master the basic structural patterns of the target language.

The advantages of cognitive approach. First is it revived the re-emergence of grammar in the classroom. It put more emphasis on guided discovery of the rules. This is the rule-governed nature of language. It rejected the habit formation of behaviors theory.

There is language acquisition rather than habit formation. Learning is not a habit formation but requires cognitive processing and mental effort because learners are thinking beings. It stressed on the learning of the rules via meaningful practice and creativity. It liberated the teachers from the straitjackets of grammar translation approach, audiolingualism, and structural situational methods. We also have the disadvantages.

It placed a great deal of emphasis on the development of second language as a combination of skills, as its core cognitive code learning represents a theoretical rather than pedagogical approach. It is essentially a theoretical proposal because it did not lead to the development of any teaching method in relation to classroom procedures and activities. There is a little use of examples for authentic material.

It never took off in a big way. The theory did not gain support over time. And human thinking is said to be an invisible process and therefore cognitive processes are hypothetical constructs.

Human information processing is resembled computers. Which perhaps oversimplifies the human mind, human brain is much more sophisticated than computer systems. As a theory, it often ignores past experiences and culture influence while we process information.

CCA or cognitive code approach does not consider individual personalities of people and how personalities are formed. There is too much emphasis on social context. It is the personalized theory. In other words, it does not take into consideration feelings or unconscious actions or reactions. According to Carroll, the theory attaches more importance to the learner's understanding of the structure of the foreign language than the facility in using that structure.

Another disadvantage is that it is extremely time-intensive on the part of the foreign language teacher or educator. who acts as a facilitator, has to invest a huge amount of time and effort on a per-student basis. CCA came to the fore when Chomsky stated a severe attack on behaviorist learning approach in 1957. Behaviorism and structuralism were rejected by Chomsky's theory of language in 1965, which refuses the learning series of behaviorism. Chomsky argued that humans are born with wire device which he called language acquisition device or the LAD where UG or universal grammar operates. CCA accepts universal grammar of Chomsky which underlies all grammars.

In the current perspective of second language learning, CCA is largely seen as the updated variety of traditional grammar translation method. with an intended goal of overcoming the shortfalls of the audio-lingual approach.