THE SILENT WAY

CONTENT• Introduction• Approach•Design•Objectives• Procedure

INTRODUCTION• In the early 1960s, the reign of the

audio-lingual method began to be criticized.

• Linguists like Noam Chomsky challenged the idea that language acquisition took place by habit formation.

• Chomsky concluded that language acquisition is a product of rule formation.

• This led to the formation of the Cognitive Code Approach.

INTRODUCTION (continued)• Caleb Gattegno propounded the Silent Way

method of teaching language in the early 1970s.

• Although the Silent Way is not derived from the Cognitive Code Approach, they share some basic principles.

• A basic rule of the Silent Way method is: “Teaching should be subordinated to learning.”

• Caleb concluded that learning is a process which we initiate by ourselves by mobilizing our inner resources to meet the challenge at hand.

APPROACH• Theory of learning (Psychology)Using understanding of first language learning processes as a basis for deriving principles for teaching foreign languages to FLL.Makes use of both inductive and deductive learning for rule formation.• Theory of language (Contrastive

analysis)

DESIGNObjectivesShort-term objectives• To provide the learner with a basic practical

knowledge of the grammar of the target language.

• To give beginning-level students aural and oral facility in basic elements of the target language.

Long-term objective• To acquire a near-native fluency in the target

language.

DESIGN (Continued)• Curriculum (Choice of Content)Structural Syllabus (Grammatical items & rules and functional vocabulary)• OrganizationSyllabus is designed to aid students to build upon their L1 knowledge. They move from the known to the unknown.

PROCEDURE• Types of Activities (learning &

teaching)Introduction of sound-colour chart

Introduction of colour-coded word chart

Introduction of colour-coded Fidel chart

TYPES OF ROLES• Teacher makes extensive use of

silence

• Student-teacher interaction

• Student-student interaction

INSTRUCTION MATERIALS

Sound-colour chart

Rods

Colour-coded word chart

• Fidel charts

This is a Presentation by Group 3:•Samuel Owusu Fianko•Anna Amoah