Some approaches to ELE

Audio Lingual Method:

                It is based on the linguistic and psychological tradition. It was founded in conditioning theories and habit formation. This method has a great deal of oral practice, grammar drills and conversation. There have been many adaptations of this method.

Community Language Learning:

                This method is based on the affective and social nature of language learning. The group has a great importance in the learning process, the interaction among its members makes learning easier and more supportive as a process. This diminishes the learning context anxiety. The distribution of the group is seated in a circle and the role of the teacher is to supervise the conversation, support the learners and if necessary to direct and teach some language rules. At some point the learner becomes independent and able to talk without the correction and guidance of the teacher.

Suggestopedia:

                In this method, comfortable situations and relaxed environments are fundamental. The learners are encouraged to act as children, to be relaxed and not to take authority too seriously.

The Silent Way:

                It is more based on the cognitive aspects than on the affective ones. The foundation of this approach to learning is problem solving. The learner is encouraged to discover learning rather than memorize things and repeat. Physical objects have a fundamental role in this approach; specifically rods of different lengths and colors.

Total Physical Response:

                This approach gives a great deal of importance to the listening stage as a previous stage for speaking, in the language learning process. The learners are asked to respond physically to what they listen, so they have to act out different commands. By listening and performing different actions, students will begin to feel comfortable with language and will start to produce verbal responses.

The Natural Approach:

                This approach proposes that speech has to emerge naturally, when the learner feels prepared to speak. The amount and quality of input are very important to language acquisition. The teacher has to provide her students with lots of comprehensible input so students become comfortable with the language and hopefully start speaking it at some point, whenever he feels prepared to do it. Three stages are identified in the language learning process: the pre-production stage (listening), the early production stage and the extending production stage.