Approaches, Methods, Procedures and Techniques

Approach: People use this term approach to refer to theories about the nature of language and language learning which are the source of the way things are done in the classroom and which provide the reasons for doing them. An approach describes how language is used and how its constituent parts interlock- it offers a model of language competence. An approach describes how people acquire their knowledge of the language and makes statements about the conditions which will promote successful language learning.

Method: a method is the practical realization of an approach. The originators of a method have arrived at decisions about types of activities, roles of teaches and learners, the kinds of material which will be helpful and some model of syllabus organization. Methods include various procedures and techniques (see below) as part of their standard fare.

          Wen methods have fixed procedures, informed by a clearly articulated approach, they easy to describe. However, if a method takes procedures and techniques from a wide range of sources (some of which are used in other methods or are informed by other beliefs), it is more difficult to continue describing it as a ‘method’. We will return to this discussion when we discuss post method realities in B2.

Procedure: a procedure is an ordered sequence of techniques. For example, a popular dictation procedure starts when students are put in small groups each group then sense one representative to the front of the class to read (and remember) the first line of a poem which has been placed on a desk there. Each student then goes back to their respective group and dictates that line. Each group then sends a second student up to read the second line. The procedure continues until one group has written the whole poem (see Example 5 in Chapter 19C)

          A procedure is a sequence which can be described in terms such as First you do this, then you do that…. Smaller than a method, it is bigger than a technique.

Technique: a common technique when using video or film material is called silent viewing (see Chapter 18, B1). This is where the teacher plays the video with no sound. Silent viewing is a single activity rather than a sequence, and as such is a technique rather than a whole procedure. Likewise the finger technique is used by some teacher; they hold up their hands and allocate a word to each of their five fingers, e.g. He is not playing tennis and then by bringing the is and the not fingers together, show how the verb is contracted into isn’t.

Another technique is to tell all the students in a group to murmur a new word or phrase to themselves for a few seconds just to get their tongues round it. 

Reference:

Harmer, J. (2010). Popular Methodology. In The Practice of English Language Teaching (Fourth Edition ed., p. 62).