Second Language Learning and Language Teaching

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grammar-translation method: the traditional academic style of teaching,
which places heavy emphasis on grammar explanation and translation as a
teaching technique
Keywords

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The core aspects of these classrooms are texts, traditional grammar and transla-
tion. Conscious understanding of grammar and awareness of the links between the
first and the second language are seen as vital to learning. The academic teaching
style is sometimes known as the grammar-translation method for this reason. The
style is similar in concept to Marton’s reconstructive strategy or Allen et al.’s ana-
lytic activities. It is a time-honoured way of teaching foreign languages in Western
culture, popular in secondary schools and widespread in the teaching of advanced
students in university systems around the world. James Coleman (1996) said that
when he started teaching in an English university, he found the grammar-transla-
tion method ‘was clearly the most popular approach to language teaching in the
universities’. The academic style can involve aspects of language other than gram-
mar. A teacher explains how to apologize in the target language – ‘When you bump
into someone on the street you say “sorry”’; a teacher describes where to put the
tongue to make the sound /
θ/ in ‘think’ – both of these are slipping into an aca-
demic style where the pupils have to understand the abstract explanation before
applying it to their own speech. The difference from later styles is that, in the aca-
demic style, explicit grammar itself is the main point of the lesson.
Translation is the component of the style that has had the least effect on tradi-
tional EFL teaching. For historical reasons, EFL has avoided the first language,
both in methodology and in the coursebooks produced in England. One reason 
is the use in many countries of expatriate native speaker teachers who do not
know the first language of the students and so cannot translate, one of the hand-
icaps for the native speaker teacher, described in Chapter 11. The other is the
prevalence within England of multilingual EFL classes, where the teacher would
be quite unable to use the many first languages the students speak. So the transla-
tion component of academic teaching tends to be found in countries that use
locally produced materials with local teachers – the secondary school lessons
mentioned above were actually observed in Gaza, where foreign coursebooks and
native speakers of English are in short supply.
The academic style does not directly teach people to use the language for some
external purpose outside the classroom; translation, for example, is a means, not an
end. To use the division made in Chapter 10 between international, local and
national goals, the academic style is ostensibly aimed primarily at the individual goal
of L2 learning as an academic subject; in other words, it aims to create Lang
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linguis-
tic competence (sheer language knowledge) in the students’ minds, rather than
something to be used directly. In addition, it often claims to train the students to
think better, to appreciate other cultures and to gain other educational advantages.
But the academic style is nevertheless supposed to prepare the student for the
actual use of language. By developing academic knowledge, the student eventually
becomes able to use the second language in situations outside the classroom. While
the style does not directly practise language use itself, it aims to provide a basis for
language use when the student requires it. Hence the undoubted popularity
among students of grammar books such as Basic Grammar in Use (Murphy, 2002).
Despite the lack of explicit grammar in most contemporary teaching methods,
students continue to believe that this will help them.
The academic style sees the acquisition of competence as getting hold of tradi-
tional rules and lists of vocabulary. Its syllabus largely consists of a list of gram-
matical points and vocabulary items. One of the first courses I ever taught,