Studia Filologiczne UJK

Summary

EFL speaking, a productive oral skill combining various types of knowledge and subskills, is regarded as a central language ability in the lingua-franca era of English. Having stressed the difficulty with acquiring the ability to speak, we aim to provide a historical account of how EFL speaking was approached in instructed settings by investigating ten most popular methods selected from Method Era of EFL Pedagogy. The key assumptions underlying each method are discussed, proving that historically speaking practice – in spite of the fact that it has been rarely marginalised by its sister skills with the exception of the pre-Reform Movement or cognitive psychology-oriented periods – was not an effective and successful endeavour in Method Era of FLT. Nevertheless, we would like to point out that this seemingly unavailing period has produced illuminating insights which nowadays can be successfully applied in FL classroom contexts.