Changes in language teaching methods are due to various causes. At each stage of history the needs and goals of those who were learning a language were different: to translate the classics; to intercept and decode messages from the enemy during World War II; to benefit from the increasing international trade and tourism in the second half of the XXth century.

Grammar- Translation dominated language teaching from the Middle Ages (until quite recently). Its focus was placed on reading and writing skills as well as grammar rules which were presented explicitly. This was a reasonable thing to do if we take into account that the goals were reading and translating literature, especially the classics.

The combination of structural linguistic theory-which views languages as pyramidally structured blocks-and behaviourist psychology led to the Audiolingual Method . According to behaviourism learning is a mechanical process of habit-formation whose main components are repetition, memory, positive reinforcement and immediate and explicit error correction. This method was at its peak between 1930 and 1955.

The new world geopolitical map, post-war development and prosperity, and the creation of the European Community implied greater efforts to spread the study of major languages. The functional and communicative dimension of language prevailed over the mere mastery of grammatical structures. The importance of individual as an active and creative constructor of its own learning (including obviously language learning) was foregrounded in the Communicative Approach. The four basic skills, namely listening, speaking, reading, writing, would be developed almost simultaneously and in a balanced way. Tasks should be motivating and meaningful to the learner. Therefore, a wide variety of materials are included so as to support this kind of language teaching, particularly 'authentic' or 'from life' materials such as newspapers, magazines, films, leaflets, etc.

This has just been a brief review. Many methods, approaches and techniques which are not mentioned here have contributed in a significant way to language teaching; but it must be said too that some others which challenged the validity of all their predecessors went out of fashion very quickly. There have even been others that were mere "trade marks" whose objective was simply making money.