A Brief History of Language Teaching - Part 1

I feel it's worthwhile to establish some context for language students to the world of language teaching. A modern history of language teaching will give you an informed perspective on your own particular learning process, what your teacher is doing, and what makes for effective language teaching.

The following, therefore, is a very brief history of language teaching that emphasizes the period starting from the innovative, theoretical developments of the nineteenth century Reform Movement up to the present.

A sufficient perspective on this period of 100+ years would not exclude the background out of which the Reform Movement arose however; therefore, a cursory review of the pre-theoretical ‘Dark Ages’ of language instruction will introduce this history...

It stands to simple reasoning and observation that tradition is not conducive to innovation. Not surprisingly therefore, language instruction in the Western world was dominated for a very long time by a tradition known as the Classical Method.

The Classical languages of Latin and Greek were taught by focusing on such things as grammatical rules, memorization of vocabulary and conjugation, and text translation. Doesn't sound fun, does it.

In the eighteenth century, as other ‘modern’ languages entered the foreign language curriculum, the Classical Method was thoughtlessly re-applied, its authority as the ideal manner of language instruction resting solely on the weight of its TRADITION.

In the nineteenth century, this method, with its strategy of foreign text translation, was eventually codified in areas where foreign literary scholarship was highly valued. This type of scholarship was especially prevalent in Germany, and it was there that the Classical Method became known as the Grammar Translation Method (GTM). GTM is notable from the viewpoint of contemporary language pedagogy in that it is a method of instruction with no real theoretical justification in any of the social sciences (e.g. linguistics, psychology)!

Toward the end of the nineteenth century, widespread political and social changes in Europe (e.g. war, tourism) gave rise to a common need for oral (as opposed to written) proficiency in foreign languages. In other words, large numbers of people crucially and finally NEEDED to learn how to communicate with other people by actually listening & speaking.

This need prompted the intellectual leadership of various language teaching specialists across Europe to bring about what is now called the Reform Movement in language teaching.

These specialists made a deep and widespread impact on educators mainly because they rejected tradition, and instead appealed to the authority of rigorous scientific disciplines of linguistics and psychology.

The Reform Movement in language teaching happened in the 1880s as a result of the combined efforts of various language teaching specialists who were trained researchers in their scientific fields.

Meanwhile, the formation of the International Phonetic Association in 1886 popularized the revisionist view that SPEECH IS THE PRIMARY FORM OF LANGUAGE; it also bolstered the impetus towards greater organizational structure in the language teaching profession.

As the nineteenth century closed, language teaching was getting organized, and most importantly, scientific.

A key figure in the history of the Reform Movement is the Frenchman Francois Gouin (1831-1896), whose astute observations of first language acquisition (by children) led to the development of naturalistic language-teaching methods.

Gouin’s Series Method simulated the ‘natural’ way in which children learn first languages, and it proved to be effective, but his consequent influence on the language teaching world was overshadowed by Charles Berlitz and his popular Berlitz (or Direct) Method in the early twentieth century.

The first major product of the Reform Movement, the Direct Method, borrowed its basic premises from the Series Method – lots of intralingual oral interaction and no explicit grammar instruction, but its popularity waned as the social emphasis shifted back to reading comprehension.

By the middle of the twentieth century however, the Direct Method’s premises were re-directed into a method popularized in America called the Audiolingual Method.

More on the Audiolingual Method in Part 2...