There is no one method to teach or learn languages--including one's own. Educated adults demand methodological approaches different from those demanded by uneducated adults. Children's ways of learning differ according to their age. Intelligence and possibly aptitude play roles in learning. Culture very much affects how people can be taught and how they learn best. Each individual has his or her own learning style. Motivation is probably the major factor in learning. And, of course, the ease of transfer from native language to target language depends on a number of linguistic and educational parameters, such as correspondences between the two languages and functional goal.
Unfortunately, we still know relatively little about how people learn--in spite of a profuse literature over at least a century. This literature reveals disparate and often conflicting theories and practices in the teaching of second language. Note that second language is not necessarily second. Immigrant children, for example, are apt to speak the language native to their parents and, in addition, the language of the new country. Adolescents and adults may have been the victims of traditional language learning at school, so that the jump to modern methods is rendered all the more difficult; on the other hand, they may also have acquired techniques of learning which work for the individual learner. Yet primary to the implementation of a TESOL methodology is the goal of teaching this other language. In many countries, the prime objective of language learning is not communicating but passing state examinations which measure how well the student knows the rules of the target language, rather than how he or she is able to communicate in this language--particularly orally, the basic mode of communication which distinguishes humans from apes. Before selecting a methodological approach to teaching a foreign language, therefore, the teacher will need to specify the goal...