Grammar Translation Approach
Traditional Approaches to teaching ESL in general have been (1) teacher-
centered and teacher-controlled, (2) very carefully structured, (3) sequenced
mostly by grammar structures to be taught, (4) with discrete units of language
taught separately (part to whole), (5) focused mostly on producing correct form,
(6) with the learner treated as a passive recipient of knowledge about the
language, (7) with little focus on language use for communicative or other
meaningful purposes, (8) with ESL taught by itself (Ovando and Collier, 1998).
One of these approaches is grammar-translation approach.
Grammar-translation was developed in the mid-19 th century. It is
nevertheless used until today in some isolated, unenlightened educational
contexts. Ovando and Collier (1998) stressed that student’s L1 is used a great
deal in a grammar-translation course to explain the grammatical structures of
English, to define vocabulary, and to translate readings in English. The emphasis
of this approach is on the development of reading, writing, and grammar, with
less concern on the development of oral English language development because
of the lack of access to native speakers of English. This usually involves
memorizing long vocabulary lists out of context, deductive instruction of
grammar in which rules are taught explicitly, practice of extensive verb
conjunctions that are committed to memory, and reading literature passages
through translation, with the teacher serving as an authority figure and
providing immediate error correction.
Brown (1993) listed the eight major characteristics of Grammar
Translation: (1) classes are taught in the mother tongue, with little active use of
the target language, (2) much vocabulary is taught in the form of lists of isolated
words, (3) long elaborate explanations of the intricacies of grammar are given, (4)
grammar provides the rules for putting words together, and instruction often
focuses on the form and inflection of words, (5) reading of difficult classical texts
is begun early, (6) little attention is paid to the contexts of texts, which are treated
as exercises in grammatical analysis, (7) often the only drills are exercises in
translating disconnected sentences from the target language into the mother
tongue, (8) little or no attention is given to pronunciation.
Celce-Murcia (2003) has parallel idea to Brown (1993) that “teaching
pronunciation is largely irrelevant under this type of approach” and to Ovando
and Collier (1998) that this method “grammar or text comprehension is taught
through the medium of the learner’s native language, and oral communication in
the target language is not primary instructional objective”.
It is ironic that this method retain so stalwart until very recently among
any other many competing models. It does virtually nothing to enhance a
student’s communicative ability in the language (Brown, 1993). Richards and
Rodgers stressed “it is remembered with distaste by thousands of school
learners, for whom foreign learning meant a tedious experience of memorizing
endless lists of unusable grammar rules and vocabulary and attempting to
produce perfect translations of stilted or literary prose”. They pointed out further
that “grammar-translation has no advocates, which means it is theory-lessness.
There is no literature that offers a rationale or justification for it or that attempts
to relate it to issues in linguistics, psychology, or educational theory” (cited in
Brown, 1993).
