THE SILENT WAY INTRODUCTION

The silent way is a language teaching method created by

Caleb Gattegno

It is one of the innovative methods that emerged and

shares some principles from the cognitive approach to

language studies proposed by Noam Chomsky.

The cognitive approach says that language learning is not

about habit formation but rather rule formation and that

speakers have a knowledge of underlying abstract rules

which allow them to create and understand novel

utterances.

The general goal of the silent way is to help beginning level students to gain fluency in the target language with the ultimate aim being near-native language proficiency and a good pronunciation.

One of the basic principles that the silent way shares with cognitive approach is that “teaching should be subordinated to learning”

The proponent, Caleb Gattegno looked at language learning from the perspective of how babies and young children learn their native language and he concluded that learning is a process we initiate by mobilizing our inner resources such as creativity,intuition and perception and so the teacher only helps in the process.

Teaching is done using gestures and other materials in a

silent way. These materials are:

MATERIALS USED IN TEACHING

A Sound/ Color wall chart.

Made up of different color

rectangles in which each

color represents a

phoneme or sound of the

English language

MATERIALS

CONT……

Color Rods: These are rods containing

sounds which corresponds to the

sound chart

They allow students to create words

using phonemes.

Word wall chart: This chart displays

the structural vocabulary of the

language. Words are written using

the same color code as the sound

chart suggests

Spelling/ Fidel charts:

They show the possible

spellings of each

phoneme and they also

use the same color

code as the sound

chart.

DO YOU THINK THAT THE WAY BABIES

LEARN THEIR NATIVE LANGUAGE

(L1)SHOULD BE THE SAME WAY

ADULTS LEARN THEIR (L2) USING THE

ABOVE MATERIALS?

NO. WHY?

WEAKNESSES OF THE SILENT WAY

Because children are able to learn their native language because of

their exposure to the language but with the target language of which

the classroom is suppose to be their environment of exposure, only

gestures are used, students cannot formulate enough rules for

communicative purpose

The materials used and the lack of communication in this method would

certainly fail to introduce all aspects of the target language. This is

because the lack of communication and the rigid structures used will

make taking the method beyond the very basic difficult and aspect

such as the syntax and phonology of the language cannot be taught.

This would affect the students in learning real communication and so

their ultimate goal of the students expressing their thoughts, perceptions

and feelings in the target language cannot be achieved.

Also students with little or no knowledge in their

native language which is being used as the building

blocks in teaching the target language would have

challenges in understanding the language.

Example.In a school located in James town in

Accra where the silent way method is being used. It

would be assumed that Ga is the native language

of the students and so it would be used in teaching

the target language ( French).A native speaker of

Ewe with no knowledge in Ga in the class would find

it difficult in learning the French which is the target

language.

CONTINUATION………

This method failed to take into consideration that every

language has its own unique linguistic features. This is because

the proponent view language learning as a matter of

experience in that learners need to link their knowledge of their

L1 to studying the target language because they view

languages of the world to have shared linguistic features

meanwhile every language has its own unique features.

Also sometimes the teacher’s action maybe ambiguous to

students

THANKS FOR YOUR AUDIENCE