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Theories, Methods & Techniques of Teaching - Grammar Translation

 

The purpose of grammar translation then is to basically translate between L1 and L2 and vice versa. So, we could take a simple example. Let's imagine that our native language was English and our target language was French and let's assume that we want to translate a document from French into English. Let's take a simple sentence. Here's a sentence in French "Ouvre la fenêtre" and we'll add "s'il vous plaît" at the end. What we want to do is to take this L2 and translate it back into English. Now, if we have a reasonable knowledge of French then we may well know that this particular verb "ouvre" "to open" translates directly and this female form of the and finally the fenêtre "Open the window" and this polite form of "please". This is all very well if the two structures that we're translating between the L1 and L2 have a common grammar, which French and English usually do. However, one problem that we do get with this particular classical method, is that if the grammar structures are not the same, then it's very difficult to translate between the two things.


Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured design means that you can quickly get to grips with each section before moving onto the next.

This unit was a good basic foundation of how to gauge learners and teachers and what the various roles of students and teachers are. It was very helpful for laying important groundwork. I especially liked learning about how a teacher needs to be flexible filling so many roles. Students must be ready t learn and the teacher should be able to coax good learning habits from them.Classroom management is one area I have always not known much about. Learning about this has been very helpful. I have learned about how a teacher should interact with the students as well as how important it is to have a classroom set up well and so much more. I didn't know that even these detail could help in classroom management. The unit answered a lot of questions I had.



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