Teaching Language

I believe the best way to teach is to use all the approaches and methods available. All the methods have merits and downsides, for example, the silent way is a good way to let students learn how to learn things and be able to be independent and think analytically, it cannot be done in every lesson some things will need to be explained. The direct approach also has its merits in that it only uses the target language, students learn more if everything is in English but the downside to that is the lack of understanding that might create. The audiolingual method is also something I would use in my teaching. You can focus on just one skill and help students develop strategies to deal with those skills and assignments. Some grammar-translation can still be useful to students nowadays, I needed to memorise all the case endings in German and that helped me with the rest of the grammar. Another aspect of that is that grammar is an important part of the language, you may not need to know all the rules by heart, but you do need to have an understanding of grammar to communicate effectively and intelligently. The bottom line is that all the theories and methods are great if you use them for specific items you wish to teach. You cannot adhere to one method and teach language successfully.

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