The ELT World guide to teaching English
Saturday September 1st 2012

The ‘Silent Way’ for Dummies

There are three basic tenets of this approach;

  • that learning is facilitated if the learner discovers rather than remembers or repeats;
  • that learning is aided by material objects; and
  • that problem-solving is fundamental to learning.

The Silent Way started off in the early 1970s and was the innovation of the late Caleb Gattegno. The use of the word silent is also noteworthy, as the Silent Way is based on the premise that the teacher should be as silent as possible in the classroom in order to motivate the learner to produce as much language as feasibly possible. As far as the presentation of language is concerned, the Silent Way adopts a decidedly structural approach, with language taught through sentences in a progression based highly on grammatical complexity; this is described by some as a building-block approach.

In the Silent Way, the structural patterns of the target language are presented by the teacher and the grammar conventions of the language are learnt inductively by the learners. Tools such as Cuisenaire rods are often used to illustrate meaning (being an example of the material objects mentioned previously). New items are added in moderation by the teacher, with learners taking these as far as they can in their communication until the need for the next new item becomes apparent. The teacher then provides this new item by modeling it very plainly only once. The learners are then left to make use of the new item and to integrate it into their existing stock of language, again taking it as far as they can until the next item is needed and so on.

OK, for example, let’s say that the teacher has introduced the idea of pronouns as in “Give me a green rod”. The class will then use this structure until it is clearly assimilated, using, in addition, all the other colours. One member of the class would now like to ask another to pass a rod to a third student but she does not know the word “her”, only that it cannot be “me”. At this point the teacher would intervene and supply the new item: “Give her the green rod” and the learners will continue until the next new item is needed (probably “him”).

This minimalist role of the teacher has led some critics to describe Silent Way teachers as coming across as aloof and, in reality, this apparently excessive degree of self-restraint can be seen as such. However, the role of the teacher in the Silent Way can be more fairly seen as ‘teach, test, and get out of the way’. The perceptible lack of real communication in the approach has also been criticized, with some arguing that it is easier said than done to take the approach beyond the very basics of the language, with only highly motivated learners being able to produce real communication from the unbending structures illustrated by the rods. The fact that, for logistical reasons, it is limited to relatively small groups of learners is also seen as a key weakness of this approach.

As with other methods and approaches, however, some aspects of the Silent Way can be observed in many lessons in the contemporary classroom. Indeed, in the ‘80s and early ‘90s, for instance, it became trendy in some quarters to argue that excessive teacher talking time was something to be discouraged. Cuisenaire rods are also popular with some teachers and can be used tremendously creatively for a variety of purposes, from teaching pronunciation to story-telling.

The notion of only modeling a new structure or item of vocabulary once may also have some validation because it encourages learners to firstly listen more carefully and then to experiment with their own construction of the statement. Last but not least, this problem-solving trait of Silent Way may well prove to be its most enduring legacy as it has led in a roundabout way both to the inspiration of Task Based Learning and to the prevalent use of problem-solving activities in language classrooms.

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3 Responses to “The ‘Silent Way’ for Dummies”

  1. Malcolm says:

    Interesting read.

    However, you may be interested to know that The Silent Way is successfully used in larger classroom settings:

    Here is a picture of a Japanese class in Besançon in the summer of 2007. It’s a large, heterogeneous class, as can be seen by the age differences. The youngest was 8, the oldest well over 70.

    http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=4194488&op=1&o=global&view=global&subj=169448072569&id=675388082

  2. david says:

    Thank you for that, Malcolm.

  3. [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Berni Wall and Shaunwilden, Joan Axthelm. Joan Axthelm said: This looks good, tx, (& I am a dummy, so it wrks!) RT @Shaunwilden: #eltchat What is the silent way? – try this http://bit.ly/ecSNmR [...]

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