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5. Current methods of language teaching 
During the teaching process the following methods as 
explanation-illustrative, informational, productive, problematic, 
heuristic methods can be used. 
The oral methods include narrating, lecturing, conversation and 
explanation. This is the verbal way of imparting knowledge.
Narrating may be short (or long), clear, interesting and full of 
emotions. Although the subject and form of the student’s narrative 
are rather narrow, the teacher can, within the limits, come up with a 
wide range of possible statements that express actual (real-life) 
situations. The teacher’s evaluation of the situation will increase the 
students’ self-confidence and encourage them to solve the problems 
of their own. 
The demonstrative method has two types: picture demonstration 
and subject demonstration. 
In the picture demonstration method a teacher uses manuals, 
maps, pictures, tables and explains the theme. 
In the subject demonstration method a teacher shows different 
instruments, subjects and actions. This will help the learners not 
only to memorize but also to understand the information. 
The illustration method considers using different illustrative 
materials in the process of teaching. It is obvious that illustrative 
teaching materials improve motivation for learning and memorizing 
teaching material. 
It is necessary to deal with conversation method in details. 

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In the conversation method the sincerity of the teacher is very 
important because it creates favorable atmosphere in the learning 
process. Nowadays the most teaching activities are based on the 
conversation method. It is also one of the most rewarding. Students 
cannot be expected to leap suddenly to original and creative 
communication. The teacher has to lead them step by step, gradually 
reducing controls over what they say and how they say. 
It is known that the student would like to express himself in 
English but is afraid to deviate from the safety of the sentences he 
has practised and the words he memorized. In this case the teacher 
has to prod him gently and help the student by pointing out that with 
the words and structures the student already knows. This will enable 
the student to seek other ways of putting the words and phrases 
together to express his thought. Using inferences will lead the 
student to a build-up of novel speech situations. 
When the teacher helps the student work out the meaning of a 
word or structure, he encourages him to guess meaning through the 
process of deduction – a vital survival skill in English conversation 
in and beyond the classroom doors. 
Questions and answers are major elements of a natural 
conversation, the backbone of directed conversation sessions. 
Fortunately, there are a number of ways to vary and enliven the 
question-and-answer format. 
It is necessary to point out that native speakers have a natural 
tendency to use short answers. For example: 
A: How about that! 
B: What? What happened? 
A: Did you see what that guy did? 
B: No. I was looking the other way. 
Since there is much of a common occurrence in normal 
conversation, we should give all the students practice in responding 
to questions in this manner. 
As for the kinds of question-answer sequences, they may be 
divided into four major types: 
1) question – single statement answer; 
2) question – multiple statement answer; 
3) question deduced from answer; 

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4) multiple questions drawn from a single statement. 
When someone asks a question, he often receives just a single 
statement in reply. Very often this statement results in unprofitable 
“yes” or “no” answers. The teacher should encourage his pupils to 
proceed from short answers to longer ones that give some indication 
of natural conversational English. 
The multiple statement reply is a favourite technique used by 
many teachers. The teacher specifies exactly how many statements 
he wants as a response to a question. The student may answer the 
question with one statement, add two more that are factual and 
related to the first one. 
A useful variation is to give students a factual reply and have 
them deduce the question or questions that would have produced 
such a reply. 
The practice of ELT gives evidence that students spend more of 
their time answering questions than asking them in the English 
classrooms. This is why such techniques as deducing questions from 
answers or working with multiple questions from a single statement 
are recommended in guided conversation practice. These exercises 
correct the imbalance in students’ syntactic repertoire and promote 
facility in question formation – a much needed skill in all 
conversation. 
Another major ingredient in all conversation is comments. We 
continually make comments when we converse – either in the form 
of simple remarks (It looks like it’s going to rain) or in the form of 
rejoinders (You’re right). But although comments are such an 
important part of conversation, one rarely sees special techniques 
used to help students develop facility in commenting in English, 
with the result that a statement intended to encourage conversation 
is often followed by a distressing silence. 
Rejoinders are sprinkled throughout conversation. They are 
conversational, generally brief, sentences that express interest, 
surprise, disagreement, enthusiasm, sympathy, or simply 
reassurance that the speaker is being listened to. Since each 
language has established its own standardized rejoinder formulae, it 
is essential that students learning English resist the temptation to 
translate their native language rejoinders into English. The teacher 

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should encourage students to use rejoinders in dialogue to keep the 
conversation going and to demonstrate attentiveness and interest in 
what is being said. 
The demonstrative method has two types: picture demonstration 
and subject demonstration. 
In the picture demonstration method a teacher uses manuals, 
maps, pictures, tables and explains the theme. 
In the subject demonstration method a teacher shows different 
instruments, subjects and actions. This will help the learners not 
only to memorize but also to understand the information. 
The illustration method considers using different illustrative 
materials in the process of teaching. It is obvious that illustrative 
teaching materials improve motivation for learning and memorizing 
teaching material. 
The modern trend toward a more active use of the students’ 
mental powers probably represents the most important effort of the 
cognitive theory of FLT. Heuristic method is akin to this theory 
stressed on the necessity “to engage the student’s full mental 
powers”. Heuristics is understood as the ability of teachers to 
provide new ideas, aid and direction that will help learners solve 
specified problem-posing tasks. The teacher uses effective ways of 
deeply understanding learners in their struggle to learn to solve 
problems. One of the possible means of heuristic method is