A look back across nearly a century of language teaching reveals a cyclical history. The “changing winds and shifting sands” of language teaching methods manifest a new paradigm every quarter of a century or so, with each new paradigm a break from the old but taking with it positive aspects of previous paradigms. These changing methodologies are very much theories in practice. Methods, however, are difficult to define. They manifest themselves in such varieties at times that the term
approach may be more accurately descriptive of these general moods. An approach is a general and theoretical view of how language ought to be taught, while a method includes a developed procedure for teaching. The Audiolingual Method, for example, would be better termed an approach because there is such variation within the so-called method and because it is derived from a specific set of theoretical assumptions. We nevertheless refer often to a number of “methods”–since that is the traditional nomenclature–keeping in mind the fuzzy line of distinction between method and approach.
(Principles of Language Learning and Teaching, by Douglas Brown. Adapted)
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