There have been many attempts to reform the way languages are taught. Early in its history, holistic language education meant teaching language as a “whole”. The proponents of the holistic approach criticized the traditional educational methods for what they thought was an excessive emphasis on language structure and a multitude of grammatical exercises, which many learners found stale, boring, difficult to comprehend and even more difficult to memorize. However, the “holistic” method of teaching that was proposed, which can also be described as “amorphous”, sounded progressive in theory but has not been proven effective in practice.
When children acquire their mother tongue, they do not need to formally study the grammar; they naturally assume the existence of grammatical patterns and learn to follow them. So do children who learn foreign languages during the critical period, before the age of 6. Older children and adults, however, find it more difficult to “absorb” grammar, because their notions about languages have already solidified. These learners do require at least some formal instruction
The contemporary approach is to keep the core structure of the way languages have been traditionally taught, but to present the material in more attractive and engaging way, one that appeals to the senses and the emotions of the language learners and creates a wholesome learning experience. This combined approach still justifies the definition of “holistic”, although it achieves the wholesomeness in a different way
The justification for the holistic approach lies in the way memories are formed. The emotions, with which new information is perceived, have a direct impact on the duration this information is held in memory and the speed at which it can be recalled. Using one or more of the different aspects our memory: auditory, visual, motor, and associative, helps to form the initial impression in the memory. However, this impression should be solidified by integrating these mechanisms to facilitate the recall of new words and grammatical constructs, with the ultimate goal of using them accurately in communication.
The ability to find the right set of motivations that would appeal to an individual learner is the key to maintaining long-term progress in learning a foreign language. We promote a combination of traditional teaching and the use of modern technologies to achieve these goals.
Elena Sadov writes about language acquisition using journalistic techniques, which flesh out the issues that many languages learners face, and then analyzes the results to make the material more suitable and practicable for research purposes.
Annemarie Waugh is writing for English-speaking adults who are becoming acquainted with British English and are learning new words and phrases in the process.
“Li Hong Snyder is writing for non-native speakers of Mandarin, who are taking a great cultural and linguistic leap, but visual art, songs, and cultural interpretation help guide them through this novel experience.”