Appropriate Methods For Teaching Languages ​​

A language is the language of a people or a nation and refers to a system of signs that allows a human community to communicate verbally or gesturally. We have to make a distinction between the mother tongue, which is the language of the country in which a person was born, and other foreign languages ​​that can be learned throughout life.

Learning another language or language implies, therefore, the power to know and appropriate, to a certain extent, its sign system, its rules and its functioning.

If we consider that a method involves a specific and concrete procedure to achieve something, from a teaching point of view, we will point out the most relevant aspects of each method and make a distinction between the most appropriate methods for teaching languages and, therefore, for the learning a foreign language.

Appropriate Methods for Language Teaching

GT method

The oldest method of teaching a language, and perhaps the most orthodox, is what is sometimes called the GT Method. It is a method primarily focused on grammar and translating texts and phrases from one language to another.

This method pays special attention to the grammatical rules and structures that exist between a sentence in one language and another, placing emphasis on equivalences in considering universal grammatical patterns. This involves memorizing thousands of words and rules, as well as phrases taken out of context.

direct method

At the end of the 19th century, another method appeared, called the Direct Method. It focuses on verbal communication, regardless of the grammatical specificity of the sentences used, trying to make the learner understood even when the grammatical structures are not the most appropriate.

In this method, grammar is intuited and consists of eliminating errors until the person is able to make himself understood, thus establishing adequate relationships between the foreign word and the situations it describes or refers to. Hence its name, “direct”.

Audiolingual Method

On the other hand, the method called Audiolingual has many coincidences with the previous one, as it gives priority to spoken language, insisting on oral expression and listening. However, in this case, the repetition of words, sentences and dialogues is used as a teaching strategy.

Most Appropriate Methods for Language Teaching

Over time, different methods have been developed and used to teach a foreign language, and while we cannot speak of a single method as being the best, some are probably more appropriate than others.

This is the case of the Communicative Method, for example, which is more than one method. It is considered an approach from which learning other languages ​​is seen as a process whose objective is more functional than structural. That is, what is most important is the purpose of communication, not just learning the grammar of a foreign language.

In terms of teaching organization, using the communicative method involves planning activities focused on problematic situations, in which the learning and acquisition of grammatical rules are relegated to the background, without underestimating its internalization, but always in function of the communicative objective.

These problematic situations refer to the different scenarios that a person faces in their daily lives, such as work, airports and travel, shopping of all kinds or asking for help in dangerous situations, when it is necessary to be able to express themselves progressively from the use of another language.

Communication is the most important in language teaching methods

Of course, we must emphasize that any method selected for teaching a foreign language will be adequate if we take into account the particularities of the learner and their specific learning needs.

It is from these needs that educators must be able to be flexible in choosing methods and even combine relevant aspects of each of them.

Undoubtedly, both repetition and memorization and knowledge of grammatical rules can be valid strategies for learning another language.

However, these strategies must be at the service of the resolution and decision-making in problematic situations placed as activities of the communicative method, whose objective is to make people learn to express themselves so that they can communicate in other languages.