ABSTRACT
The history of language teaching does indeed display a bewildering variety of different methods and approaches, all jostling for our attention, often by means of extravagant claims of the 'learn a language in three months without any effort at all variety. This chapter focuses on a path through the forest of methods, paying some attention to the background ideas and intellectual traditions which lie behind the actual classroom procedures. In the late 1960s, Kelly (1969) produced an overview of language teaching history which began in the period around 500 BC. His long historical perspective carries a message for anyone looking at the development of language teaching. For learners also the task was daunting, because exotic languages confront English-speaking learners with difficulties not encountered in languages more closely related to their own. Out of the ASTP emerged what is sometimes called the 'GI Method'; and out of that developed audiolingualism.
