A History of ELT 1

English Language Teaching in Europe

12. The Grammar-Translation Method

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The Origins of The Method

• The method is so ordinary that it is difficult to see what all the fuss was about. Each new lesson had one or two new grammar rules, a short vocabulary list, and some practice examples to translate.

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The Origins of The Method• Developed for Secondary Schools• It could be called ‘’the grammar school method’’• The label is misleading in some respects• Before 1800, most language learners were scholars, they were highly

educated and their way of language learning was not appropriate for younger pupils.

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The Origins of The Method• The primary aim was to make the language learning easier.• The central feature was the replacement of traditional texts by

exemplificatory sentences.• The earliest course published in 1793 by Johann Christian Fick in

Germany. • (Practical English course for Germans of both sexes, Following the Method of Meidinger’s

French Grammar)

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The Origins of The Method• It focused on accuracy with the aim of success in formal written

exams.• They exemplify the grammar in a more concentrated way than the

texts do.• Grammar-translation textbooks were graded (not in the modern

sense) and presented grammar points one by one in an organised way.

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Language Teaching in SchoolsSome Anglo-German Contrasts

• To understand how the Grammar Translation method developed better, it is important to relate foreign language teaching to a broader framework of educational and social change.• The contrast between Germany and England is worth exploring as;• Germany was considered the model of advanced educational thought at the

time• Germany was later to provide the cutting-edge of the Reform Movement

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In England;• The most significant development in middle-class education was the

establishment of system of public examinations controlled by universities in 1850s.

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The effects of Public Examination System• The washback effect of these exams were determining both the content of the language teaching and methodologicalprinciples of the teachers.• Fixing the priorities of Grammar Translation Method.• Setting and maintaining academic standards.

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Oxford Vs. Cambridge• Approaches were made to Oxford and Cambridge in 1857.• They accepted it, but

• The attempts to amalgamate the two boards failed and they continued their separate ways.

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Cambridge• Far-teaching (especially education

of women)• Establishment of Over seas

Examination in 1863 (with 10 candidates)• There were practical obstacles for

the system but it expanded in time• This lead to increase the status of

modern languages and English by including them on the curriculum alongside the classical languages

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Side effects of this policy;• Allowing the public schools (like Eton, Harrow) to opt out on the grounds that they did not teach modern subjects.• Modern languages and English has lost academic prestige through

their association with the locals, and social prestige by their exclusion from the best schools.• Eventually, universities came around to the notion of instituting

modern language degrees. (Cambridge in 1880s, and Oxford 20 years later)

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• ***This university involvement in determining the content of secondary school curriculum effectively stifled the reform of language teaching in England at the end of the nineteenth century.

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Language Learning by Adults: the ‘’practical approach of Ahn and Ollendorff• The transport facilities changed the role of languages as a means of

communication.• National rivalries prevented the emergence of Lingua Franca.• If people were to exploit the opportunities offered by the railways,

they had to learn the languages spoken at the end of the line.

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As a result;• Demand increased for travellers’ phrasebooks. (like Bartels’ Modern

Linguist series in the 1850s)• There was also a need for textbooks.• 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 his rival

Ollendorff year later.• Until the emergence specialist language schools like Berlitz 1880s, they

dominated the scene for almost half a century.

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• Changes were not restricted to European continent.• Emigration to the United States from every country in Europe,

brought with it a growing practical competence in English.• The industrialization of the second half of the nineteeth century

created a new class of language learner, and therefore could not be expected to learn foreign languages by traditional methods.

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• A new approach was needed which would suit the new learners’ particular circumstances and it eventually in the form of ‘direct’ methods which required no knowledge of grammar at all.

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Franz Ahn (1796-1865)

• Had no ‘bright ideas’ about language teaching and never promised to teach a language in six months.• Unlike his many imitators, his work was modest, compact and useful.• The public got what it was promised, a simple introduction to a

foreign language, taught through a ‘new, practical, and easy method’• He published his first textbook in 1827. It was a French reader for

German learners.

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A new, Practical, and Easy Method• Ahn’s method lives up to its title; practical and easy.• Grammar notes require only a minimum knowledge.• The vocabulary is useful.• The practice sentences are short and easy to translate.• His textbooks follow a method that is largely the result of his intuitive

feeling for simplicity; • They proceed one step at a time,• Not too many words in each lesson,• Plenty of practice

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• ***The disconnected sentences of grammar-translation approach are no sillier the ‘scientific’ drills of the audiolingual method with which they share many features. Both are inevitable outcome of two basic principles;• Language teaching course can be based on sequence of linguistic categories• These categories can be exemplified in sample sentences for intensive

practice

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Heinrich Gottfried Ollendorff• The earliest examples of the Ollendorff method, called A New Method

of Learning to Read, Write, and Speak a Language in Six Months. • It taught German to French and English speakers.• Later he brought out courses adapted to teach French (1843), Italian

(1846), English (1848) and other.• Exercise examples are always given in the learner’s mother tongue for

translation.• They are intended to provide materials for ‘’conversations’’ between

teacher and student.

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Two Original Feature of Ollendorff’s Courses• Curious and rather obscure theory of interaction on which he based

all his exercises. (there are a lot of exercises in his books)• System of linguistic grading.

• Ollendorff says ‘’ my system of acquiring a living language is founded on the principle that each question contains nearly the answer which one ought or which one wishes to make to it’

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Individual Reformers

• Interest in methods was not confined to Reform Movement.• It rose steadily as the practical

need for foreign languages grew in importance.• The work of pre-reform

movement writers is virtually unknown today

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• The ideas of pre-reformer were either ignored by the Reformers or condemned along with the traditional school methods as ‘out of date’.• Nevertheless, in spite of their shortcomings, they are worth discussing

and four of them in particular;• Jacorot• Marcel• Prendergest• Gouin

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‘All is in All: Jean Joseph Jacotot (1770-1840)• Became a language teacher by accident.• After the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, he was exceledto Belgium. • He taught French at university but he was not a Flemish-speaker.• Confronted by this challenge, he devised the earliest example of

monolingual methods for language classroom.

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• He asked his students to hunt through the rest of the book for further examples of the words he had just read.• He supplemented the text study with comprehension questions and

other forms of linguistic work, insisting that the students should look for similarities and differences.• He realized not only was explanation unnecessary, it was actually

wrong.• Every individual had a God-given ability to instruct himself.• The function of a teacher was to respond to the learner, not to direct

and control him by explaining things in advance.

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The Rational Method of Claude Marcel (1793-1876)• With the work of Claude Marcel, the similarities with the current methods are striking.• His first priority in language teaching is the teaching of reading.• His principal work was a massive two-volume study of the role of

language in education called Language as a means of Mental Culture and International Communication. It was published in 1853 when he was a French Consul in Cork, Ireland.

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• He attempts to define a role for the teaching of languages, native and foreign, modern and classical, in the context of a far-ranging study of the nature, purpose, and structure of education.

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According to Marcel• There is a difference between

impression and expression.• They together constitute the

double object of language.

• impression•• Reception

• expression

• Production

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• He makes another subdivision between spoken and written language, giving rise to Marcel’s ‘four branches’ of language study: hearing, speaking, reading and writing, (the four skills of modern times).

• Much of his work is taken up with the problem of ordering the priorities among the four branches, in the light of educational and pedagogical demands and constraints.

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• Having identified ‘parents, teachers, and method ‘as’ the great agents of education, he sets out to define the characteristics of a good method.

• THE METHOD OF NATURE

• ‘’The method of nature is the archetype of all methods, and especially of the method of learning languages.

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Crucial Characteristics of The Method of Nature• The mind should be impressed with the idea before it takes

cognizance of the sign that represents it.• Marcel’s belief in the precedence of impression implied the prior

importance of the two impression branches reading and hearing over the two expressive branches; speaking and writing.

• This belief led Marcel to design the Rational Method of language teaching. His next task was to accommodate the contrast between written and spoken language.

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Distinction between Analytic and Synthetic Methods• Analytic methods • Example• Practice• Experience

The analytic method brings the learner in immediate contact with the objects of study.Synthetic method disregards example and imitation; it turns the attention of the learner to principles and rules, in order to lead him, by an indirect course, to the objects of study.

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• According to Marcel, the child learning its mother tongue is the obvious master-example of the ‘Method of Nature’ , and the perennial question arises whether this provides a model for foreign language classroom. Marcel believed that, it did, provided that the learners were under the age of twelve.

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Tomas Prendergast’s ‘Mastery System’(1806-1886)• He is the only Englishmen among the earlier nineteenth-century reformers.• The basic manual of the system, called The Mastery of Languages, or the

art of speaking foreign languages idiomatically, appeared in 1964 and it was followed by a number of sample mastery courses;• French and German 1868• Spanish 1869• Latin 1872• Hebrew 1871

The system undoubtedly based on isolated sentences. (Sentence generating technique)

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The Seven Steps of Prendergast’s Method• Step 1: Memorization of five or six sentences making up about one

hundred words.• Step 2: The learner ,moved on the written language.• Step 3 and 4: Manipulation of the model sentences (evaluations) and

the acquisition of the further models.• The last three steps deal with the development of reading and

conversation skills.

• He made considerable use of translation but insisted that it should be ‘cursory observation, not close study- Habituation not investigation.

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Frençois Gouin and the ‘Series’ (1831-1896)• Published his major work, The art of Teaching and Studying

Languages, in Paris in 1880, on the eve of the Reform Movement. • The English translation appeared in London in 1892.• The central concept was that the structure of a language text

reflected the structure of the experience it described.• He believed that sequentiality was the primary feature of experience

and that all events could be described in terms of a ‘series’ of smaller component events.

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He claimed four particular advanteges;• 1. Each phrase expressing a detail, a new fact, the repetition of the

same subjects.• 2. The natural repetition of the same nouns, constant and periodic

return of the thought towards the same object. (Memorization)• 3. The same repetition and perpetual recurrence of the same sound is

the essential condition for good pronunciation.• 4. The listener, feeling himself safe in this repetition of the subjects

and complements, turns the principal effort of his attention quite naturally upon the verb.

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• The most obvious practical drawback to Gouin’s system is the over abundance of third-person statements though he attempted to solve this problem by including a selection of everydy dialogue phrases.