In this part，modernism will be discussed in comparison with traditionalism mentioned in chapter one.As has been mentioned in Chapter one，all teaching methods，diverse as they may be，may be classified into two general categories by their attitudes towards the mother tongue.One category，represented by the Direct Method including the Audio-Lingual，the Audio-Visual，and the Communicative Approach，advocating that language is a set of habits and FL is a set of new habits independent of the mother tongue.As the new habits are unavoidably affected by the old habits，they believe that most errors，if not all，in FLL are caused by MTI.This group of method is called modernist method or modernism.It advocates that foreign language learning should be more like first language acquisition：lots of oral practice，no translation between 1st and 2nd languages，and little or no interpretation of grammatical rules（Richards and Rodgers，1986：9-10）.

As a prelude to the study of techniques for teaching the various language skills，The author of the present study will examine major methods which represent modernism：the Direct Method，the Audio-Lingual Method，the Audio-Visual Method and the Communicative Approach from angles of their background，principal features，objectives，techniques theoretical assumptions and critiques.