There's certainly been a lot of different language teaching approaches over the years, with each one claiming to be the One True Way. Nowadays, most schools use a mixture of approaches.

One thing that I think is very good about the school I'm doing my training in is that all instruction is carried out in the target language, which enables the student to think in the target language. One thing that has held my Spanish back quite a bit is that I've learned everything through translation, which means I now have to train myself to avoid translating everything into English, which is a barrier to fluency. But I'm getting there.