How teachers and parents can understand the theoretical methods of teaching.
In the past the teachers mainly used the Prescriptive method or as we now call it, the Traditional approach. A prescriptive grammar is a grammar that asserts itself as the only correct formulation of a particular language, and rejects any other constructions as wrong. This is mainly based on the prestige dialects of the community and they often specifically condemn constructions which the lower class adopts. This type of grammar did not bode too well with the modern day grammarians and so they modified the traditionally used prescriptive grammar to what we call descriptive grammar. This type of grammar follows a much adopted communicative approach towards language. A descriptive grammar is a grammar that describes the language as it is actually used by people, regardless of whether prescriptive grammars would consider a construction correct or not. Unlike the Audio-Lingual Method of language teaching, which relies on repetition and drills, the communicative approach can leave students in suspense as to the outcome of a class exercise, which will vary according to their reactions and responses. The real-life simulations change from day to day. Students' motivation to learn comes from their desire to communicate in meaningful ways about meaningful topics. Over the years many methods have been tried out to see which is the best pedagogical approach to teach language to students.
The Audio-Lingual Method (ALM) which came out as the result of the need for better speaking skills of foreign languages during and after the World War 2, did not reach the much hoped communicative skills of the people involved. In this method, the lessons were often structured in such a way that the participants had to listen to preplanned dialogues and mimic the pronunciation and the grammatical structures in it. The advocates of ALM felt that as the participants repeated the structures incorrectly, they acquired the language incorrectly. Thus the critics asserted that the students did not achieve the much desired communicative competence in the target language.
The traditional approach to grammar deals with a set of rules which cannot be changed or modified in any way, as if "language is of divine origin and hence was perfect in its beginnings but is constantly in danger of corruption and decay unless it is diligently kept in line by wise men who are able to get themselves accepted as authorities, such as those who write dictionaries and grammars." (Pyles and Algeo, 1993)
