Theories, Methods & Techniques of Teaching - The Classical Method
Before looking at the methods or approaches themselves, there are some terms that we need to define. These are the approach, the method or the technique. Basically, these are hierarchical. The approach is an overriding set of principles that a method can actually make use of, whereas the technique are the things that we actually do in the classroom to approach that method. So, these three words are going to appear during the presentation. Again, for each of either the approaches all the methodologies we're going to ask four questions. So be it an approach or a method for each of those things: Where did it come from? What's its background? What does it involve when we're talking about actually in the classroom, in other words techniques? What is positive about it? What appears to work about that methodology or approach and what is negative what doesn't work so well? Basically, we're going to look at it in a historical viewpoint. So, we'll start with the oldest particular teaching methodology, which is known as the classical method. The classical method was given its name basically because it was trying to teach the classics in language, which is ancient Greek and Latin. Those particular languages are now dead. This methodology was probably started somewhere around the 17th century and the purpose of this particular methodology was for scholars to be able to translate old Greek and Latin texts into their particular language. If we take the language that we usually speak, our native language, that is often given the designation L1 and the language that we are trying to translate that to, let's call it the target language, is given the designations L2.
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