A Comparison between "Direct Method" and Grammar "Translation Method". Different Language Teaching Methods

Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2017 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Pedagogy, Literature Studies, grade: 82%, , language: English, abstract: Two methods of teaching foreign languages, the “Direct Method” and the “Grammar Translation Method” are described and compared. The underlying principles with main focus on acquisition of communicative skills and grammatical knowledge respectively are illustrated. Looking at possible results of either method we find that there is no gradual difference between them in the sense of better or worse, but that both have completely different targets. The suggestion is made to combine different methods in order to achieve multiple goals and to vary the emphasis according to individual goals. The most ancient and probably most fundamental controversy in language teaching is the one between “Direct Method” and “Grammar Translation Method”. Both of these have totally different underlying approaches. For interested educational stakeholders or educators, there are two important questions, they should think of before looking for an appropriate method: What do I want the students to achieve? How can the learners reach this goal? One can think of different goals which should be reached by teaching a language and every teacher will want to cover most of them in their teaching. The emphasis however is very divers between the different approaches that have been developed over the years. And the most apparent difference, a completely different idea of how to teach language shows up between the two mentioned methods and their approaches respectively. This is why it is so interesting and exciting to compare these two methods and this is why I will try to tackle that task in this paper. The first and main goal of teaching a language obviously is teaching the language. But here rises already the first question: What is the language that we want the learners to learn? Are we talking about skills in oral or written language? Is our focus more on active or passive language i.e. on speaking and writing or listening and reading respectively? Are we concerned about correctness or fluency? Does correctness mean formulating grammatically correct sentences or texts, does it refer to perfect pronunciation and intonation, are we talking about style aptly adapted to the contextual situation? And does fluency have to do with the speed of writing or speaking, with the ability to develop own ideas and own formulations while speaking or writing rather than using memorized phrases? Or do we want the learners to know about the language, understanding its structure, its roots, its development?