Silent Way

The Silent Way is a language-teaching approach created by Caleb Gattegno that is notable for the 'silence' of the teacher.

Gattegno first described the approach in 1963, in his book Teaching Foreign Languages in Schools: The Silent Way.

The Silent Way uses a structural syllabus and concentrates on teaching the uses of the functional vocabulary of the language.

While the Silent Way is not widely used in its original form, its ideas have been influential, especially in the teaching of pronunciation.

The book conspicuously lacked the names of most prominent language educators and linguists of the time, and for the decade following its publication Gattegno's works were only rarely cited in language education books and journals.

[9] Gattegno was openly sceptical of the role that the linguistic theory of his time had in language teaching.

He felt that linguistic studies "may be a specialization, [that] carry with them a narrow opening of one's sensitivity and perhaps serve very little towards the broad end in mind".

[10] The Silent Way was conceived as a special case of Gattegno's broader educational principles, which he had developed to solve general problems in learning, and which he had previously applied to the teaching of mathematics and of spelling in the mother tongue.

[13] Students are encouraged to actively explore the language,[14] and to develop their own 'inner criteria' as to what is linguistically acceptable.

[18] For example, the teacher might ask students to work with a floor plan of a house in order to introduce the concepts of inside and outside.

[21] Once the language structures have been presented in this way, learners learn the grammar rules through a process of induction.

He advised teachers to concentrate on the most functional and versatile words, many of which may not have direct equivalents in the learner’s native language.

[20] Translation and rote repetition are avoided, and instead emphasis is placed on conveying meaning through students' perceptions, and through practicing the language in meaningful contexts.

Teachers may never give a formal test, but they constantly assess students by observing their actions.

For example, to teach prepositions the teacher could create a situation for which the students use the statement "The blue rod is between the green one and the yellow one".

The teacher can point to the chart to highlight the pronunciation of different words in sentences that the students are learning.

For example, in English, the entry for the sound /ey/ contains the spellings ay, ea, ei, eigh, etc., all written in the same color.

[32] However, the ideas behind the Silent Way continue to be influential,[33] particularly in the area of teaching pronunciation.