ORIGINS & BACKGROUND
This is the full name of the educator who created the Silent Way.
Caleb Gattegno (1911–1988)
Gattegno borrows Bruner's term for the teaching mode in which the learner is a principal actor rather than a bench-bound listener.
The hypothetical mode
This is the name given to the color-coded pronunciation charts used in Silent Way classrooms.
Fidel charts
The text describes the Silent Way teacher's emotional stance with this precise phrase — neither elated by success nor troubled by error.
The teacher is a 'disinterested judge, supportive but emotionally uninvolved' / 'neutral observer, neither elated by correct performance nor discouraged by error'.
These colored wooden sticks, originally used for mathematics, became a central material in Silent Way classrooms.
Cuisenaire rods
Gattegno explicitly rejects natural or direct approaches to L2 learning with this argument about how L2 learners differ fundamentally from L1 learners.
The L2 learner 'cannot learn another language in the same way because of what he now knows' — L2 processes are 'radically different' from L1 acquisition
According to Stevick, these physical teaching tools serve a specific psychological function that produces better retention than repetition alone — name both the tools and the function.
Rods and Fidel charts serve as 'associative mediators' — physical devices that create memorable images and facilitate student recall better than repetition.
The text says learners must develop these three qualities — name all three — and explains that the absence of teacher correction is what makes the third one possible.
Independence, autonomy, and responsibility. The absence of correction requires learners to develop 'inner criteria' and self-correct.
The Silent Way was used in these two official US training programs, contributing to its early popularity.
US Foreign Officer training programs and Peace Corps training programs
According to Gattegno, this is what gives meaning to language.
Experience
The vocabulary word charts typically contain this many charts and this range of words in the native language.
Twelve charts containing 500 to 800 words
Stevick defines the Silent Way teacher's role with three tasks. Name all three.
(a) to teach, (b) to test, (c) to get out of the way
This is the name of Gattegno's reading series in which sounds are coded by specific colors — the precursor to his language teaching work.
Words in Color
These are the three core learning hypotheses of the Silent Way: learning is facilitated by discovery/creation, by physical objects, and by this third condition.
Problem-solving involving the material to be learned
The Silent Way uses this type of syllabus, organizing content by grammatical complexity and relationship to previously taught items
A structural (grammatical) syllabus
R&R identify this as the key reason the Silent Way has not been rigorously evaluated by the SLA research community — and explain what its practitioners rely on instead.
Its 'fringe' status has kept SLA researchers away; practitioners rely on self-reported success rather than empirical research.
Despite Gattegno's philosophical ambitions, R&R conclude that the Silent Way's actual practices resemble these two more traditional methods in several key ways.
Situational Language Teaching and Audiolingualism
Gattegno describes this concept — the phonological and suprasegmental character of a language — as something learners must develop a 'feel' for as soon as possible.
The 'spirit' of the language
Gattegno calls this the most important vocabulary category — it includes pronouns, numbers, and comparison words, and provides a key to the spirit of the language.
Functional vocabulary
This is the central and defining characteristic of the Silent Way teacher's behaviour in the classroom.
Silence — the teacher is silent as much as possible.