Multiple Intelligences as Strategy for Teaching EFL to high school graduates

The disadvantages of this method include a total neglect of spoken language, communication skills, use of esoteric vocabulary, and monotonous procedure in class.

Thus the Grammar-Translation Method is simply a combination of the activities of grammar and translation. The teacher begins with rules isolated vocabulary items, paradigms and translation. Pronunciation either is not taught or is limited to a few introductory notes. Grammar rules are memorized as units, which sometimes include illustrative sentences.

Harold Palmer’s Method

Harold Palmer the great English authority and teacher, experimented extensively with the question-answer method. He considered question-answer work to be “the most effective of all language learning exercise ever devised”.

Palmer insisted, however, that if this technique was to be carried out successfully, all questions asked by the teacher must be carefully planned and thought out beforehand. Questions should never be haphazard, either in form or content. Specifically, H. Palmer thought that any question asked by the teacher should be of a nature that admits the following:

a)an obvious answer, not an answer that requires one or more complicated acts of judgement on the part of the student;

b)an easy answer, not one that requires the use of word, facts, or constructions unknown to the student;

c)a relevant answer, direct answer involving only a moderate change through the process of conversion, substitution, or completion of the material contained in the teacher’s question.

In H. Palmer’s view, there are three stages of learning:

1.Receiving knowledge.

2.Fixing it in the memory by repetition.

3.Using the knowledge by real practice.

H. Palmer was the author of some 50 theoretical works, textbooks and manuals. Of great interest are H. Palmer’s “100 Substitution Tables”, in which sentence patterns are arranged in tables for pupils to make up their sentences, following the pattern. His main findings can be conveniently summarized as the following objectives:

1.Phonetic, semantic and syntactic aspects.

2.Oral speech by way of speaking and understanding.

3.Accumulation of passive material with subsequent active reproduction.

4.Techniques used for translation include visuality, interpretation and verbal context.

5.Speech patterns to be learn by heart.

6.Rational selection of vocabulary based on frequency counts and utility.

7.Topical selection: minimum vocabulary list of 3000 words.

H. Palmer paid great attention to a system of exercises, which in his should include:

1.receptive –question and short answers to them;

2.receptive-imitative –words and word-combinations repeated after the teacher;