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Silent Way

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11 views2 pages

Silent Way

Uploaded by

lukaszmrugala3
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Silent Way

Background
The Silent way developed in the 1960s by Caleb Gattegno and was first introduced in his book
Teaching Foreign Languages in Schools: The Silent Way in 1963. He believed that language
learning could occur at much faster rate than normally transpires.
Characteristics
What often happens however is that teaching interferes with learning. According to this, the
central principle of the silent way is that teaching should be subordinated to learning. It means
in part that the teacher bases his lesson and what the students are learning at the moment not he
wants to teach them. This method is based on the premise that teachers should be silent as much
as possible and students should be encouraged to produce language as much as possible. The
teacher is silent in that way that he does not model the language but rather directs the students
and the students are those who should be practicing the language, not the teacher. Because the
teacher does not supply a model the students learn to give their full attention to the teacher's
clues. They are also encouraged to learn from one another. The method emphasizes the
autonomy of the learner.
The lesson can be as follows: the teacher greets the students and then he reviews some of the
words the students will use that day by pointing to them on a Fadel (a color coded word chart, on
which each English sound is assigned a distinctive color). In this way, the teacher can focus on
the differences in pronunciation and pronunciation is seen as fundamental in this approach. If
students become familiar with the Fadel chart, Sound-color chart and word charts, the teacher
can build from the known to the unknown.
The teacher can construct a fictional situation such as making a floor plan using quiz and air rods
to demonstrate. The choice of vocabulary is important in this method and the teacher elicits from
the students the relevant vocabulary. He had the basic structure in his mind but he lefts the
students to take responsibility for guiding the construction of the floor plan. The teacher respects
the intelligence of his students and gives only what is necessary. Translation is avoided and
evaluation is carried out by observation , and the teacher may never set a formal test. The teacher
can ask the students directly what they have learned or better he may ask them to write a few
sentences towards the end of the lesson to verify what particular students have learned that day.
Both sources of student feedback help to inform the teacher about what to work on next and
students learn to accept responsibility for their own learning.
Teaching should be subordinated to learning. Language is not learned by repeating after a
model
Gattegno believed that language is not learned by repeating after a model; students need to
develop their own inner criteria for correctness to trust and to be responsible for their own
production in the target language. T spends a lot of time working with student’s errors. Erros are
important and necessary to learning. They show the teacher how the students understand what
he is teaching and specifically where things are unclear. Teacher uses variety of tools such as
hand gestures, charts, the blackboard and other students to get the students to self-correct.
Advantages:
 It fosters cooperative learning between individuals
 The teacher expects students to progress not perform perfectly
 He makes SS interested and excited about learning process
 It embodies a new approach to education in general, a respect for individual and
awareness of the individual’s extraordinary cognitive powers.
Disadvantages:
 For some teachers it can be difficult to plan according to the student’s interests
 No formal tests means teachers can have difficulties to make the fair evaluation
 Learners hard to understand
 Not all SS are happy to take responsibility for their own learning process, especially
young learners can have difficulties to manage.

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