Grammar-Translation Method

 Hi everyone!

This entry is about the first method we learned in the English Didactics class.

The Grammar-Translation Method became very popular during the 18th century and it was first recognized by Karl Plotz, it was created due to the necessity of people to be able to understand the traditional languages such as Greek and Latin.

The main skills this method works with are reading and writing therefore not much attention is paid to pronounciation and since the main goal of this method is not for people to communicate in the target language, the classes are taught in the mother tongue.

Since this method is all about grammar, a strength the students will develop is having a better control of grammatical structures and also since a lot of vocabulary is being learned continously this will activate the students memory as well as knowing many different words, however, the bad part of this method is that the students might have poor listening and speaking skills since literary language is superior to the spoken language.

Another thing to point out is that in this method the teacher has an overall control of the class and they use a deductive form of teaching, meaning that grammar is taught straight to the point.

Some of the exercises that this method uses is translating texts word for word and splitting the page in half to do so, having the source text on the left of a notepad and the target language on the right, which makes it easier when translating since one can continue checking the source text. Students might leave some space after each line for error correction which is another element of this method.

Although the grammar-translation method does not work that effectively, they continue to use it because it is what people have seen, what they know and it is what they have learned throughout the years.

That is it for this entry on the Grammar-Translation method, thank you so much for reading and stay tuned for the next entry, bye bye!👋