History of Foreign Language Teaching methods and stages of its development

Disadvantages of grammar-translation method:

• 1. The grammatical analysis was very neat and satisfactory for the grammarians who had devised it, but it often made facts about the language very confusing to the students.
• 2.The method put a tremendous strain on students' memories.
• 3.Word-to-word translations were often unsatisfactory.
• 4. The students had to learn a lot of grammatical terms ( noun, tense, indicative, etc). In fact, they had to learn a new language, talking about language.

The Direct Method

• The Direct Method has one very basic rule:
• No translation is allowed.
• Meaning is to be conveyed directly in the target language through the use of demonstration and visual aids.

The Direct Method Principles

• Language is primarily speech.
• Culture consists of more than the fine arts (e.g. the students study geography and cultural attitudes).
• The reading skill will be developed through practice with speaking.
• The native language should not be used in the classroom.