The History of Language Teaching

Language teaching has been around for many centuries, and over the centuries, it has changed. Various influences have affected language teaching. Reasons for learning language have been different in different periods. In some eras, languages were mainly taught for the purpose of reading. In others, it was taught mainly to people who needed to use it orally.

These differences influenced how language was taught in various periods. Also, theories about the nature of language and the nature of learning have changed. However, many of the current issues in language teaching have been considered off and on throughout history.

ANCIENT TIMES
The history of the consideration of foreign language teaching goes back at least to the ancient Greeks. They were interested in what they could learn about the mind and the will through language learning. The Romans were probably the first to study a foreign language formally. They studied Greek, taught by Greek tutors and slaves. Their approach was less philosophical and more practical than that of the Greeks.
Europe in Early Modern Times

In Europe before the 16th century, much of the language teaching involved teaching Latin to priests. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, French was a lingua franca for speaking to foreigners. Members of the court spoke French, of course, but it was also a necessary language for travelers, traders, and soldiers.
“The analysis of the grammar and rhetoric of Classical Latin became the model language teaching between the 17th and 19th centuries, a time when thought about language teaching crystalized in Europe. Emphasis was on learning grammar rules and vocabulary by rote, translations, and practice in writing sample sentences. The sentences that were translated or written by the students were examples of grammatical points and usually had little relationship to the real world. This method came to be known as the grammar-translation method” (Kenji Kitao, S. Kathleen Kitao, 21)


The 19th and Early to Mid-20th Century
“In applied linguistics, the grammar translation method is a foreign language teaching method derived from the classical (sometimes called traditional) method of teaching Greek and Latin. The method requires students to translate whole texts word for word and memorize numerous grammatical rules and exceptions as well as enormous vocabulary lists. The goal of this method is to be able to read and translate literary masterpieces and classics.” (wikipedia, para.1)



Theories of Language Learning & Language Teaching

BEHAVIOURISM

“Behaviourism, is a philosophy of psychology based on the proposition that all things which organisms do — including acting, thinking and feeling — can and should be regarded as behaviors.” (Skinner, 1984, 547-587).

“Behaviorism is a theory of animal and human learning that only focuses on objectively observable behaviors and discounts mental activities. Behavior theorists define learning as nothing more than the acquisition of new behavior.”

“One of the most famous of these scientists was Ivan Pavlov. His experiments showed that if he rang a bell before giving food to the dogs he was studying, when the dogs heard the bell, they would salivate, even before the food was presented to them. This is called a conditioned response. Pavlov believed that this indicated that this is how animals learned, even in the wild. Pavlov and other studying in fields of animal behavior (including John Watson and B.F. Skinner) came to believe that animal behavior was formed by a series of rewards or punishments. Skinner, in particular, promoted the idea that human behavior could be described using the same model.

In applying his principles to language, Skinner theorized that parents or other caretakers hear a child say something that sounds like a word in their language, they reward the child with praise and attention. The child repeats words and combinations of words that are praised and thus learns language.”
(Kenji Kitao,1999; S. Kathleen Kitao,1999).

“In psychology, cognitivism is a theoretical approach in understanding the mind using quantitative, positivist and scientific methods, that describes mental functions as information processing models.” (wikipedia, para. 1).
“The cognitive revolution in psychology was a response to behaviorism, which was the predominant school in experimental psychology at the time. This school was heavily influenced by Ivan Pavlov, B.F. Skinner, and other physiologists. They proposed that psychology could only become an objective science were it based on observable behavior in test subjects. Because mental events are not publicly observable, Behaviorist psychologists avoided description of mental processes or the mind in their literature.” (wikipedia, para.1).





The Mid- to Late-20th Century
In the years following World War II, great changes took place, some of which would eventually influence language teaching and learning. Language diversity greatly increased, so that there were more languages to learn. Expansion of schooling meant that language
learning was no longer the prerogative of the elite but something that was necessary for a widening range of people. More opportunities for international travel and business and international social and cultural exchanges increased the need for language learning.
As a result, renewed attempts were made in the 1950s and 1960s to
1) use new technology (e.g., tape recorders, radios, TV, and computers) effectively in language teaching,

2) explore new educational patterns (e.g., bilingual education, individualized instruction, and immersion programs), and

3) establish methodological innovations (e.g., the audio-lingual method). However, the hoped-for increase in the effectiveness of language education did not materialize, and some of the theoretical underpinnings of the developments were called into question.
“Beginning in the mid-1960s, there has been a variety of theoretical challenges to the audio-lingual method. Linguist Noam Chomsky challenged the behaviorist model of language learning. He proposed a theory called Transformational Generative Grammar, according to which learners do not acquire an endless list of rules but limited set of transformations which can be used over and over again.” (Kenji Kitao,1999; S. Kathleen Kitao,1999).

For example, a sentence is changed from an affirmative to a negative sentence by adding not and the auxiliary verb to, i.e., "I go to New York every week" would be changed to "I do not go to New York every week." With a fairly limited number of these transformations, according to Chomsky, language users can form an unlimited number of sentences.

Other theorists have also proposed ideas that have influenced language teaching. Stephen Krashen, for example, studied the way that children learn language and applied it to adult language learning.

“He proposed the Input Hypothesis, which states that language is acquired by using comprehensible input (the language that one hears in the environment) which is slightly beyond the learner's present proficiency.” (Kenji Kitao,1999; S. Kathleen Kitao,1999).

Learners use the comprehensible input to deduce rules. Krashen's views on language teaching have given rise to a number of changes in language teaching, including a de-emphasis on the teaching of grammatical rules and a greater emphasis on trying to teach language to adults in the way that children learn language. While Krashen's theories are not universally accepted, they have had an influence.


REFERENCES
Skinner, B.F. (16 Apr 1984). "The operational analysis of psychological terms". Behavioral and brain sciences(Print) 7 (4): 547–581.
Chomsky, Noam (1959). “A Review of B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior”.
Kitao, Kathleen S.; Kitao,Kenji(1999). “Fundamentals of English Language Teaching”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki