What Linguistics Teaches Us About Teaching Language

This chapter explores a number of language teaching methods and their relation to linguistics. Linguistics, as the science of language, explores what language is in terms of structures and functions. Language teaching methodologies have drawn on these varying explanations to set goals and methods to support students’ formal learning. Language teaching approaches include grammar-translation, direct method, audio-lingualism, the natural approach, and communication language teaching. The natural approach incorporates five hypothesis of language learning, including 1) that the processes of first language acquisition and second language learning differ, 2) that children acquire some native language morphemes in a natural order, 3) that successful acquisition stems from access to comprehensible input, 4) that the learner’s emotional state plays a role in acquisition, and 5) that successful learners balance their application of rules with spontaneous language use.