语法翻译法

A Brief Introduction to Grammar-Translation Method

(Zhong Qinglun)

Definition

Grammar-translation method is a method of foreign or second language studying or teaching which makes use of translation and grammar study as the main teaching and learning activities. It is a way of studying or teaching a foreign language through detailed analysis of its grammar rules and application of this knowledge to the task of translating sentences into or out of the target language, in one’s mother tongue.

Background

It is more than a thousand years since translation was used in teaching and learning, but it was not until last century that it became one of the scientific teaching methods.

In 18th century, English scholar W. Jones proved that all languages such as the ancient Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, etc. shared one language origin. Hence the historical comparative linguistics, a scientific study of linguistics, developed rapidly. It made textual research of historical evolution, language family and the relationship between language and national psychology. F. V on Humboldt (1767-1835) was one of the representatives.

Greatly influenced by mechanic linguistics and psychology, linguists then held that all languages originated from one and believed that language and thinking were the same. They also thought that the grammars, the concepts, the meanings and even the collocations of words of all the languages were identical. They regarded language as morphological classification and form-flexibility and the morphological difference was in pronunciation and spelling. They stressed the function of systematic grammar rules. They took grammar as something like gum that gummed words and phrase together according to certain grammatical rules. Thus in learning a foreign language what the learner needed to do was translate the foreign language into his native language, literally. Then in foreign language teaching, there was a trend that teachers explained grammatical concepts and rules and then did translations as the main activities in class. Thus the Grammar-Translation Method (GTM) came into being.

In 18th and 19th century, teaching of English, French and German rose quickly. At that time there was no other newer teaching method to be developed, so the GTM, used to teach such dead languages as Latin and Greek, was chosen. In fact it was first made known in the United States in 1845. This school regarded grammar as the first thing to be learned when one studied English. So the English teaching was based on teaching grammar. It dominated foreign language teaching from the 1840s to the 1940s. Some of the representatives of this school were Johann Seideustucker, Karl Plotz, H.S. Ollendorff and Johann Meidinger.

Because GTM has a long history, it has got many different names: grammar method, grammar-translation method, Ollendorff’s method, classical method, traditional method,