Competing Methodologies in Early 19th-Century Foreign Language Teaching: Moses Santagnello (and Others) vs James Hamilton

This paper presents and compares the teaching methodologies of Moses Santagnello and James Hamilton, two foreign language teachers working in England in the first half of the 19th century. Santagnello and Hamilton were among the firsts to reconsider traditional methods of foreign language teaching, so that their criticism anticipated some of the issues later raised by the Reform Movement and later SLA researchers. The methods they developed differed considerably from one another; Santagnello was a supporter of a meaningful acquisition of foreign grammatical structures in the students’ native language, while Hamilton believed grammar to be a hindrance on acquisition and suggested that language learning should start from reading practice. Common to both methods was the use of translation, although in different ways. Finally, worthy of consideration are also the authors’ observations and ideas on the features of language learning and teaching of their time; indeed, both authors dealt with issues that are still highly debated in present-day language teaching.