Grube

The silent way - A method for the Grube

Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject English - Pedagogy, Didactics, Literature Studies, grade: 1,0, Martin Luther University (Angewandte Anglistik und Amerikanistik), course: Proseminar "Traditional and Alternative Teaching Concepts" SS 2007, 7 entries in the bibliography, language: English, comment: Die Dozentin war sehr zufrieden mit der Arbeit, der Darstellung der Methode und der Argumentationsstruktur. Sie bemängelte einen fehlenden Forschungsüberblick zum Thema in der Einleitung. Diesen Mangel habe ich behoben - zum speziellen Thema selbst gibt es kaum Abhandlungen. , abstract: The Silent Way is a teaching method that considers learning to be a conscious, cognitive process. However, the Silent Way tries to involve the whole of the learner, considering cognitive and affective aspects. That is why Roslyn Young can conclude: "The Silent Way is usually considered to be one of the alternative or humanistic approaches to language teaching." Taking this into consideration, the question can be of interest whether the Silent Way is a method which can easily be used at a typical German grammar or comprehensive school. It seems obvious that there are several factors which prevent the method from being applied at German schools - other alternative methods such as Suggestopedia, Superlearning or the Birkenbihl Method cannot find their way into German classrooms either. Sometimes only small parts of the method are applied as in the case of Suggestopedia whose traces can be found in the way some texts are dealt with in modern text books such as the new Green Line books. Therefore, this paper will try to see whether the thesis that the Silent Way is not suitable for a typical German classroom will prove to be the result of a superficial prejudice or not. To achieve this aim, the paper will give a short overview over the method in a first step. Secondly, some aspects which seem to be important for the role the method could play at German schools will be considered