The Nature of Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching Essay (Book Review)

Foreign language study is a long-term and challenging process that demands many skills from both educators and learners to succeed and achieve appropriate results. At the same time, there are numerous aspects impacting all participants and showing the emergence of particular outcomes. That is why much attention is devoted to the development of tools, models, and methods of language teaching that are used in modern educational establishments to achieve success and ensure a high level of language skills.

The assigned reading also delves into this aspect and revolves around the nature of approaches and methods that can be used by skilled specialists depending on the situation and current needs of learners. Understanding this area is critical for the appropriate selection of models and their implementation into practice.

Describing the methods, the chapter assumes that the difference between a philosophy of language teaching regarding theory and principles becomes critical. That is why there are the three suggested levels of conceptualization which are defined as approach, method, and technique. They form a particular bond and remain in hierarchical relations that determine their further use and implementation. Thus, an approach is described as a set of assumptions describing the nature of language teaching and learning.

The method is outlined as the plan needed to present the language material in terms of the selected approach. One approach might include many methods used by educators to achieve their goals. Finally, the technique is a set of actions that take place in classrooms and are used to accomplish the objective. These three terms become central while speaking about language teaching and final success.

Continuing cogitation about the outlined basic elements, the reading delves into the critical peculiarities of the approach, design, and techniques to avoid misunderstandings and reveal essential features. For instance, the existence of multiple theoretical concepts of language is emphasized as they impact teaching and results significantly. That is why there is a detailed description of models influencing the effectiveness of methods and tools such as the cognitive, structural, functional, interactional, sociocultural, genre, and lexical ones.

The necessity of their detailed discussion comes from the idea that language is an extremely complex phenomenon that can be studied using various perspectives determining its understanding. For instance, the cognitive model presupposes that the way a person speaks reflects the central properties of his/her mind. In accordance with this theory, our mind contains specific grammar and principles universal to all languages, which is critical for learning. For this reason, it is fundamental to take into account all existing models.

Speaking about language, one should also consider the existence of theories that are designed to explain how second languages are learned by individuals and what peculiarities impact outcomes. There is a wide array of frameworks such as behaviorism, cognitive-code learning, the creative-construction hypothesis, constructivism, sociocultural learning theory, and skill learning. All of them try to describe the main stages of language acquisition and factors that impact individuals during the educational process. At the same time, the reading emphasizes the existence of the direct correlation between language and learning theory. It means that all teachers should be ready to take them into account while trying to select the most appropriate methods.

The design is also discussed in the assigned chapter. Being determined as the level of method analysis helps to understand what are the main objectives, reasons for the selection, types of tasks, roles of learners, teachers, and instructions of various approaches. In other words, analyzing the nature of a certain methodology, one should remember the reason for certain topics, texts, and word inclusion. Finally, the procedure also plays a critical role as it involves the choice of appropriate techniques that can be applied within the language theories discussed above.

Altogether, the reading can be considered an important source that provides information about the nature of language teaching. From the text, I can understand the existence of the direct correlation between the theory that describes the way learners get new data, master their language, acquire new information, and selection of appropriate approaches that can help to achieve success. Another idea is that the effectiveness of techniques used in the class and methods come from the utilized approach that should consider the most relevant learning theory peculiar to certain learners.

In other words, language teaching is situational and should be planned in terms of existing demands, characteristics of learners, and dominant theoretical frameworks. There are also certain learning style preferences that come from the personal characteristics of students that should be considered while selecting the style to increase the effectiveness of language learning.

In such a way, the analyzed reading contributes to the improved understanding of the nature of language teaching approaches, methods, and techniques and how they should be used in various situations depending on the existing tasks, peculiarities of learners, and their needs. Moreover, the chapter outlines the need for an effective selection to ensure that preferred learning styles are utilized and applied to achieve the best possible results and help students to master their language.