6. Silent Way-Dr. Evangelin Arulselvi .M Associate Professor in English Education Department of English Dammam University Eastern Province Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Teaching pronunciation of English through Silent way

Abstract

The Silent Way, invented by Dr. Caleb Gattengo, is a discovery learning-based approach to second language acquisition. It was given its name because the students learn by authentic experience, with minimal direct input by the teacher. It is a radical and revolutionary approach to second language teaching. Teaching pronunciation of English through Silent Way encourages the learning of a foreign language through self-correction, problem solving, imagination, and teaching awareness over repetition. It is based on the premise that the teacher should be silent as much as possible in the classroom and the learner should be encouraged to produce as much language as possible.

The purpose of this essay is to examine the Silent Way as an instructional approach for teaching English pronunciation, as well as to determine under which circumstances the Silent Way is appropriate for use in an ESL classroom.

Introduction:

Silent Way originated in the early 1970s and was the brainchild of the late Caleb Gattegno. The last line of Benjamin Franklin’s famous quote about teaching and learning can be apt to explain the core idea of teaching English pronunciation through Silent Way. The three basic tenets of the approach are that learning is facilitated if the learner discovers rather than remembers or repeats, that learning is aided by physical objects, and that problem-solving is central to learning. The use of the word "silent" is also significant, as Silent Way is based on the premise that the teacher should be as silent as possible in the classroom in order to encourage the learner to produce as much language as possible.

Gattengo, who devoted his career and his life to the study of education and learning, felt that teaching and teachers in general were natural subordinates, or facilitators, to their students’ authentic learning experiences and he strongly believed that Silent Way is “not a method at all.” (Pint, 2003) Gattengo believed that educating a student’s awareness was paramount, and filling the mind with regurgitated facts and bits of information only served to distract from this heightened awareness. (Pint, 2003)

Gattegno, Caleb (1972) framed the basic principles. These principles situate the Silent Way in the tradition of discovery learning that sees learning as a creative problem-solving activi

1. Teachers should concentrate on how students learn, not on how to teach

2. Imitation and drill are not the primary means by which students learn

3. Learning consists of trial and error, deliberate experimentation, suspending judgement, and revising conclusions

4. In learning, learners draw on everything that they already know, especially their native language

5. The teacher must not interfere with the learning process.

The Silent Way represents Gattegno's venture into the field of foreign language teaching. Gattegno believed that to teach means to serve the learning process rather than to dominate it. Gattegno looked at language learning from the perspective of the learner by studying the way babies and young children learn. He strongly believed that learning is a process which we initiate by ourselves by mobilizing our inner resources like perception, awareness, cognition, imagination, intuition, creativity etc, to meet the challenges.

Learning tasks and activities in the Silent Way have the function of encouraging and shaping student oral response without direct oral instruction from or unnecessary modelling by the teacher. Basic to the method are simple linguistic tasks in which the teacher models a word, phrase, or sentence and then elicits learner responses. Learners then go on create their own utterances by putting together old and new information. Charts, rods, and other aids may be used to elicit learner responses. Teacher modelling is minimal, although much of the activity may be teacher directed. Responses to commands, questions, and visual cues thus constitute the basis for classroom activities. He stated that learning is a process which we initiate by ourselves by mobilizing our inner resources like our perception, awareness, cognition, imagination, intuition, creativity etc., to meet the challenges at hand.

Definition: Silent Way

The Silent Way, in practical application, most closely resembles the concept of discovery learning, on which it has had great influence. (Pint, 2003) In the administration of Silent Way, the teacher assumes the role of a facilitator, or guide, in the process of increased awareness. With minimal direct instruction, the teacher provides ample opportunities for his or her students to gain understanding through self-exploration and activities based on free thought. While employing the Silent Way, teachers are to remain as silent as possible, allowing their students every opportunity to gain this increased awareness unaided. (Bowen, 2010)

Teacher’s Silence

The basic idea of the teacher’s silence is to focus students' attention, to elicit student responses and to encourage them to correct their own errors. The teacher gives just as much help as is necessary and then is silent. Or the teacher sets up an unambiguous situation, puts a language structure into circulation and then is silent. For example, the teacher put her palms together and then moved them onwards to signal to students the need to lengthen the particular vowel they were working on. In another instance, the teacher indicated that each of her fingers represented a word in a sentence and used this to locate the trouble spot for the student. Even in error correction, the teacher will only supply a verbal answer as a last resort.

Basic Principles of using Silent Way

Every approach on student centred learning and any philosophy based on minimal teacher input has to have some rules, or boundaries. Any method of teaching with minimal teacher input needs a teacher or a mentor who is responsible for the broader framework of the lesson, as well as for creating scenarios under which this learning can take place. Abide by this necessity the Silent Way of teaching method can be used by three basic principles.

1) Learning is facilitated through discovery and creation, not memorization or repetition. Repetition, according to Gattengo, “consumes time and encourages a scattered mind to remain scattered.” (Richards, Theodore, 2010)

2) Learning is facilitated by physical objects, or manipulative. These objects are a source of physical stimuli, and also provide visual aids and images that will aid in student recollection. (Richards, Theodore, 2010)

3) Learning is facilitated by problem solving, which must involve the material to be learned. In Gattengo’s own words, this encourages students to develop “inner criteria to allow them to monitor and self-correct their own production.” (Richards, Theodore, 2010)

Given these three basic principles, a set of properties, physical items, visual aids and other manipulatives has been developed to aid in the facilitation of the Silent Way. These items work symbiotically to ensure a thorough mastery of the language to be learned, and they are as follows: (Cherry, 2010)

Teaching materials used for the Silent way method

Gattegno's name is well known for his revival of interest in the use of coloured wooden sticks called Cuisenaire rods and for his series Words in Colour, an approach to the teaching of initial reading in which sounds are coded by specific colours.

Cuisenaire Rods

Cuisenaire rods can be used to provide visible actions for any language structure. A sound-color chart for English; these charts are used right from the beginning stages to teach pronunciation and word stress.

The chart has a black background and is covered with small rectangular blocks arranged in rows. Each block is a different colour. Each rectangle represents one English sound. There is a white line separating the upper vowel sounds and the lower consonant sounds. Without saying any thing the teacher points out the rectangles. There is silence. Seconding time pointing also followed by silence. Third time he says /a/ as he touches the first block. As he does this students say /e,i,o,u/ While pointing /e/ the teacher puts her two palms together then spreads them apart to indicate lengthening the sound.

Sound Colour Chart

The chart contains blocks of colour, each one representing a sound in the target language. The sound-colour chart gives a direct link between sounds and colours, and in doing so, avoids the confusion caused by the irregular English spellings. The original English sound-colour chart was developed for teaching native speakers how to read as a part of Gattegno’s Words in Color program, which addressed the problem of learning to read and write. The original arrangement of the rectangles reflect sequence of the introduction of spellings in that program, whereas the arrangement of the British English sound-color chart (pictured above) reflects the special features of the English sound system.

In the Silent Way students are seen as bringing a vast amount of experience and knowledge with them to the classroom; namely, their first language. The teacher capitalizes on this knowledge when introducing new material, always building from the known to the unknown. The students begin their study of the language by studying its sound system. The sounds are associated to different colors using a sound-color chart that is specific to the language being learned. The teacher first introduces sounds that are already present in the students’ native language, and then progresses to sounds that are new to them. These sound-color associations are later used to help the students with spelling, reading, and pronunciation.

Word Chart

The word charts present the most common English words, using the same colour code as the sound-colour chart and the Fidel. Gattegno called these words the “functional vocabulary”. There are twelve English charts containing about 500 words . Many of these words in these charts cannot be directly translated into other languages, making them the most difficult and also most important words for beginners to learn.

Fidel Chart

It displays all the spelling of the English language arranged according to their sound. The arrangement of the chart is identical to that of the Sound-Colour chart. Spellings are grouped and color coded to indicate their pronunciation. Fidel charts show the variations in spelling and sound of the target language, through a system of phonetic groupings. Students can use a pointer and a Fidel chart to sound out and form new words, or existing vocabulary words.

Wall Pictures

Wall pictures provide an important visual aid to the learning process. These wall pictures provide an image of the physical representation of the word being learned, as well as a color-coded version of the word itself. For example, when learning the word “cat,” students will be presented with a picture of a cat, and the color-coded word “cat” below. This provides valuable contextual information about the meaning and usage of the word.

Sound Colour Chart

Teacher can conduct an activity by showing a sound colour chart. Each rectangle in the chart represents one English sound. There is a white horizontal line approximately halfway down the chart separating the upper rectangles, which represent vowel sounds, from those below the line represents consonant sounds.

Teaching Learning Process

Gattegno anticipates that using the Silent Way would require most teachers to change their perception of their role. Stevick defines the Silent Way teacher’s tasks as (a) to teach, (b) to test, and (c) to get out of the way (Stevick 1980: 56). Although this may not seem to constitute a radical alternative to standard teaching practice, the details of the steps the teacher is expected to follow are unique to the Silent Way.

Procedure of Learning

Students begin their study of the language pronunciation through its basic building blocks, its sounds. Relying on what sounds students already know from their knowledge of their native language, teachers lead their students to associate the sounds of the target language with particular colour of the sound colour chart. Later these same colours are used to help students learn the spellings that correspond to the sounds. For this purpose coded fidel charts can be used. Proper reading and pronunciation practice can be given using word charts.

After practice with the sounds of the language, sentence patterns, structure and vocabulary are practiced. If a response is incorrect, the teacher will attempt to reshape the utterance or have another student present the correct model. The first part of the lesson focuses on pronunciation.

The teacher sets up situations that focus students attention on the structures of the language and these situations provide a vehicle for students to perceive meaning. Students typically involve only one structure at a time. Teachers work with the students striving for pronunciation that would be intelligible to a native speaker of the target language. Students receive a great deal of practice with a given target language structure without repetition for its own sake. The teacher asks the students to describe their reactions to the lesson or what they have learned and this encourage the students to take responsibility for their own learning.

For much of the student – teacher interaction, the teacher is silent. She is active and setting up situations to force awareness, listening attentively to students speech and silently working with them on their production through the use of non verbal gestures and the tools available.

Conclusion

It is teacher’s ultimate decision to use Silent Way for teaching English pronunciation. She should consider certain factors like the types of students in the classroom, the current level of their language acquisition, and the time sensitivity. As with other methods and approaches, however, aspects of Silent Way can be observed in many lessons in the modern classroom. In the 1980s and early 90s, for example, it became fashionable 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 extremely creatively for various purposes from teaching pronunciation to story-telling. The idea of modelling a new structure or item of vocabulary just once may also have some justification as it encourages learners both to listen more carefully and then to experiment with their own production of the utterance. Lastly, the problem-solving feature of Silent Way may well prove to be its most enduring legacy as it has led indirectly both to the idea of Task-based Learning and to the widespread use of problem-solving activities in language classrooms. The innovations in Gattegno’s method derive primarily from the manner in which classroom activities are organized, the indirect role the teacher is required to assume in directing and monitoring learner performance, the responsibility placed upon learners to figure out and test their hypotheses about how the language works, and the materials used to elicit and practice language.

Reference cited:

Bowen, T. (2010). Teaching approaches: what is the silent way? Retrieved October 16, 2010 from One Stop English: http://www.onestopenglish.com/​section.asp?docid=146498

Cherry, D. (2010). Silent Way Charts. Retrieved October 16, 2010 from Donald Cherry: http://www.donaldcherry.com/​silentway.

Diane Larsen-Freeman, (2010) Techniques and Principles of Language teaching. Second Edition, Oxford University press.

Gattegno, Caleb (1972). Teaching Foreign Languages in Schools: The Silent Way (2nd ed.). New York: Educational Solutions. ISBN 978-0-87825-046-2. Retrieved October 10, 2011.

Pint, J. (2003). Caleb Gattegno and the Silent Way. Retrieved October 16, 2010 from Saudicaves: http://www.saudicaves.com/​silentway/​

Richards & Theodore. (2010). The Silent Way in Richards and Theodore’s Framework. Retrieved December 02, 2010 from Penn State University:http://www.personal.psu.edu/​users/​m/x/​mxh392/​insys441/​methodology/​silentway.htm.

Stevick, Earl (1974). “Review of Teaching Foreign Languages in the Schools: The Silent Way”. TESOL Quarterly 8 (3): 305–313. doi:10.2307/3586174. Retrieved 2011-04-28.

Cuisenaire rods

Sound-colour chart

Word Chart

Fidel Chart