Over the last 50 years language teaching has gone through some major changes aiming at better and better teaching. Even if the methodology has been drastically changed far too many teachers are stuck with the principles of the 1980’s with students who are not able to use the language properly and are not enjoying the classes.

The basic questions are still the same: What is the best and most effective way to teach and learn a foreign language? What kind of language lesson would I myself enjoy?

The translation method was used up to the 1970’s: translating texts from English into mother tongue and vice verca focusing on grammar with a very limited view on other language skills.

I myself am a child of this period, graduated from high school in 1973 and could not speak English at all when I started to study English at Oulu University in Finland. I never heard the teacher speak English freely, we students never spoke or heard recorded English in class, no recordings were available, hands were raised for the answer and we stood up, answered and sat down one at a time. We were nice students who could stand the process since we knew of nothing better.

Until – we realized the new German teacher’s methods were effective: a lot of reading aloud in class, dealing with the chapters properly in groups and spending two hours a week in the language lab speaking German, recording and listening to ourselves speaking. Hely Laitinen, the teacher, was 20 years ahead of her time. Six German lessons a week for two years – and I can still speak German even if I learnt it 50 years ago and have not used it very much. One of the miracles of my limited brain capacity.

In was actually amusing that when I got to study English and Swedish I could not speak the languages more than at an elementary level since we had not practiced speaking at school and there was no other source avaialbe in those days. Of course Iearnt to speak both langauges quite well in a year but still, I was 19 years of age at that time. What a waste!

In the 1980’s the audio-lingustic method was introduced which meant a step forward towards real usage of language and developing speakinglistening and writing in particular. New methods were introduced and teachers started to use recordings in English and writing tasks were given to the students.

I did my compulsory one-year teacher training in 1979 – 1980 in a training school in Oulu in northern Finland. The teaching methods were very teacher-oriented even if there were glimpses of students working in pairs and groups. After the teacher training I taught English, Swedish and Finnish in a local prison and was a part-time teacher in a couple of other school until I got a permanent position as a teacher trainer in Oulu University training school.

In the 1970s suggestopedia developed by Georgi Lozanov brought many new ideas into language teaching even if it was considered to be too different a style to be used continuously. Thanks to suggestopedia we started to eliminate the barriers of learning aiming at more relaxed lessons where all human senses were made use of while the students were working in pairs or groups. Music and language games were made use of. The students felt relaxed and were not afraid of making mistakes when speaking and working together. I personally felt better thanks to the changes but I was still not pleased.

It was an in-service course in southern Finland that changed my style of teaching permanently. On the way back to Oulu I had an incredibly illuminating discussion with professor Irma Huttunen who had been one of the lecturers in the course. She had recently finished her doctoral thesis on autonomous learning and I was absolutely fascinated by her ideas and what she had learnt while applying the ideas in her own classes.

I spent the weekend developing the new approach to the texts in the English books and how the time in the class was spent. On the following Monday morning I had a double lesson with senior high students and I said to them that I hated much of what we did in my own lessons and that I wanted to try out something new with them. I explained what I thought was wrong in our system and what and why I was going to do with them in the future.

We agreed on a two-week trial period and would come back to the old style if the new style turned out to be disasterous. We never went back. It was 1986 and most of the principles I came up with at that time served me until I retired a couple of years ago. One of my posts to come will deal with this new lesson planning.

In the 1990’s it was finally realized that English and languages in general are to be learnt resulting in true skills that can be made use of in real life: communicative language teaching became more and more popular. Teachers realized that they have to teach all the language skills and the skills were also tested in the final exams.

Still the biggest changes were seen in classes themselves: teachers’ role began to change and they were more organizers of the lessons than actually teaching all the time. Students were not evaluated only on the basis of exams but their activity level and participation in class was also taken into account. The third change was the introduction of computer programmes and modern technology in lessons.

The 21st century has seen this tendency taken further in many ways: classes and methods have become more student-oriented, time is devoted to enhance the students’ stydy and social, skills the teacher has become more an organizer than the one who talks about the language, assessment is not based only on tests and exams, learning how to learn effectively is actively taught and modern technology is made use of. The internet became a valid source for new information and publishers introduced computer materials that were directly linked to the textbooks used. Even taking exams can now be done in special exam locations at a time chosen by the students themselves. The goals set for the 21st century are becoming reality.