Cognitive Code-Learning Theory (CC-LT) or the Trend toward Cognitive Activity The trend toward a more active use of the students’ mental powers probably represents the most important effort of the cognitive theory of language acquisition. Advocates of the A-LM often advised the teacher to keep students “active” – since, they said, when a student is […]

Current Trends in English Methodology What is current methodology? Do we have to abandon all we have learned of the audio-lingual method (A-LM), the Direct Method (DM), and start anew? Thus far, the suggestions for change have been gentle, but we have not been left with a vacuum to be filled. Judging from techniques and […]

Georgi Losanov’s Method or Suggestive Method Few methods have been met with claims ranging from sensational to sceptical: mysterious and costly, a highly questionable new gimmick (one critic has unkindly called it “a package of pseudo-scientific gobbledegook“) and far remote from language teaching styles as language sleep learning, meditative relaxation, electrical and sound impulses (E.Davydova), […]

Audio-Lingual Method The Audio-Lingual Method (A-LM), like the Direct Method we have just examined, has a goal very different from that of the Grammar-Translation Method. The Audio-Lingual Method was developed in the United States during the Second World War. At that time there was a need for people to learn foreign languages rapidly for military […]

Direct Method   The Direct Method (DM) appeared as a reaction to GTM and the failure to produce learners who could use the foreign language they had been studying. The Direct Method was based on the belief that students could learn a language through listening to it and that they learn to speak by speaking […]

Harold Palmer’s Method.   Harold Palmer, the great English authority and teacher, experimented extensively with the question-answer method. He considered question-answer work to be “the most effective of all language learning exercises ever devised”. Palmer insisted, however, that if this technique was to be carried out successfully, all questions asked by the teacher must be […]

Grammar-Translation Method This method has been with us through the centuries and is still with us. It has had different names; at one time it was called Classical Method since it was used in the teaching of the classical languages, Latin and Greek. The method involves many written exercises, much translation and lengthy vocabulary lists. […]

Ian Comenius and his Method   At the turn of the 17th century Volfgang Ratichius (1571-1635) complained about contemporary methods of LT which stressed rote learning and grammar at the expense of reading and speaking. He initiated the principle of cognitive learning of Latin translation as a basic means of semantization and emphasised on repetition […]

Heuristics (Problem Solving) Heuristics is akin to Cognitive Code-Learning Theory that stressed on the necessity “to engage the student’s full mental powers”. Heuristics is understood here as the ability of teachers to provide new ideas, aid and direction that will help learners solve specified problem-posing tasks. In current methodology heuristics is the principle of instruction […]

The Content of FLT One of the essential categories of FLT is the content or what to teach. It is impossible to determine the content of FLT without referring to linguistics – a science that deals with the study of languages as a definite system of codes. Thus, linguistics describes the standard use of the […]