New Methodology and Traditional Techniques

Abstract

In recent years, some foreign-language teachers have insisted that language should be taught in a straight jacket, in segments and fragments, in a predetermined order, and, apparently, without regard for the learner. According to them, modern foreign languages cannot be learned well or efficiently unless a certain sequence, supposedly the normal one for the native learner, is observed. Emphasis on what should take place in the classroom has apparently shifted from learning and the learner to teaching and the teacher. Books supposedly designed to make foreign-language learning more natural, and frequently intended to appeal to any sort of program and to all teachers, have continued to appear on a market already glutted with similar materials. Repeatedly, wonderful results have been predicted for this new methodology, but little has been offered in the way of substantial evidence that anything has really improved. More traditional approaches have been politely ignored or condemned. Success has been equated with technique, and teachers who do not use the method have often been considered backward, unsympathetic, recalcitrant or reactionary.