Years ago, I sat in a cross-divisional department meeting with my world language colleagues, staring down at a discussion question assigned to us by a well-meaning administrator: “What is the most effective way to teach language?”
It’s a seemingly straightforward question. But in world language instruction, it has ignited a decades-long conflict.
The world language teaching community is small. Often, there are only a couple of us in a school building, which means we tend to band together. My world language colleagues have been some of my best teaching friends—and some of my most bitter adversaries.
Nothing has soured friendships among language teachers like the question of how we ought to teach our subject. And though that may sound like an indictment of our community, it’s for a simple reason: we really, really care.
Formalized world language instruction in the US actually dates back to the mid-19th century, when Ohio enacted a bilingual education law to provide German instruction. This was soon followed by an identical provision in Louisiana (for French instruction) and one in New Mexico (for Spanish). By 1900, nearly 12 states had similar provisions for a wide range of world languages, including Cherokee, Norwegian, and Czech.
Early formalized Instruction was informed by the Grammar-Translation Method, a common way to teach so-called “dead languages”—ones that have no native speakers but are still used or studied (i.e. Latin, Ancient Greek, etc).
But our 19th-century colleagues had a lot going on outside of the schoolhouse, so we’ll have to be gentle in our scolding when we say: dead languages and living ones are different. And their instruction should be, too.
The Grammar-Translation Method relies heavily on learning grammar rules, applying them in translation exercises, and basically never listening to or speaking the language in question. It treats language like an algebraic equation; if x=”the,” find every instance of x and translate it as “the.” That has about the same instructional value as Sudoku (no disrespect), which is fun but not a meaningful exercise for real-world application.
By the late 1800s, our colleagues must have caught on to the fact that teaching living languages like they’re dead ones wasn’t useful, so they changed tactics.
Instead of translating everything, teachers began to translate…nothing (or next to nothing). This was the era of the so-called “Direct Method,” which relied on language inductive grammar and exclusive use of the target language. The goal was to teach a student their second or third language more or less how they learned their first; through hearing, speaking, and making a whole mess of mistakes.
As the 20th century came and went, many other language learning pedagogies emerged, each more or less responding to the others. The pendulum swung to and fro, wavering between warring ideas and trying to ascertain what my administrator asked: what is the most effective way to teach language?
Each side has its base. I’ve been in trainings where facilitators claimed teaching grammar was “very outdated.” I’ve been in meetings where TPRS (more of a proficiency-aligned model) was shaded as “only teaching kids how to write stories about cats in space.” I felt major frustration when a colleague bragged about a translation exercise, and I’m sure she questioned my sanity when I opined on not correcting students’ every grammatical error.
There are language teachers who have left schools (and the profession) over this. This question has led to so much disagreement that my administrator never asked it again.
But the question itself hasn’t disappeared. And neither have the feelings around it.
At this point, there’s one take on the issue that I think all world language teachers can agree on: there’s no silver bullet, no magical one-size-fits-all approach. Much of the time, effective language instruction depends highly on who you’re instructing.
For whatever reason, there was a lot of overlap between my AP French roster and my colleague’s AP Calculus one. Many of these students liked learning grammar and appreciated the logical structure of both subjects. Others who made it all the way to AP had impressive speaking skills but very little control over the language’s mechanics—and, for some reason, tended to be musicians.
Using one instructional method for both groups of learners would be silly. A grammar-focused pedagogy would exclude my musical students, who were attuned to the flow and intonation of the language. Using an immersion model would overwhelm my calculus students who craved a more structured approach. As a teacher, I need to serve the students in front of me and be able to teach them all.
And therein lies a truth that could break through the war of words in language instruction: instead of an “either/or,” maybe our approach to pedagogy should be “both/and.”
Both grammar and communication skills.
Both accuracy and risk-taking.
Both language and culture.
Both mastery and joy.
Successfully implementing the both/and strategy relies heavily on your instructional materials. Many world language teachers are ditching textbooks in favor of curating their own resources, allowing them the flexibility to choose how and when to teach grammar or focus on proficiency.
While we certainly offer resources for those who want to go it alone, I was never that teacher. I needed a textbook—a good one. And the one I kept coming back to was T’es branché?
T’es branché? and its counterparts—¡Qué chevere! for Spanish, Deutsch So Aktuell for German, Zhen Bang! for Chinese, and Amici d’Italia for Italian—were designed to strike that balance between accuracy and communication. Grammar concepts in T’es Branché? are divided among unit lessons in a way that is nontraditional at first glance, but makes a whole lot of sense when you think about it.
For example, French indirect object pronouns are divided into one lesson where students practice using me, te, nous, and vous. The next lesson allows them to only focus on lui and leur. This isn’t like any other book I’ve ever used, and initially I wondered why I was being asked to do this. But because my students didn’t feel overwhelmed by learning and memorizing all of the pronouns and their rules, we could spend more time using lesson vocabulary to communicate.
Instead of being taught all of the -IR verbs at once, T’es branché? breaks them up so students don’t spend hours drilling verbs on Conjuguemos, trying to remember the difference between verbs like finir and partir. First, students learn and master regular -IR verbs. Then, when they’re ready, we move on to the irregulars.
Sheltering grammar this way became hugely important for my instruction. With fewer concepts, exceptions, and irregular constructions to remember for each lesson, my students gained confidence in using the basics and built a strong foundation as they progressed to more complex structures.
T’es branché? is also the only curriculum I have ever used with so many listening and speaking activities baked into each unit. I never had to look for clips online or buy speaking activities from online. I just had to rattle off a page number to my students or print out a grab-and-go activity from the online platform. And those activities? They’re good.
Ultimately, I kept coming back to T’es branché? because it’s the only curriculum that allowed me to teach both grammar and proficiency while remaining true to my teaching style. I didn’t have to do extra work or spend hours trying to find resources. I got to rely on both the core curriculum and high-quality ancillaries, like the communicative activity catalog, leveled eReaders, and a collection of curated videos from Destinations Library.
Asking what is the most effective way to teach language? can open a can of worms. But maybe finding materials that support both of the major approaches is the answer to creating consensus—and creating proficient speakers to boot.