1. Universidad Católica de la Ssma. Concepción
Facultad de Educación
Pedagogía Media en Inglés
Didáctica en Inglés 1
CMAP Progress
“Grammar Translation Approach” Fernando Alexi Peña Salinas
Gabriel Fernando Jara Muñoz
• Historical Context: This Approach has its “roots” in the concepts that
formed the educational system of countries in Europe during the 18th and
19th century, the conception that society had about human mind and what
elements a person should possessed in order to be competent in the world.
One of those elements were Greek and Latin Literature, and it seemed to be
that the only way to teach them was through the classical method focus
primarily on grammar and vocabulary issues1. Therefore, there was no need
of using communicative or oral skills, for that was not the goal of this
method of teaching.
• Teacher’s Role: The role of the teacher in the classroom is moderately
simple, reduced and even mechanized. Grammar translation method
requires few specialized skills from the educator2 (he/she teaches in his/her
mother tongue), which means that the delivery of the “contents” (basically
grammar rules, vocabulary, conjugations and text translations) are easy to
present (written exercises-long explanations focus on grammar issues) and
to evaluate (written tests) for the main aim of this approach is to enhance
students’ vocabulary, making them able to read and study other contents or
books in a foreign or second language.
1
Brown, D.(1994) Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy, pp 18
2
Brown, D.(1994) Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy, pp 19

2. • Student’s Role: The role of the student is basically limited to a few
actions, which are to memorize, to conjugate and to translate3. Because the
goal of this method is not to develop oral or communicative skills, the
student is restricted only to do written exercises in order to gain vocabulary,
memorize structure of sentences or translate texts.
• Role of the Abilities: The Grammar translation method is focused on
grammatical rules and the written part of the language (Brown, D. 1994), in
order to make the learner able to understand it in this form. Therefore, as
its name suggests, the abilities focused on this method are the ones
required for understanding grammatical rules, memorization of vocabulary
and its transformation within the language, the translation of texts, and
obviously the ability to exercise and produce in a written way. That is
because is based on the Classic Method, which at the beginning was
used for teaching Greek and Latin, which are mainly found in their written
expressions.
• Summary of a class: Because of the low specialized skills required to the
teacher as Brown (1994) says, the class follows a certain structure which
consist of delivering the content (vocabulary) with no context, in the
learners mother tongue, followed by explanations of grammatical issues
(rules, collocations etc). Then all of those rules are applied on text
translation wherein no attention is paid to pronunciation4. Usually in class,
vocabulary is written in the whiteboard, and students have to memorize it
and then translate a text in order to apply new vocabulary5.
3
Brown, D.(1994) Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy, pp 19
4
Brown, D.(1994) Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy, pp 19
5
Murphy School of Education, (2010), Grammar Translation Method in EFL Class. Japan

3. • Advantages and Disadvantages:
Advantages:
- Reading of difficult classical text is begun early. This could obviously mean an
early development of complex grammatical structures and vocabulary
(Prator and Celce-Murcia 1973).
- Elaboration of tests, as it is only focused on few skills, both from teachers as a
requirement, and students as goal, are easy to construct and can be easily
prepared.
- Although it does not develop the required communicative skills for nowadays
linguistic competence in foreign language learning, it has remained to be stalwart
among many competing models (Brown, D. 1994).
Disadvantages:
- Prator and Celce-Murcia (1973) Classes taught in mother tongue, with little active
use of language, which means that students are not developing skills for
communicating in an oral way, and are prepared for being "scholarly" (Brown, D.
1994).
- (Richard & Rodgers 1986) this method has no supporters and no theory. and as
pointed in "Teaching by Principles", (Brown, D. 1994), at the beginning, there were
few if any theoretical foundations of language learning upon which to base
teaching methodology, therefore, this method, based on the Classical Method is
influenced by that beginning.
- Prator and Celce-Murcia (1973) Even though it is aimed on translations of texts,
little attention is paid to the ontent of texts, which are treated as a source for
exercises. Analysis of structures is more relevant than meaning of the texts.

4. • Brown's principles present: The Grammar Translation Approach is a
quiet difficult method in terms of matching it with a Brown’s Principle,
mainly because many of the principles are focus on the Student (student-
centered) and the more communicative approaches, however there are
some aspects of certain principles that might be present in grammar
translation method:
1. Principle 10: The Native Language Effect:
The Grammar Translation Approach presents the contents in the learners
mother tongue, therefore as this principle suggest (Brown, 1994) teachers
can use the native language in classroom as long as it helps in the student
learning process, mainly because it can facilitate the way learners structure
the sentences or the order of words.
2. Principle 12: Communicative Competence
As its name suggest this principle aims to develop competences in the
learner in many aspect such as “organizational competence (grammatical
and discourse), pragmatic competence (functional and sociolinguistic) and
psychomotor skills6” (Bachman 1990 and Canale & Swain 1980
aforementioned in Brown 1994). However it is necessary to mention that
this principle does contemplate and integrate grammar explanations, drills
or exercises, but just as a part of the class, for the main objective is to
develop all of the skills in the learner.
6
Brown, D.(1994) Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy, pp 79