10. Approaches and Methods to Teach English

When teaching, it is important to know how to teach. Nowadays, teachers can find many ways of teaching. Those ways of teaching can help to break the monotony and have students interesting in class. Also, these ways of teaching can help to teach depending on the needs of students and depending on the goals they want to reach. Those are called approaches and methods. In an English course, there are varieties of approaches and methods can be useful to teach English. First, let us see some definitions. Teaching approach is some principles, beliefs or ideas about the environment of the classroom that is translated to the classroom, and a method is a systematic way of doing something. Here are some.

Grammar translation method

Grammar translation method is related with the word tradition and classical method. This method focuses traditional things such as grammatical rules of a language, learning vocabulary, memorizing, translation of words and sentences and writing. The characteristics are that teachers are the ones who talk the majority of time, and students just pay attention and do not have much participation. Speaking activities are not the main goals because what it makes is that students translates texts. Another characteristics is teachers and students speak in their mother tongue not in in English. This method is useful just for people who want to learn technical English because technical English is useful to translate.

 Direct method

This method is useful for the people who want speak and communicate. Teacher who use this method do not allow that students speak in their mother tongue, and they make many oral interactions. For example, students have presentation, role-plays, discussion and so on in English. In this method, grammar is not so important, but it is taught unconsciously. Teachers teach much vocabulary by speaking, and they make many listening practices. For the majority of people, this is the best method to teach English. 

Suggestopedia

Suggestopedia is not so common, but it is very an interesting method. Suggestopedia is apply from part of psychologists in education. This method is about how people can learn in a better way with the correct environment and stimulus. This method has the characteristic of teaching with music and a relax environment. The music is not any type because it has to be classical music. It means that students learn in comfortable place, and they act as children because they play and practice English with funny activities. They are not focus on grammar, but it is taught unconsciously. Teacher do not assign homework because it is stressful for students, and they learn with patient. 

Those approaches and methods can be good for teaching. Teachers have to be aware that methods can help them to have a successful class. There are more such as the Audio-lingual, Total Physical Response (TPR), The Silent Way and so on. It is important to know them because it is going to depend on the needs of students to use the methods. 

Some ideas were taken from:

http://www.onestopenglish.com/methodology/methodology/teaching-approaches/teaching-approaches-the-grammar-translation-method/146493.article

Teaching by principles by H. DOUGLAS BROWN