Robert uses a sharp knife to cut through a lot of confusion in this post:
I was at a conference last weekend (6-9 October 2016), but it wasn’t a language teachers conference; it was a business conference. During the course of the weekend we had several times that we were asked to interact with other participants and tell them about what we were doing. Every time I explained how I teach German, my conversational partner responded that this made absolute sense and wished they had had a teacher who taught this way. Intuitively, they grasped what TCI and TPRS are all about.
Now I am working on a new blog post (after far too long away) about the history of foreign language teaching methods. In short, we are still haunted by medieval thinking, which was essentially a bookish culture with an intense love of system. The inclusion of Grammar in the Trivium, the basic curriculum, was a reflection of that because language was viewed primarily in terms of system, and grammar was considered the most systematic level of the language and therefore useful for teaching logic and critical thinking. The teaching of “foreign languages” was in reality the teaching of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew grammar as preparation for teaching Logic and Rhetoric, not for communication. Although we have ostensibly changed our goals, we still use techniques, strategies, and even methods derived from a completely different mindset. One writer even pointed out that the sentences and exercises were intended to be nonsensical, disconnected, and even repugnant so that students would attend to form not meaning. (And you always wondered why those textbook sentences seemed to have no context, rhyme or reason.)
What no one is telling you is that the real acquisition of foreign languages took place in the home (nannies and tutors), on the street (friends and travelers), and in the business (partners and co-workers). Until the late 19th century, “foreign language” courses in schools and universities were not intended to teach communicative ability, and we have continued the practices long after abandoning the purpose for them.
Schools are not innovators but institutionalizers.