Approaches to English Teaching

The Structural Approach, The Situational Approach, The Oral Approach, The Drill Method, Communicative Approach, The Behavioristic Approach

Approaches to English Teaching

• The Structural Approach
• The Situational Approach
• The Oral Approach
• The Drill Method
• Communicative Approach
• The Behavioristic Approach
• Whole Language Approach
• Task based Approach
• Thematic Approach
• Eclectic Approach

The Structural Approach :- The structural approach emphasizes that language can best be learnt through a scientific selection and grading of structures or patterns of sentences and vocabulary It believes that word order or the "patterns of form" is of primary importance in learning a foreign or second language. It is the order of words in a pattern that makes true meaning clear. It lays a lot of emphasis on the use of function or structural words.

The main emphasis is put on teaching the students a command of the structures. Once they know these frames or patterns, they can fit words into them easily. For instance, once they know the pattern If... had been... ing,... would have (done), they can easily learn words to put into the blanks and brackets; but if they only know lists of words, they cannot possibly speak, understand, read or write a sentence.

   Advantage :   

1. Structural approach can be easily adopted at all stages.

2. It emphasize the equal importance of the fourfold linguistic aims of listening, speaking, reading and writing.

3. Structural approach rightly assigns primacy to speech and also called aural-oral approach.

4. It is based on the principle of simple to complex.

   Disadvantage :   

1. The structural approach will not provide the teacher with advice on how to present each new teaching point.

2. It becomes very difficult to cover the whole syllabus.

The Situational Approach :- The Structural Approach is often combined with the Situational Approach, which means that everything that is taught should be taught in a situation or context that links the words with the thing they refer to. If you want to teach 'This is a book', you should actually take a book and demonstrate to the pupils what you are talking about. The utterance, 'This is a book' should grow out of the situation of having a book and wanting to tell the pupils what its name is in English. The meanings of words and of structures are only the situations in which they can be used.

The Oral Approach :- It happens that the Structural Approach grew up at a time when the Oral Approach was popular, so it is usually linked with that. The Oral Approach is based on the belief that the easiest way to learn a language, even if ultimately you want only to be able to read it, is to start orally-the teacher presenting all new material orally, with the students only listening, and then the students using it themselves in speech, before reading or writing of the material is attempted.

The Drill Method :- Followers of the Drill Method believe that we learn a thing by hearing it, speaking it, reading it and or writing it many items. A thing cannot usually stick in our heads if we hear, speak, see or write it only once: only repetition can ensure retention. Until the thing to be learnt is so well known that we can instantaneously recall it when we need it, it is not really known. In the case of weak, unimaginative teachers, this sometimes degenerates into mechanical repetition of what they want their students to learn: This is a book, this is a book, this is a book, etc. but such drill is both extremely boring and inefficient.

Communicative Approach :- The communicative Approach also known as communicative language teaching (CLT). Communicative language teaching makes use of real-life situations that require communication. Classroom tasks equip students with the skills necessary for communication in those contexts. The teacher first sets up situations that the students are likely to face in real life e.g. asking for information, describing a process, telephoning, apologizing, complaining, giving directions, etc. The role of the teacher is that of facilitator and guide, not an all-knowing giver of knowledge. This approach lays more emphasis on engaging the learners in meaningful interactions and construction of meaning rather than in pattern practice/structural drill/habit formation. Students are given opportunities to reflect on their own learning process. At times fluency may have to take on more importance than accuracy in order to keep learners meaningfully engaged in language use.

The Behavioristic Approach :- Behavioristic approach to learning views learning as a mechanical process without any cognitive involvement. It lays a lot of emphasis on habit formation. The teacher controls the learning environment. Here the learners are perceived as empty vessels into which the teacher pours knowledge. Behaviorist Language Theory is identified with the Audio-lingual/ Audiovisual method, associated with the use of rote learning through repetitive drills. In this approach there is very little room for problem solving. Though it can work in junior classes, say in class I and II for training the learners’ tongues to the sounds and rhythm of English, it can’t work in higher classes. It encourages memorization and repetition only.

Whole Language Approach :- In the simplest terms, the “whole language approach” is an approach of teaching children to read by recognizing words as whole pieces of language. The whole language philosophy believe that language should not be broken down into letters and combinations of letters and “decoded.” Instead, they believe that language is a complete system of making meaning, with words functioning in relation to each other in context.
Whole language approach is based on the belief that children learn to read by writing, and vice versa. This approach encourages children to read and write for “real purposes,” with nonfiction texts and interpretation of what they read forming much of the basis of their assignments. The whole language approach to reading also stresses the love of literature and the use of engaging texts to help children develop that love.

Task based Approach :- Task-based teaching offers an alternative for language teachers. In a task-based lesson the teacher doesn't pre-determine what language will be studied, the lesson is based around the completion of a central task and the language studied is determined by what happens as the students complete it.

Thematic Approach :- Under this approach a proper theme is identified and after that further course of action is taken. Thematic approach is an approach of exploration development of the language to be mastered with the reality of the people’s environment. This approach offers continuity from lesson to lesson as well as the flexibility in structure, implementation and the individual outcomes.
A teacher can identify a theme, somehow randomly out of the classroom discussion by focusing particular topic of interest. In this way a teacher can take the themes from the interest of the students. There is no structured plan for the identifying the theme of the classroom discussion. A structured programme may hinder the natural inhibitions of the students.  A student may take some story from some television programme or from some road side incident. After that a teacher may arrange some resources and material for the students.

Eclectic Approach :- Eclecticism means the use of a variety of language learning activities, each of which may have very different characteristics and may be motivated by different underlying assumptions. The use eclecticism is due to the fact that there are strengths as well as weaknesses of single theory-based methods. Reliance upon a single theory of teaching has been criticized because the use of a limited number of techniques can become mechanic. The students, thus, cannot get benefits of learning. The use of eclecticism does not mean to mix up different approaches randomly. There must have some philosophical backgrounds and some systematic relation among different activities. Usually it is recommended to mix structural approaches with communicative use of language.