Orientalists, in Thornbury's taxonomy of language teaching methods, refers to the tradition of scholarly language learning practised by European academics, diplomats, missionaries, and explorers from the 16th to the 19th century, who learned languages such as Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit, Chinese, and Japanese, often without formal instruction, textbooks, or teachers in the modern sense.
The orientalist approach was, by necessity, self-directed and text-based:
The orientalist tradition demonstrates that dedicated learners can achieve high proficiency in difficult languages through self-study, given enough time and motivation. It is essentially the Grammar-Translation Method applied by individuals to themselves, with the crucial addition of authentic texts and, where available, native-speaker interaction. Many of the same techniques, including text-based study, grammar analysis, memorisation, and bilingual resources, remain the core toolkit of independent adult language learners today.
The orientalist approach produced readers and scholars, not fluent conversationalists. The languages learned were often treated as objects of study rather than tools of communication, reflecting the same form-over-function orientation as the Grammar-Translation Method.