Grammar Translation and Direct Approaches - My Views

This is for a peer-graded assignment in the course: Teach English Now! Theories of Second Language Acquisition by Arizona State University through Coursera.

Week 2

Please respond to the following prompts. Each response should be 5-7 sentences.

a. Discuss the differences between the Grammar Translation Approach and the Direct Approach.

The oldest approach from the list is the Grammar Translation Approach which follows the old methods of learning a language through reading novels in their original languages, while the Direct Approach follows the old style of learning a language through a children’s perspective.

These two approaches have huge differences as the Grammar Translation focuses more on the writing and reading skill of the learners while the Direct Approach focuses on listening and speaking skills of the learners.

s said in the module, Grammar Translation can easily be seen in this time through its process which includes comprehension questions and fill-in the blanks, while the Direct Approach may only be seen through student’s self-correction and understanding of pictures, maps and infographics.

The notable techniques that we should dump from these approaches are the “direct translation” from Grammar Translation Approach as languages are very diverse and dynamic that causes them to not have a direct translation (just look at Google Translate! When you translate a language using Google Translate, most of the time you’ll get a gibberish sentence of another language). While in Direct Approach, as much as it would be very effective to learn things like a child, it may not work when a learner studies a language later in their life. Most children now are very good with using multiple languages however, this is due to the fact that their parents and environment honed them to be that way and not all language learners have the same opportunities.

 

 

b. Which approach most closely aligns with your current teaching style?

In my current teaching style, I may have more similarities with Grammar Translation rather than in the Direct Approach. One factor is that my students are all actual students from school and though having them learn a language through Direct Approach may be a good idea, most of them just don’t have an environment where people use English as a medium of speech. It may also be difficult for them to learn through Direct Approach as the time won’t really permit them as they would prefer learning the language quickly and effectively.

Through the Grammar Translation Approach, I could recommend some English novels or articles for them to practice their comprehension skills and use fill-in the blanks drills for them to know how to use vocabulary words correctly.