A brief History of Language. II

A BRIEF HISTORY OF LANGUAGE.

Throw the years has been exist so many methods to teach a language. The concern that have prompted modern method innovations were similar to those that have always been at the center of discussions on how to teach foreign languages.

 Textbooks consisted of abstract grammar rules, lists of vocabulary, and sentences for translations. Speaking the foreign language was not the goal, and oral practice was limited to students reading aloud the sentences they had translated. Nineteenth-century textbook compilers were mainly determined to codify the foreign language into frozen rules of morphology and syntax to be explained and eventually memorized. The object of this was to know all about something rather than the thing itself.

Grammar translation dominated European and foreign language teaching from 1840s to 1940s.

In our opinion of grammar - translating method and the way of forget the speaking and listening skills is that students could be able to understand text and written text but they were not able to create a communicative performance. Now at day some schools teach in the translation- method because some teachers are not at all English teachers and they teach as they remember they was taught years ago , only repeating the same method.

Liliana M. Juan Carlos R.

The History of Teaching English as a Foreign Language, from a British and European Perspective

A. P. R. Howatt Retired, University of Edinburgh, UK

Richard Smith                    University of Warwick, UK