LibGuides: Language Teaching Pedagogy: Grammar Translation Method

What is the Grammar Translation Method?

The grammar translation method hearkens back to approaches used to teach classical literature from ancient Greek and Latin. The method consists of teaching the grammar rules of a target language directly, after which students then apply those rules through translation exercises or drill-style activities whereby solicited grammar structures are produced. This method emphasizes prescriptive grammar - rules about how a language ought to be used - over descriptive grammar - description of how language is actually used by its speakers. This approach often permits usage of students' native language, especially when explaining the grammatical rules of the target language. Despite the age of this approach, one can often see its influence in how many major language textbook publisher structure their chapters and lessons around grammatical concepts - as opposed to communicative goals.

Demonstration and Explanation of the Grammar Translation Method
This webpage from Brigham Young Univeersity offers a video demonstration of the grammar translation method. It also includes an explanation of its rationale, along with sample activities that often accompany this method.

Example of Grammar Translation Method Lesson and Activity

Grammar-Translation-Method-style lesson from Tex's French Grammar
The lesson provides an example of how the grammar-translation method informs - though not wholly - approaches to teaching grammar in contemporary textbooks. The end of this document also shows the types of activities that tend to accompany this approach, namely drill-style activities that solicit the production of a given grammar construction.

Resources for Further Research into the Grammatical Translation Method:

Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching by Jack C. Richards
ISBN: 9781107675964

Publication Date: 2014-04-16

An accessible and comprehensive discussion of teaching methods and approaches. Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching Third edition is an extensive revision of this highly successful book. As in previous editions, both major and alternative approaches and methods are surveyed, with the section on current communicative approaches updated to include new material on CLIL, text and genre-based teaching. The book seeks not only to clarify the assumptions behind these approaches, and their similarities and differences, but also to help teachers explore their own beliefs and practices in language teaching. Further new material deals with other directions in language teaching, such as outcomes-based initiatives, to make this edition fully up-to-date.
Teaching Foreign Language Skills by Wilga M. Rivers
ISBN: 0226720985

Publication Date: 1981-05-15

Since its original publication in 1968, Rivers’s comprehensive and practical text has become a standard reference for both student teachers and veteran instructors. All who wish to draw from the most recent thinking in the field will welcome this new edition. Methodology is appraised, followed up by discussions on such matters as keeping students of differing abilities active, evaluating textbooks, using language labs creatively, and preparing effective exercises and drills. The author ends each chapter of this new edition with questions for research and discussion—a useful classroom tool—and provides an up-to-date bibliography that facilitates further understanding of such matters as the bilingual classroom.