THE GRAMMAR-TRANSLATION METHOD – ONE OF THE DOMINANT METHODS IN ENGLISH TEACHING
CLASSROOMS
A.Tineybaeva -
International Kazakh-Turkish University named by A.Yasavi,
Philology Master of the Pedagogical Service Sciences
Department
ÐÅÇÞÌÅ
 äàííîé ñòàòüå ðàññìàòðèâàþòñÿ ïðèíöèïû, öåëè è çàäà÷è èñïîëüçîâàíèÿ ãðàììàòèêî-ïåðåâîäíîãî ìåòîäà íà óðîêàõ
àíãëèéñêîãî ÿçûêà.
ÐÅÇÞÌÅ
Ìàқàëàäà
àғûëøûí ò³ë³ ñàáàқòàðûíäà ãðàììàòèêàëûқ-àóäàðìà
әä³ñ³í³ң қîëäàíóäûң ïðèíöèïòåð³, ìàқñàòòàðû
æәíå ì³íäåòòåð³ қàðàñòûðûëғàí.
Learning and mastering
the foreign languages is very important and prestigious. Now when English has
the status of the international language in Kazakhstan, more and more people
trying to learn it. Nowadays our Government
is interested in practical mastering of foreign languages, that provides
the exit on a global level,
familiarizing with global culture. Foreign language is the only means with
the help of which its possible, to get
and demonstrate the cultural level,
the ability to think, to create and
to estimate another's idea.[1]
Teaching English as a
Foreign Language. This term is predominantly used when English is being taught
in a country where it isn’t the native language.
For various historical
and economic reasons, English has become the dominant language of the world in
the twenty-first century. English is the language of science, air traffic
control, and tourism, the Internet and to a very large extent of trade and
export. According to the British Council at least one billion people speak or
are trying to speak English at the present time and of those about 300 million
people are actively studying the English language. [2]
“How to teach foreign
languages?” For the last 10-15 years
the conditions of job of foreign language teacher are essentially changed: the
obligatory programs, textbooks and
demands for the teaching process are in the past. The freedom that
teachers got, imposes on him/her set of the obligations: necessity to choose
general strategy of teaching competently, the techniques, those are appropriate
to his/her personal features, the inquiries and opportunities of the pupils,
conditions and textbooks, those are advised to be additional or basic. It is
very difficult to choose one of the methods that you want to use during your
lesson, because there is a great deal of them. Each of the teaching methods
considered to be innovative in its time, and when its time has gone it was
included into the list of the methods those are out-of-date and is not useful.
But from each of them there is connection of discoveries and errors, success
and failures.[3]
Language is the chief means by which the human
personality expresses itself and fulfills its basic need for social interaction
with other people.
Language
as a means of communication itself, is sensitive to changes elsewhere in the
network of human communications and to developments in transport to courage
mobility and bring into face-to-face contact over long distances. The expansion
of air travel in our new time, which has created a new role for English as a
world auxiliary language has repeated on an intercontinental scale the
processes that bound the countries of the European continent together in a
railway system during the nineteenth century. People were to exploit the opportunities
offered by the railways, they had to learn the languages spoken down at the end of the line.
One
result was an increase in demand for travelers ‘phrasebooks like Bartels’
Modern Linguist series in the 1850s, but there was also need for textbooks that
offered a more thorough grounding while at the same time keeping at least
half-an-eye on the practical needs of the adult learner. The outcome was a
growing market for “methods”: textbooks which established a basic design that
was repeated from one language to the next. Ahn was the first to exploit this
market in 1834, followed by the rival Ollendorff a year later and between them
they dominated the scene for almost
half a century, until the emergence of specialist language schools like Berlitz
in the 1880-1890s.[4]
Changes
in pattern of transport were not restricted to the European as the new shipping
line carried people from one continent to another in increasingly large
numbers. Emigration to the United States, from virtually every country in
Europe, swelled to enormous proportions as the century wore on, bringing with
it a growing need for practical competence in English both among the immigrants
themselves and among those left in Europe who want to keep in touch with
relatives and friends. The full impact of these developments was not felt until
later in the century, but the practical emphasis of Ahn and Ollendorff was a
straw in the wind.[5]
According to Prator and Celce-Murcia in Teaching
English as a Second Foreign Language, the key features of the grammar-translation method are as
follows:
·
Classes are
taught in the mother tongue, with little active use of the target
language.
·
Much
vocabulary is taught in the form of lists of isolated words.
·
Long
elaborate explanations of the intricacies of grammar are given.
·
Grammar
provides the rules for putting words together, and instruction often focuses on
the form and inflection of words.
·
Reading of
difficult classical texts is begun early.
·
Little
attention is paid to the content of texts, which are treated as exercises in
grammatical analysis.
·
Often the
only drills are exercises in translating disconnected sentences from the target
language into the mother tongue.
·
Little or no
attention is given to pronunciation.
The main charachteristics of the grammar-
translation method. The syllabus, interaction between students and teacher, the
place of native language, errors, that students make, the teacher and students
role in the teaching – learning process. The most important how does language
occur, and the culture of language.
Teacher role is very
traditional: the teacher is the authority who explains the rules and knows every
correct answer and who has the right to interrupt the student any time for the
sake of error correction-which is one of the ways to keep up discipline in the
classroom and maintain the teacher's authority. So teacher is the source of all materials, all information,
all answers.
Student’s behavior: learners’ roles are that they must do everything that they were told
by the teacher, do exercises, read the literary passage, to learn grammar, to
learn vocabulary, and making up examples on the passed material.
How does language occur?
·
Pattern
is given. Students repeat – learn by rote, and in a deductive environment.
·
They
memorize (verb) paradigms and vocabulary especially.
·
There
is little interaction with the teacher. The teacher gives instruction and the
students are to perform, and they do it
usually individually.
·
Attention
to students' feelings is not considered. Nothing is done to lower student
affective boundaries.
The culture of language: it is not really addressed.
Culture, with a big 'C', is present, but due to the use of literature
better than through instruction by the teacher. Culture, dealing with life, attitudes, beliefs,
behaviors, is not taught and would only be learned by the students incidentally
through the interaction provided as grammar instruction.
Role of the native language: it is the vehicle for foreign language instruction and learning.
Native language would be the language used in the classroom for everything,
instruction, directions, explanations, translations and even it is used in interaction between teacher and learner,
learner and learner.
Accuracy and fluency. There is no denying the
fact that both accuracy and fluency are essential in language learning.
However, in English teaching dominated by the grammar-translation method,
accuracy is emphasized more than fluency. Students in such classrooms are
extremely particular about linguistic details. They never feel satisfied with
their language productions until the correct answers are provided. They are
keenly interested in the exact words, have a low tolerance of ambiguity, and
tend to focus on discrete grammar points and specific syntactic constructions.
So the question arises as to the relationship between accuracy and fluency and
which one should take precedence. These questions must be examined in relation
to what is expected of the students when they graduate and what the teaching
conditions are.
Error correction: all the errors should be corrected, and immediately! The purpose is always should be achieved on 100%.
The represents of
grammar-translation method considered that foreign language must be taught in a
secondary school with the compulsory
aim. They saw it in the development of the logic thinking with the help of
grammar exercises, they identified grammar and the logics. Techniques of this
method are as follows:
·
Translation of a literary passage from the target language into the
mother tongue in the written or spoken form: Students translate a reading
passage from the target language into their native language. The reading
passage then provides the focus for several classes: vocabulary and grammatical
structures in the passage are studied in subsequent lessons. The passage may be
excerpted from some work from the target language literature, or teacher may
write a passage carefully designed to include particular grammar rules and
vocabulary. The translation may be written or spoken both. Students shouldn’t
translate idioms and the like literally, but rather in a way that shows that
they understand their meanings.
·
Reading comprehension
questions: Each text is accompanied by comprehension questions, which can
be roughly divided into three groups: -
explicit which ask for information contained within the reading passage, - implicit which demand answers not contained
in the passage and in order to answer which students have to make inferences
based on their understanding of the passage and - applied which require students to relate the passage to their own
experience.
·
Memorization: Students are given lists of target language vocabulary and their native
language equivalents and are asked to memorize them. Grammatical rules and
grammatical paradigms are also subject to memorization.
·
Deductive application of a rule: After a detailed explanation of a
rule and analyzing examples and exceptions students are asked to apply it while
translating sentences in and out of the target language.
·
Use words in sentences or answer the questions that contain new words
(deductive vocabulary teaching): In order to show that students understand the meaning
and use of a new vocabulary item, they make up sentences in which they use new
words or answer the question with a new word.
·
Drawing analogy between the target and native languages: Learning is facilitated
through attention to similarities between the two languages, e.g., students are
taught to recognize cognates by learning the spelling or sound patterns that
correspond between the languages, e.g., suffixes -tion in English and -öèÿ in Russian.
·
Fill-in-the-blanks: Students fill in the blanks with new vocabulary items
or with items of a particular grammar type such as prepositions, articles,
pronouns, or verbs in different tenses.
·
Antonyms/Synonyms: Students are asked to find synonyms or antonyms for a
particular set of words in the reading passage or match a word with its
synonym/antonym.
·
Parsing: Students are asked to examine parts of the sentence in order to work
out subject, predicate, modifiers, type of the clause, etc.
·
Transformation: Students transform affirmative sentences into
interrogative or negative, put questions to words in italics.
·
Composition: The teacher gives the student a topic to write about in the target
language. The topic is based upon some aspects of the reading passage of the
lesson. Sometimes, instead of creating composition, students are asked to
prepare a précis of the reading passage.
Students like this type of learning
foreign language, because they are told by the teacher what they must do, and
everything is understandable, the reason is that lessons are conducted in the
native language. I think that teaching
foreign language must be in another way, because people are looking straight in
the future, were mastering English is obligatory.
The
differences between the old and present form of the grammar-translation
is that, firstly, nowadays we begin the working on the passage with the introduction of the vocabulary with
translation. This makes pupils a little confident because they are acquainted
with the words that they can find in the text. Memorization follows immediately
after the presentation of the vocabulary, then comes the reading and
translating the text. Grammar can be presented nowadays, by explaining by
modules, it is not necessary to learn the rules, pupils can only look at them
and memorize the grammar. It gives a
good opportunity to make up examples and doing
exercises easier. Another difference is using proverbs , that removed
the boredom and constantly repeating activities. I only tried to guide them,
saying what they should do. When
conducting the second lesson I tried to make pupils to think a little in the
target language. But the result is the same , the pupils know a lot about the
language and not the language itself.[6]
The grammar – translation method was developed for
the study of “dead” languages and to facilitate access to those languages’
classical literature. That’s the way it should stay. English is
certainly not a dead or dying language, so any teacher that takes “an approach
for dead language study” into an English language classroom should perhaps
think about taking up Math or Science instead. Rules, universals and
memorized principles apply to those disciplines - pedagogy and communicative
principles do not. But there are reasons why it is still used. The
Grammar Translation Method is still common in many countries - even
popular. Brown in his book Incremental Speech Language attempts to explain why the method is still
employed by stating:
“This method requires few specialized skills on
the part of teachers.”
“Grammar rules and Translation Tests are easy to
construct and can be objectively scored.”
“Many standardized tests of foreign languages
still do not attempt to test communicative abilities, so students have little
motivation to go beyond grammar analogies, translations and other written
exercises.”
The grammar-translation is still used
nowadays and its main technique is translation. General speaking, literary
translation should be followed by free translation; and sentence translation
followed by passage translation. A Grammar-Translation teacher also uses the
following techniques: reading passages from literary works; teaching grammar
using a deductive approach; analyzing and comparing difficult sentences with
students’ first language; memorizing word lists with the first language
translation. And according to the grammar-translation method, grammar is the
most important aspect of language, which is viewed as a system of rules.
Systematic study of grammatical rules plays an important role in fostering
students’ ability of reading comprehension and producing grammatically correct sentences.[7]
Methods of teaching foreign languages is like
your granny’s chest. All can be useful from it in difficult time for you. The
main thing – to have sharp-sighted eye and respect for those who thought and
created for us.
References
1.Ìèðîëþáîâ À.À. “Ãðàììàòèêî-ïåðåâîäíûé ìåòîä”. Æóðíàë “Èíîñòðàííûå ßçûêè â Øêîëå” – âûïóñê ¹4, Ìîñêâà, “Ïðîñâåùåíèå”, 2002
2.Rogova G.V. “Methods of teaching English” – Moscow, “Ïðîñâåùåíèå”, 1983
3.Howatt, A.P.R. “A history of English language
teaching” – Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984
4.Chastain, Kenneth “The development
of modern language skills: theory to practice” - Philadelphia, Center for Curriculum
Development,1971
5.Rivers, Wilga M. “Teaching foreign
language skills” – 2nd
Edition. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1981
6.È.Â.Ðàõìàíîâ “Îñíîâíûå íàïðàâëåíèÿ â ìåòîäèêå ïðåïîäàâàíèÿ èíîñòðàííûõ ÿçûêîâ â 19 – 20 â.â.”. – Ìîñêâà, 1972
7.Richards, J., & Rodgers, T. “Approaches and methods in language
teaching” – 2nd Edition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
2001