Abstract
This paper examines five methods of bilingual education methods. These are the audiolingual method, the Total Physical Response method (sometimes referred to in the literature as TPR), the Silent Way Method, the natural approach method, and the Soviet-inspired "Suggestopedia" method. The writer explains that each of these has been relatively influential in various parts of the world, and many successful bilingual programs today use derivatives of one of these methods or draw elements from each to compose spin-off styles.

From the Paper
"Once upon a time, perhaps, the art of teaching was relatively strait-forward. Each teacher used their own style, or that which had been handed down to them by those they learned from. While certainly a certain degree of theory has always been involved in teaching (after all, the so-called Socratic method of teaching was debated centuries before the birth of Christ, and is still cropping up as a controversial pedagogy), it was not until very recently that a great deal of academic attention was turned not just to the subject matter in schools, but to the way in which they were taught. Even so, the methodology of teaching second languages, as a separate study from general pedagogy, is even more recent. "The designer methods emerged in the 1970's, a period of great enlightenment as many would describe." (Brown, 1994) According to Jack Richards (2001), "The method concept in teaching -- the notion of a systematic set of teaching practices based on a particular theory of language and language learning -- is a powerful one, and the quest for better methods was a preoccupation of many teachers and applied linguists throughout the twentieth century." "

Tags:literature, silent, audioligual