Silent Way

The Silent Way is a language teaching methodology which was devised by Caleb Gattegno in the 1960s. Gattegno states that “a foreign language can only be learnt in schools by artificial methods, employing materials constructed for the purpose” (Gattegno 1972: preamble).

Theory and characteristics

As the name already suggests, the method is built upon the hypothesis that inside the classroom the teacher should be as silent as possible, whereas the students/learners should be encouraged to produce as much language as possible, participate actively in class and in this way become autonomous learners. Silence is regarded as the best instrument for learning in the classroom, because “in silence students concentrate on the task to be accomplished and the potential means for its accomplishment” (Richards & Rodgers 2001: 83). The techniques of the Silent Way “made it possible for the teacher to say less and less as the lessons advanced, while the pupils were saying more and more and using their own inner criteria developed in this approach” (Gattegno 1972: preamble). In general, there are three basic theories on which Gattegno’s work is founded:

1. Learning is regarded as a “problem-solving, creative, discovering activity”(Richards & Rodgers 2001: 81), in which the learner rather acts and participates actively than just being passive and doing nothing but listening to the teacher. If the learner is involved directly, he automatically benefits from the so called “discovery learning”.

2. The use of special physical objects such as coloured wooden rods or colour-coded wall charts facilitates learning. These physical objects “provide physical foci for student learning and also create memorable images to facilitate student recall” (Richards & Rodgers 2001: 81).

3. Learning is facilitated by involving the learners and letting them solve problems on their own with the help of the provided materials.

Learner and teacher roles

The Silent Way is not a teacher-centred approach. While the teacher uses mainly gestures and facial expressions to address the learners, his/her main task is the teaching of the language by letting the students test out grammatical forms, etc. and getting out of their way, so that they can discover these things on their own.

The learners are expected to participate in class actively. They should be willing to make mistakes, to test out the basic language elements via the usage of the materials provided and generally be highly motivated. As a learner, it is important not to get frustrated in case the Silent Way lesson sometimes may be a little tricky and the meaning of the materials is not always clear at first sight. Therefore, it is important to be able and willing to think in a rather abstract way so that the meaning of the provided material can be detected.

Materials and how they can be used

The Silent Way uses a whole set of materials, which can be used in class. It includes:

• coloured wooden rods (Cuisenaire rods)
• a set of wall charts, containing words of a 'functional‘ vocabulary and some additional ones
• a rectangle chart
• a Fidel
• a pointer for use with the charts
• tapes or discs
• drawings or pictures

Cuisenaire Rods:

The coloured wooden rods can be used to represent whole situations in an abstract way. The teacher for example could use the green rods to represent a certain number of people, the red ones to represent cars and a single white rod representing a special character, for instance the teacher himself. The teacher then would probably first point at the white rod and thereafter at himself to show the students the meaning of the rods. The next step would be the presentation of the meanings of the other rods (the green and red ones), and after the students get their meaning, the teacher might present a certain everyday situation with the rods. During this presentation, the teacher may feature certain grammatical aspects of the language and let the students find out about these. Another way to use the rods could simply be the usage of them as representing certain parts of the word order of the language. The students might then test out in which order the rods have to be put, so that the correct form is created.

The rectangle chart, the Fidel and the word charts:

The different charts can be used to teach different aspects of the language. The rectangle chart for instance can be used to show the pronunciation of the phonemes of a language. It contains several different coloured rectangles which represent the various sounds of a language. The same colour code which is used in the rectangle chart is also used in the Fidel and the word charts. The Fidel contains several different charts. They present all possible spellings of every single sound of the language. The word charts present the functional words of the language.

Advantage and disadvantage

Advantage

The use of the Silent Way enables a very high degree of interaction as well between the teacher and the students as between the students themselves and additionally raises the participation of the students in class. The students/learners cooperate and help each other in class and in this way the social aspect of learning is supported. For the students it is beneficial that they are expected to develop a certain degree of self-awareness and that they can discover the language on their own via testing things and making use of the materials provided by the teacher.

Disadvantage

Since the Silent Way is a very abstract way of learning a language, the learners have to engage themselves with the artificiality of the approach, which is extremely different from more commonly used methods of language learning. The whole concept of the method and atmosphere in class may seem too abstract and weird, so that learners may have difficulties in deriving any benefit from it.

Furthermore the the number of learners who can participate in a group is quite restricted in the Silent Way, and it is unlikely that a large number of learners will be able to participate in class unless the teacher has provided them a really large quantity of materials and a suitable location to learn.

There is also a certain amount of scepticism on the part of some teachers who doubt the utility of a teaching method in which the teacher apparently says nothing.

See also

• Wikipedia's Caleb Gattegno
• Wikipedia's Methods of teaching foreign languages

References

• Gattegno, C. (1963). Teaching foreign languages in schools: The silent way. New York: Educational Solutions.
• Richards, J.C. & T.S. Rodgers. 2001. Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching. Cambridge: CUP.
• Young, R. (2011). Caleb Gattegno's Silent Way: Some of the reasons why we do what we do.
• Benstein, P. (2011). Explaining concepts behind the Silent Way.