Key Figures in Language Teaching History
**Total Physical Response (TRM)**
TRM developed language teaching out of naturalistic principles. Language teaching should be based on a sound scientific analysis of language. The spoken language is primary; it should be reflected in an oral-based approach.
**Communicative Approach (CA)**
The goal is effective communication. The teacher’s role is mainly as a facilitator to guide the learners in the interaction that takes place in the classroom. The activities are learner-centered, and the learners focus on their own learning process. Language should be used productively and receptively. However, it pays insufficient attention to the context in which teaching and learning take place. The Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approach focuses on fluency but not accuracy in grammar and pronunciation. The CLT approach is great for intermediate and advanced students, but not beginners.
**Donatus (DON)**
Donatus focused on the parts of speech and elementary grammatical treatises. His application to vernacular languages was characterized by:
- Fostering morphology to the detriment of syntax.
- The presence of a ‘phonetic’ section.
- Definition of grammatical categories (nouns, pronouns, verbs, participles, adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions, and interjections).
- Ars minor, Ars maior: Latin grammars.
- Rhetorica – art of speaking well and writing well.
**Nebrija**
Antonio de Nebrija was the first Hispanic humanist and the father of the Spanish language. He is famous for his Gramática Castellana, the first grammar in a modern European language. His grammar is a very important reference for foreign language students. He wrote Latin and Spanish grammars, but he followed the classical models of grammar. In 1492, he wrote a vernacular grammar of Spanish. He was the main introducer of the Italian Renaissance in the Iberian Peninsula, from 1470 onwards. He worked on Spanish philology and classical languages (Latin, Greek, and Hebrew). Antonio de Nebrija fought to recover learned Latin, which was being lost through the vernacular language, so he started from a natural method to learn the language of the people in order to prevent the loss of learned Latin. He is considered the first codifier.
**Marie Leprince de Beaumont**
Marie Leprince de Beaumont was a French writer, best known as the author of the most popular version of the story of Beauty and the Beast. She began writing at a very young age and traveled to London in 1748, where she founded a newspaper for young people, covering literary and scientific subjects, and a school for children. Her published magazine (Le Magazin de Elefants) explains/teaches the French language through stories. Her method for learning/teaching a language was through books that caught the children’s attention.
**Franz Ahn**
Franz Ahn was a German teacher who is best known as the author of the method for learning foreign languages that bears his name. Driven by his professional curiosity, he began to study mathematics and modern languages with particular interest.
**Henry Sweet**
Henry Sweet was an English philologist, phonetician, and grammarian. In 1877, Sweet published A Handbook of Phonetics, which attracted international attention among scholars and teachers of English in Europe. His emphasis on spoken language and phonetics made him a pioneer in language teaching, a subject which he covered in detail in The Practical Study of Languages (1899). In 1901, Sweet was made a reader in phonetics at Oxford. The Sounds of English (1908) was his last book on English pronunciation.
**Harold Palmer**
Harold Palmer developed the oral method and the multiple lines of approach: oral repetition before reading, group work before individual work, drill exercises before free production, and concrete before abstract meaning.
**A. S. Hornby**
A. S. Hornby developed the situational approach. He was an English grammarian and lexicographer who was a pioneer in the field of English language learning and teaching (ELT). He created a new type of dictionary that was aimed at foreign learners of English, “the first monolingual learner’s dictionary.”
**John Trim**
John Trim was the director of the Council of Europe’s Modern Languages projects from 1971 to 1997. He was a key promoter of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR).