The Silent way (Language Teaching Approach)(Advantages / Disadvantages)

 

The Silent way (Language Teaching Approach)(Advantages / Disadvantages)

• Although people have learned languages ​​through the Spoken-Language Method, and in fact is still widely practiced today, the idea that learning a language means forming a set of habits was seriously questioned in the early 1960s. Cognitive psychologists and trans-formative productive linguists argue that language learning does not occur through imitation; People cannot learn a language simply by repeating what was spoken around them, because they can create words they have never heard before. These psychologists and linguists claim to have created rules that allow speakers to understand and create new expressions. Therefore, language should be considered not as a product of habit formation, but as a product of rule formation. Accordingly, language acquisition should be a procedure in which people use their own thinking processes or cognition to discover the rules of the language they acquire.
• The emphasis on human cognition led to the application of the name "cognitive code" to a new general approach to language teaching. It was observed that the students were more actively responsible for their own learning rather than simply responding to the stimuli in the environment and formed hypotheses to discover the rules of the target language. Their mistakes are inevitable and are signs to the teacher that they are actively testing the students' hypotheses. Student progression is achieved gradually, with many initially expected flaws. All four skills (reading, writing, speaking, and listening) are studied from the start and meaning is considered to be at least as important as form.

Importance of the Silent Way:

1. The Silent Way ‘offers a structural approach to the group of the language to be taught’.
2. Language is seen as a group of sounds that are arbitrarily associated with a particular meaning and arranged into sentences or strings of units of meaning by grammatical rules.
3. Language is disconnected from its social context and taught through mock circumstances, usually represented by sticks.
4. Sentences are the basic unit of teaching, and teachers focus on propositional meaning, rather than communicative value.
5. Students are given a pattern of the structure of the target language and learn the grammatical rules of the language through inductive rules.

Principles of the Silent Way:

1. Teachers should start with something already known and constructed by students from the unknown. Languages ​​share a number of features, the most basic sounds.
2. Language learners are smart and bring them language learning experiences. Teachers just need to give whatever helps is needed.
3. Language is not learned by repeating after the model. Students need to develop their own internal criteria for permission to trust and be responsible for their own production in the target language.
4. Student actions can tell teachers whether they have learned or not.
5. Students must learn to depend on each other and themselves.
6. Teachers work with students while students work on the language.
7. Teachers take advantage of what students already know. More and more teachers are making students do what they can do for themselves; the less they will do for themselves.
8. Learning involves the transfer of a person’s knowledge into a new context.
9. Reading is practiced from the beginning but follows what the students have learned.
10. Silence is a tool. This helps foster autonomy, or the implementation of initiatives. It also removes the teacher from the Attention Center so he or she can listen and work with students.
11. Meaning is explained by centering students ’perceptions, not through translation.
12. Students can learn from each other. The teacher’s silence encourages group collaboration.
13. If teachers praise (or criticize) students, they will be less independent. Teacher actions can interfere with students developing their own criteria.
14. Mistakes are important and necessary to learn. They show the teacher where things are not clear.
15. If students are given an answer, rather than allowed to correct themselves, they will not keep it.
16. Students need to learn to listen on their own.
17. In the beginning, teachers have to wait for progress, not perfection. Learning happens just in time. Students learn at different rates.
18. The teacher’s silence allows the teacher to observe the student’s behavior closely.
19. Students know that they need to be careful with the teacher so as not to stray from what he or she is saying. Student interest is the key to learning.
20. Students should take a lot of meaningful practice without repeating.
21. Elements of language are introduced logically, extending what students already know.
22. Students gain autonomy in language by searching for it and making choices.
23. Language is for self -expression.
24. Teachers can gain valuable information from student feedback; for example, he can learn what to do next. Students learn how to accept responsibility for their own learning.
25. Some learning happens naturally while we sleep. Therefore, naturally students will strive in today’s lesson.
26. The curriculum consists of a linguistic structure.
27. The structure of the curriculum is not arranged linearly, but is always recycled.
28. Speaking, reading and writing skills reinforce each other.

Advantages of a Silent way

1. This method makes students feel comfortable.
2. Students can be active in the classroom.
3. Students can improve their speaking vocabulary.
4. Increase students' confidence in their jobs.
5. Students become independent
6. Students interact not only with the teacher but also with each other.
7. Teachers have free time to observe students closely.
8. The teacher gives some tips and helps the students to correct their mistakes.
9. The teacher does n`t need to know the language very well.
10. Students can get a lot of vocabulary.
11. Translation is the easiest and shortest way of explaining meaning of the words and phrases.

Disadvantages of Silent Way

1. The students lack an active role in the classroom.
2. Students can`t grow up their speed of fluency.
3. Idioms and phrasal words cannot be translated word by word.
4. The students don`t understand the materials, because the teacher is less explain.
5. No repetition and no answer by the teacher, it will be meaningless for the students.
6. The students can`t easier to catch the materials, because the teacher command the materials so fast.
7. The teacher must know their teaching objectives clearly and make use of the teaching aids effectively.
8. Students may be confused with the symbols of the colored wooden rods
9. Students waste too much time struggling with a concept that would be easily clarified by the teacher`s direct guide.
10. It is difficult for teacher`s to evaluate student`s progress in their learning process.