Silent Way Caleb Gattegno

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sfuqua
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Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9248
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Silent Way Caleb Gattegno

Postby sfuqua » Mon Dec 21, 2015 4:15 pm

Has anybody ever used the "Silent Way?"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Way
http://www.onestopenglish.com/methodology/methodology/teaching-approaches/teaching-approaches-what-is-the-silent-way/146498.article

I was initially trained in this when I started Peace Corps in Samoan. I found the program to be ingenious, since I was completely unfamiliar with real language learning. It was a lot like Michel Thomas, with a little light reading thrown in. I especially liked the colors used with the letters. With the colors it was possible to make a highly irregular spelling system transparent immediately. The Chinese charts I saw looked spectacular.

The Silent Way was not very effective with me, but I knew absolutely nothing about how to learn a language, and I was not a good student.

Much of the Silent Way involved moving cuisenaire rods. Think Michel Thomas with his use of general nouns, pronouns, and then the word for rods.

At a conference, I took an hours Silent Way lesson in Thai. After that lesson I could say and understand, "Take the rod." "Do you want to take the rod." I thought that I probably knew some of the most useless vocabulary possible.

And then I happened to get into an elevator with a former Peace Corps volunteer, an extremely good looking man who spoke great Thai. On the elevator were three beautiful Thai college students, who seemed to only have eyes for the PCV Thai speaker. The PCV had some horrible failed chemical experiment in his hand with *a glass rod* in it. He pulled the glass rod from the goop, and said to the tallest, prettiest of the Thai students, "Do you want to take the rod?" She blushed and then punched him. I'm not sure I understood all the connotation, but I think I have an idea.

I was amazed that one hour of Thai Silent Way instruction could let me understand an unlikely Thai sentence "in the wild."
4 x
荒海や佐渡によこたふ天の川

the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way
Basho[1689]

Sometimes Japanese is just too much...

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sfuqua
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1642
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 5:05 am
Location: san jose, california
Languages: Bad English: native
Samoan: speak, but rusty
Tagalog: imperfect, but use all the time
Spanish: read
French: read some
Japanese: beginner, obsessively studying
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9248
x 6299

Re: Silent Way Caleb Gattegno

Postby sfuqua » Wed Dec 23, 2015 3:26 pm

No takers... I really think this method was more a set of activities that worked OK at the beginner stage, and that it would have to be replace by other activities later in the process.
I always thought that it would be a nice technique to learn for those potentially uncomfortable moments teaching small classes of absolute beginners.
2 x
荒海や佐渡によこたふ天の川

the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way
Basho[1689]

Sometimes Japanese is just too much...

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iguanamon
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Studies: Catalan
Language Log: viewtopic.php?t=797
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Re: Silent Way Caleb Gattegno

Postby iguanamon » Wed Dec 23, 2015 3:45 pm

sfuqua wrote:No takers... I really think this method was more a set of activities that worked OK at the beginner stage, and that it would have to be replace(d) by other activities later in the process. ...
I read the wikipedia article. I'd never heard of this before, This looks like an interesting technique for small classes but it is teacher dependent. Since most of us on the forum are self-learners and not in classes, I think it has little relevance to what most of us do here, but... I wonder... What if some smart apple came up with an interactive computer program to substitute for the teacher in the process? Could this provide a rapid boost, a "leg up" if you will, in a language that could make self-learning more effective afterwards? I'd have to try it out before I could judge.
1 x

User avatar
sfuqua
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1642
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 5:05 am
Location: san jose, california
Languages: Bad English: native
Samoan: speak, but rusty
Tagalog: imperfect, but use all the time
Spanish: read
French: read some
Japanese: beginner, obsessively studying
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9248
x 6299

Re: Silent Way Caleb Gattegno

Postby sfuqua » Wed Dec 23, 2015 4:00 pm

It's not applicable to most of us here.

Some of us teach languages, and Silent Way can be a way to start out with students who are at the complete zero level in whatever language you are teaching. I didn't do so well being trained in Samoan. I had about 120 hours of instruction, and I would have learned a lot more if I had just memorized a phrasebook or had had 120 hours of "Pimsleur like" instruction. Considering the brutal drop into complete immersion into a non English speaking environment I was facing at the end of my training, I really needed to get talking about survival topics. Silent way really could have made a nice start to this, teaching us the orthography, and some of the basic grammar, but we needed more talking.

Silent Way shared some of the typical problems of traditional language classes; much of the time you are waiting for your turn to speak. Silent Way tended to be pretty intense, however, with the teacher limiting how much he talks. This tended to make learners pay very close attention. The lessons could be very slow with long silences, but generally students would pay close attention the whole time.
1 x
荒海や佐渡によこたふ天の川

the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way
Basho[1689]

Sometimes Japanese is just too much...


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