Introduction

In this chapter I shall examine three periods in language learning history: (1) the distant past, with its traditional practices of translation, repetition, rote memorization, reading aloud, etc. – all widely condemned with little or no empirical justification, (2) the more recent past: The Silent Way, Community Language Learning, Suggestopedia, Total Physical Response and the Natural Approach, and (3) the present: Dogme, Task-Based Learning, Cooperative Learning, and Content and Language Integrated Learning.

For each of the approaches examined, I shall attempt to draw out key features and principles which, if combined appropriately in a local context, could form the basis for a principled eclecticism accessible to teachers at the chalk face. I conclude that it is how teaching is done, rather than what is done, which is central to successful learning.

Preliminaries

Stevick once offered a riddle which posed the conundrum of the best method.

The recent history of English Language Teaching has been characterized by a sometimes fevered search for the Holy Grail of the best or most effective method (Maley 2005, 2006). Latterly, this has been combined with a compulsion to collect, analyse and evaluate data through research. In fact, research has become a major enterprise in its own right, linked to, yet still separate from, the daily teaching enterprise. In Memory, Meaning and Method, Stevick sets out two opposing views on the value of research for language teaching. On the one hand, there is ‘a belief that past failures have been due to insufficient knowledge, and that therefore we need to know more’. On the other, there is ‘the assumption that past failures – and successes – have come from the degree of wisdom with which we have handled what we have known at the time’ (Stevick 1976: 105).