English Language Teaching Approaches: A Comparison of the Grammar-translation, Audiolingual, Communicative, and Natural Approaches

Abstract

This work compares four of the most widely used teaching approaches in foreign language contexts; Grammar-Translation, Audiolingual, Communicative, and Natural Approaches. For the comparison, seven features were considered; supporting theories, creation purpose, materials and techniques used, and the roles of teachers, students, and students´ mother tongue in the teaching-learning process. A checklist was created to provide a visual representation of the characterization of the features compared in each approach. Several texts and articles were reviewed to be accurate in the characterization of the information. The results show that the characteristics of each approach were determined for the epoch in which they were proposed and promoted. Some characteristics such as the use of books overlapped all approaches compared in this work; others were unique to certain approaches, supporting theories, for instance; and, others were common in two or three approaches, as in the case of the use of conversations and the role of learners as active learners, to cite some examples.