2.2.2 The 19^th Century

During the nineteenth century, the Grammar-Translation Method with its emphasis on the transmission of structural rules and analysis of form (Brown, 1980) served as the principal method of teaching modern and classical languages in schools. As the name suggests, the characterizing feature of the method was its emphasis on translation into and from the target language. The goal of studying a foreign language was to learn the language so as to be able to read its literature. Grammar was taught deductively with the student's native language being the medium of instruction and with a strong emphasis on accuracy (Richards Rodgers, 1986). Little emphasis on speaking or listening to the language was encouraged. Instead, the "book-oriented method" reflected an intellectual activity of mental discipline involving reading and memorization of rules and facts (Stern, 1983). Brown (1980) argues that the theoretical underpinnings of the method were more pedagogical than linguistic or psychological with limited time and resources in schools favouring such an approach. Richards and Rodgers (1986) noted that it was a method without theory or without any literature which might offer a rationale or justification for it. Not surprising then, the Grammar-Translation Method had a negative reputation in the annals of language teaching:

In the final decades of the nineteenth century, grammar translation was attacked as a cold and lifeless approach to language teaching, and it was blamed for the failure of foreign language teaching. The majority of language teaching reforms in the late nineteenth century and throughout the first half of the twentieth developed in opposition to grammar-translation. (Stern, 1983, p. 454)