As part of a professional development class on language teaching every week I have to reflect on two language teaching methods. Here are some of the discussion prompts and my personal take on them:
GRAMMAR-TRANSLATION METHOD vs DIRECT METHOD - differences and personal preferences.
“REPETITA IUVANT” vs “CARPE DIEM”
“REPETITA IUVANT!” That’s what my high school French teacher would say at the start of each lesson. Using a Latin phrase which literally means “repeated things are beneficial” is all you need to know to understand that my teacher followed a GRAMMAR-TRANSLATION [GTm] method to teach a modern language. In his defense, I attended a “liceo classico” the most literary and classics oriented of Italian high schools and indeed I did study two more foreign languages: Latin and Ancient Greek, both classically taught using a grammar-translation method as well! :)
Did that make me hate studying foreign languages? Quite the contrary, as shown by the fact that I started learning English as an adult and that I became a language teacher!
While I don’t have any direct experience of the DIRECT [Dm] method as a student I do however teach full immersion language classes to children, which is as close to the direct method as you can get, with the addition of a substantial dose of ludic pedagogy.
At the antipodes of the teaching methodologies spectrum, the GTm and the Dm differ in basically everything, from the techniques used (essay writing, comprehension questions, memorization of vocabulary and translation for the GTm vs enactments, transcodification and information gap for the Dm), to the content (classic literature for one vs informative articles and dialogues to the other), to the purpose (teaching morality and literary culture to elevate our humanity vs teaching social and geopolitical contemporary culture to facilitate traveling and exploring).
An additional practical difference is the way structures are taught - deductively for the GTm (presentation of the rule → exercises and practice) vs inductively for the Dm (specific examples or activities → self-discovery of the rule); this coupled with the use of the first language for the GTm vs the exclusive use of target language for the Dm creates another derivative but substantial difference: the amount of time necessary to discover a structure is certainly much longer in the Dm than in the GTm - it could however be argued that inductive teaching is more conducive of real acquisition and therefore students who are learning through the Dm will need a longer time when each new aspect of the language is introduced but they will have to review it less times, therefore saving time at the end… “ai posteri l’ardua sentenza” (posterity will judge).
The purposes of both methods have some undeniable charm: how wonderful it is to be able to discover a different culture through its literary masterpieces, and what an incredible experience learning a new language as an adult as we did in infancy!
My personal teaching style falls in average in the center of the pendulum arch of language teaching approaches, as I try to pick and choose the best techniques from each style depending on the topic, the phase of the lesson, and the age and learning style of the students, but I do find myself drawn towards more inductive and communicative styles as I love helping my students DISCOVER the language and use it in real life.
With my adult students I very often use the information gap technique, the transcodification and the enactments from the Dm, but with my more advanced students I also love analyzing literary texts and using translation, as a wonderfully complex exercise in language and culture comparison, and I use essay writing as a cumulative assessment and self expression exercise, all techniques used by the GTm.
With my youngest students I get to experience the full joy of an almost pure Dm as we have all the necessary “puzzle pieces” (neuroplasticity, a brain and lifestyle fully dedicated to learning and a high time/quantity-of-things-learned ratio - meaning parents don’t expect their young children to learn quickly) for them to really discover the second language as their first, so with them I get to live by “CARPE DIEM!”... I do however also use a lot of repetition, so maybe those Romans and my French teacher were on to something with their "REPETITA IUVANT!" :)
“REPETITA IUVANT!” That’s what my high school French teacher would say at the start of each lesson. Using a Latin phrase which literally means “repeated things are beneficial” is all you need to know to understand that my teacher followed a GRAMMAR-TRANSLATION [GTm] method to teach a modern language. In his defense, I attended a “liceo classico” the most literary and classics oriented of Italian high schools and indeed I did study two more foreign languages: Latin and Ancient Greek, both classically taught using a grammar-translation method as well! :)
Did that make me hate studying foreign languages? Quite the contrary, as shown by the fact that I started learning English as an adult and that I became a language teacher!
While I don’t have any direct experience of the DIRECT [Dm] method as a student I do however teach full immersion language classes to children, which is as close to the direct method as you can get, with the addition of a substantial dose of ludic pedagogy.
At the antipodes of the teaching methodologies spectrum, the GTm and the Dm differ in basically everything, from the techniques used (essay writing, comprehension questions, memorization of vocabulary and translation for the GTm vs enactments, transcodification and information gap for the Dm), to the content (classic literature for one vs informative articles and dialogues to the other), to the purpose (teaching morality and literary culture to elevate our humanity vs teaching social and geopolitical contemporary culture to facilitate traveling and exploring).
An additional practical difference is the way structures are taught - deductively for the GTm (presentation of the rule → exercises and practice) vs inductively for the Dm (specific examples or activities → self-discovery of the rule); this coupled with the use of the first language for the GTm vs the exclusive use of target language for the Dm creates another derivative but substantial difference: the amount of time necessary to discover a structure is certainly much longer in the Dm than in the GTm - it could however be argued that inductive teaching is more conducive of real acquisition and therefore students who are learning through the Dm will need a longer time when each new aspect of the language is introduced but they will have to review it less times, therefore saving time at the end… “ai posteri l’ardua sentenza” (posterity will judge).
The purposes of both methods have some undeniable charm: how wonderful it is to be able to discover a different culture through its literary masterpieces, and what an incredible experience learning a new language as an adult as we did in infancy!
My personal teaching style falls in average in the center of the pendulum arch of language teaching approaches, as I try to pick and choose the best techniques from each style depending on the topic, the phase of the lesson, and the age and learning style of the students, but I do find myself drawn towards more inductive and communicative styles as I love helping my students DISCOVER the language and use it in real life.
With my adult students I very often use the information gap technique, the transcodification and the enactments from the Dm, but with my more advanced students I also love analyzing literary texts and using translation, as a wonderfully complex exercise in language and culture comparison, and I use essay writing as a cumulative assessment and self expression exercise, all techniques used by the GTm.
With my youngest students I get to experience the full joy of an almost pure Dm as we have all the necessary “puzzle pieces” (neuroplasticity, a brain and lifestyle fully dedicated to learning and a high time/quantity-of-things-learned ratio - meaning parents don’t expect their young children to learn quickly) for them to really discover the second language as their first, so with them I get to live by “CARPE DIEM!”... I do however also use a lot of repetition, so maybe those Romans and my French teacher were on to something with their "REPETITA IUVANT!" :)
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