THE SILENT WAY

“There is no the best or a better method in language teaching. Every method has advantages and disadvantages in itself.”

Basic Ideas:

Language learning processes from known to unknown.

Inductive teaching is emphasised, therefore rules are not given to the students explicitly.

Teacher is silent in the class mostly, students are starred in classes.

Students are expected to interact and cooperate with each other and to learn by discovering.

Self-expression has a great importance in language learning.

Other Features of Silent Way:

Teachers are facilitators of learning, they are aware of what students know and lead the process according to their available knowledge. Because learning is proceeded from known to unknown in 

Silent Way.

Teacher is silent and students are expected to discover the language.

Student is an explorer in classes, they benefit their available knowledge while exploring. They are active attenders and take the responsibilities on themselves in the class.

Teacher’s being silence helps the learners to be active attenders of the class and gives the responsibility to them. Also, thanks to this silence, students can monitor themselves and improve their self-assessment ability.

Interaction among students are very important, as learners must learn from each other by cooperating with.

In teacher-student interaction, teacher is silent and when it is absolutely necessary s/he helps the students.

Vocabulary is taught by visual aids such as word charts.

Native language of students can be benefited when needed. Hence, they can see the differences and similarities between two languages in terms of especially pronunciation.

Teacher monitors students constantly and s/he may not give them a formal test. That is, the teacher can be evaluation criteria.

Main aim in SW is to make the students self-confident while using the language and help them expressing themselves in target language well.

In SW, errors are viewed as inevitable and teacher lets students to use and improve their self-assessment, so there is self-correction in SW.

Pronunciation is prior to other elements.

Four skills are made use (reading, writing, listening and speaking)

The important techniques and materials are sound colour charts (they are used for teaching pronunciation and every colour is coded as a sound), colour rods (for cognitive coding), silence of teacher, self-correction gestures of teacher, Fidel charts and word charts (for learning vocabulary).

Summarizing Keywords/Phrases:

Silence

Self-assessment

Learning by discovering

From known to unknown

Teacher as a facilitator and students as explorers

Inductive teaching

Language for self-expression