APPROACHES TO ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING

What is an approach in ELT?

• It is simply a way of teaching language.
• Approaches are theories which can be benefited as methods and techniques in the classroom.
• It is what you are going to teach and what you are going to base on your teaching to.
• It is an idea to provide a succesful teaching. It offers a model of language competence.

What is a method in ELT?

• A method is the form of an adopted approach for the lesson.
• An approach can be used in many different ways in terms of goals and objectives. These ways mean “method” in ELT.
• It is about how you are going to teach and how you are using approaches, principles.
• A teacher can adopt an approach according to students’ needs, this may require flexibility also.

What are the differences between an approach and a method in ELT?

• An approach is much wider than a method, you can benefit from an approach to find a method by choosing a way.

For example; Communicative Language Teaching is an approach, but Audiolingualism is a method. First one of them is a theory while the other one is an adopted and formed theory.

• A method is more specific than an approach in terms of functionality.
• A method is in an adopted form of approach.
• An approach is an idea while a method is a concrete form of this idea in teaching.
• A method shortly is the practical realization of an approach.

What is a technique in ELT?

• It simpyle refers to specific strategies which teacher uses in the classroom.
• It is an important tool to get a positive result in class.
• A method is much wider than a technique in the way of functioning area, because techniques are strategies to make the methods or approaches successful to deal with mostly students’ behaviours.

For instance; Silent Way is an approach, but a teacher’s praising students’ every success is a technique, strategy.

• Some techniques can be found in different methods, but some of them are specific to a given method.

What is a procedure in ELT?

• It refers to ordered sequence of techniques to execute a method.
• It is set of actions, operations and strategies using in the class to when carrying out a method.

An example of a procedure:

 1- The class reads a text written in the second language.

          2- Student translate the passage from the second language to their mother tongue.

          3- Student translate new words from the second language to their mother tongue.
As you can see above, a procedure is compound of techniques.