The Silent Way is a language teaching method created by Caleb Gattegno in 1963 that utilizes extensive silence. The key principles are that learning is more important than teaching, students develop their own understanding rather than repeating a model, and errors are an important part of learning. Students must be observant, willing to discover the language independently, and have a positive attitude. The goals are for students to become independent, autonomous, responsible users of the language who can self-express and interact with others. Classroom activities include the teacher modeling words for students to incorporate into their own utterances with minimal guidance.

1. The Silent Way
Prepared by
Vaidehi Hariyani
(Research Scholar)
Department of English,MKBU

3. What is it?
• The Silent Way is a language
teaching method created by
Caleb Gattegno (1911-1988) in
1963.
• An extensive use of silence is
used as the teaching technique.

4. Principles:-
• Teaching should be subordinate to learning.
• Language is not learned by repeating after a model;
the students need to develop their own “inner
criteria” for correctness.
• It is the students that should be practicing the
language, not the teacher.
• Errors are important and necessary for learning.

5. What the students need to do?
• They need to be more observant.
• They must be willing to let go and willing to discover
the language.
• The must have a positive attitude.

6. Goals of the Silent Way
• Students are expected to become independent,
autonomous and responsible.
• Students can use the language for self-expression.
• They can develop independence from the teacher.
• It is a platform of interaction between and among the
students.
• It develops self exploration by discovering their own
mistakes.

7. Activities that can be done in the Classroom:-
• Teacher models a word, phrase or sentence and elicits
learner responses.
• Learners then can create their own utterances by
putting together old and new information.
• Teacher’s modeling is minimal, although much of the
activity is teacher-directed.

8. Advantages
• Students learn by themselves.
• Students are able to fix their
own pronunciation based on the
teacher’s guidance.
• Learning through problem
solving fosters creativity,
discovery, an increase in
intelligence potency and long
term memory.
Disadvantages
• There is lack of sound and
pronunciation knowledge, so it is
sometimes confusing.
• There is lack of teacher’s
guidance.

9. Materials used in class:-
The
Sound-
Color
Chart

10. Word
Chart

11. •Cuisenaire
rods

12. Works Cited:-
• Richards, Jack c. and Theodore s Rodgers.
Approaches and Methods in Language
teaching. Cambridge university press, 2001.