Historical Perspectives
Members of a professional community share an understanding of the profession's history, in this case, a knowledge of the different teaching methods and how they have changed in the past fifty years or so. In this video, Dr. Garza recalls earlier language learning methods by recounting his own history as a language learner. He mentions three predecessors to today's communicative methods: grammar-translation method (GTM), audiolingual (ALM), and cognitive code method. Most of these early methods stressed learning about the language rather than using the language.
Describe the method(s) used by your foreign language teachers. As a language learner, were you exposed primarily to methods that emphasized learning about the language or learning by using the language?