Each teaching method is based on a particular vision of understanding the language or the learning process, often using specific techniques and materials used in a set sequence.

The main methodologies are listed below in the chronological order of their development:

Grammar Translation – the classical method
Direct Method – discovering the importance of speaking
Audio-lingualism – the first modern methodology
Humanistic Approaches – a range of holistic methods applied to language learning
Communicative Language Teaching – the modern standard method
Principled Eclecticism – fitting the method to the learner, not the learner to the method