Most language learning systems address four basic skills – reading, writing, listening, and speaking. The grammar-translation method focuses solely on the first two, largely ignoring listening and speaking. This method has been around since the days of Ancient Greece and Rome, then experienced a bit of a resurgence in the early 1900s. Since then, it has fallen out of favor and most view it as a rather antiquated way of teaching.

As the name implies, it’s all about two things – grammar and translation. And although this narrow focus now seems inadequate for learning a foreign language (L2), during the 1900s this system served its purpose, as most people solely wanted to be able to read and understand old texts, generally Latin. Little thought was given to actually being able to speak the language. Classes taught under this methodology are almost entirely in the students’ native language (L1), which makes it easy for students to follow, though the class content itself is usually repetitive and tiresome.

Typical Lesson

10th grade Latin class for native German speakers

  1. Students read a text in Latin, typically about an ancient hero’s conquest or a political struggle. The bottom of the text may include key terms and their translations (Latin to German) to aid readers.
  2. Students sit in silence and write the answers to reading comprehension questions about the story, plus fill-in-the-blank grammar questions about a verb tense seen in the text.
  3. Students are graded on their comprehension and writing skills.

Role of the Teacher

This is a very teacher-centric class, as the teacher is the authority and all interactions in the class, if any, are teacher-student. Very rarely are there student-student interactions. Ironically, as the second language itself is viewed more as a foreign subject than a foreign language, the teacher is not required to be an L2 native speaker or fluent. The teacher and students talk about the L2 rather than talk in the L2.

Positives

  • Good for academic researchers or literary scholars who only need to be able to read a language;
  • A native speaker is not required to teach the class;
  • The use of L2 makes answering vocab questions simple. For example, a student in Cuba asks what the English word “apple” is, and the teacher replies “manzana“. Without using the Spanish L2, the teacher has to say, “You know, that red fruit, it’s about the size of a baseball, they’re crunchy…”, while miming eating an apple.

Negatives

  • No speaking or listening skills;
  • Classes are usually tedious and boring, especially for learners who need a more interactive style. Even the most studious in the class will quickly lose motivation after a few of these dreary lessons;
  • Perfect translation itself is impossible, and memorizing the translation of one term may later confuse students who come across another meaning of the word. For example, a student may learn the word “light,” but then be completely confused when encountering things like “to light a fire,” a “light meal,” “going light on someone,” etc.;
  • This is a very memorization-intensive style of learning, which usually means information is committed to short-term memory, but then forgotten quickly. Anyone who has ever crammed for an exam is familiar with this phenomenon. You “learn” what is necessary for a specific moment, then within a few days that information has been replaced by something else (which will also likely be forgotten).

Final Thoughts

The grammar-translation method is now one of the most widely scorned methods in the modern education world, and most programs have moved away from it. In countries with fewer resources and more old-fashioned educational systems, however, this may be the only style of teaching available. It should be noted, however, that parts of this system are inherent in other styles of learning/teaching, and that some of its grammar study can be incorporated into a more well-rounded methodology.