The grammar-translation method : a tale of the unexpected

Abstract EN

The history of English Language Teaching methodologies is a tale of ambition and accomplishment.

Along this path, English language education worldwide has witnessed the implementation of the different methods and approaches that the literature of foreign language learning/teaching has developed and elaborated, moving from the most ancient classical method, the Grammar- Translation Method, to the most recent one, Communicative Language Teaching, or CLT for short.

Yet, an exhaustive survey of the different methods and approaches would be well beyond the scope of this paper.

Therefore, the focus will be on one of the most controversial classical methods which has dominated foreign language education more than a century and a half, and despite the many criticisms has produced excellent results and high academic standards compared to CLT, with its imperialist dimension and would be ‘onesize- fits-all’ approach, which in the opinion of many longexperienced ELT teachers, ‘failed to deliver the goods’.

The method in question is the Grammar- Translation method.