Approaches to teaching, only one method for everybody?

During the decades 70's and 80's the way they teached was shifted to teaching and learning processes because in the past the art of teaching was focused on only small parts of the complex set of elements that compound teaching and learning.


In this time, the term method was replaced by the term pedagogy. And the teaching theory was viewed as something that is built by individual teachers, and includes not only the theory but the practice too in the classroom. Because that it is what it means pedagogy: the science of teaching.


But, what is a Method, an Approach and a Technique?


According to the definitions of Douglas Brown:


Method: is an overall plan for systematic presentation of language based on a selected approach.


Approach: is a set of assumptions dealing with the nature of language, learning, and teaching.


Technique: specific classroom activities consistent with the method, and therefore in harmony with an approach as well.


According to the definitions quoted above, we can acknowledge now that we can take one of the vast methods existing in the world, but not always a method fits our own reality in the classroom, because the age, the gender, the cultural background and the needs of our students it is what dictate the method we have to use, the approach to catch their attention and the techniques we must to use in order to reach our goal: that the student really learns what he has to.