Translation in Foreign Language Pedagogy: The Rise and Fall of the Grammar Translation Method The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Siefert, Thomas Raymond. 2013. Translation in Foreign Language Pedagogy: The Rise and Fall of the Grammar Translation Method. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:10952296 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Translation in Foreign Language Pedagogy: The Rise and Fall of the Grammar Translation Method A dissertation presented by Thomas Raymond Siefert To the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of Germanic Languages and Literatures Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts May, 2013 © 2013 – Thomas Raymond Siefert All Rights Reserved Dissertation advisor: Thomas Raymond Siefert Professor Peter J. Burgard Abstract Translation in Foreign Language Pedagogy: The Rise and Fall of the Grammar Translation Method Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) is identified as dismissing translation, applying to all “translation” the restricted expression of translation within the discredited Grammar Translation Method (GTM). Recent, negative classifications of the GTM are considered and, this dissertation observes, the concept of the GTM is shown as prone to being mythologized. A summary definition of the GTM is offered. Of the five Prussian language teachers viewed by history as originating the GTM, Joahnn Valentin Meidinger and, to a lesser degree, Heinrich Gottfried Ollendorff are shown offering methods and an approach to translation that are most similar to the definition of the GTM used today. Johann Heinrich Philipp Seidenstücker, Johann Franz Ahn, and Carl Julius Ploetz are found also to stand in the lineage of the GTM, but with important qualifications. The name “Grammar Translation Method” is asserted by this dissertation to originate in the Reform Movement, specifically, Wilhelm Viëtor’s Der Sprachunterricht muß umkehren! (1882) and a lecture of Viëtor’s from 1899. Viëtor is noted characterizing “traditional” methodologies with the terms “Grammatik” and “Übersetzung,” beginning with Meidinger’s Practische Französische Grammatik (1783). Translation is found to remain problematic for the Reform Movement. A separate, concurrent movement, resulting in the Direct Method, is seen banishing all use of translation, and arguably lives on in CLT today. The formulation of a novel definition of the translation of texts is attempted. This definition, along with opinions from Translation Studies, is applied to a statement by Viëtor, where translation is particularly problematized, with the goal of mitigating this problematic. The dissertation recommends that CLT similarly use this definition of translation, so as to mitigate its own skepticism towards translation. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION The Downfall of Translation in Language Teaching Is a Result of Translation’s Obfuscation by and Conflation with the Grammar Translation Method. 1 CHAPTER ONE On the Early History of the Grammar Translation Method. 32 CHAPTER TWO Naming and Characterizing the Prussians’ Method: The Reform Movement and Wilhelm Viëtor’s Important Contribution. 110 CHAPTER THREE Banning Translation for Good: The Direct Method. 175 CONCLUSION Formulating a Novel Definition of Translation, Unbound from the Grammar Translation Method. 217 BIBLIOGRAPHY 264 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Professor Patricia Chaput, for helping me to get focused. Emily Jones, Daniel Le Ray, Geraldine Grimm, Marylou Siefert, Bill Chapman, Paul Reuben, for reading, editing, support, and helping me to get through. v DEDICATIONS To my parents, would that they could have read it. Also to Francis Drury McGinn, III, without whom this never would have gotten written. (Thank you, Frank.) vi INTRODUCTION The Downfall of Translation in Language Teaching Is a Result of Translation’s Obfuscation by and Conflation with the Grammar Translation Method. Disdain of the Grammar Translation Method is widespread today. It can be hard to say which of the following causes most concern for language teachers today: translation-based instruction, grammar-based instruction, or instruction based on the Grammar Translation Method. Animosity towards the Grammar Translation Method (GTM) has been so great that the entire method has by now been largely cast aside by those in the fields of second language (L2) instruction and Second Language Acquisition (SLA).1 The GTM is treated by many now as if it were only a relic of history, unworthy of serious consideration as a viable methodology for language teaching and learning today. See, for example, Richards and Rogers (2001): [T]hough it may be true to say that the Grammar-Translation Method is still widely practiced, it has no advocates. It is a method for which there is no theory. There is no literature that offers a rationale or justification for it or that attempts to relate it to issues in linguistics, psychology, or educational theory. (Richards and Rodgers 2001: 7) In a similar vein, Brown (2007) pronounces his judgement: It is remarkable, in one sense, that this method has been so stalwart among many competing models. It does virtually nothing to enhance a student’s communicative ability in the language. … As we continue to examine theoretical principles in this book, I think we will understand more fully the ‘theorylessness’ of the Grammar Translation Method. (Brown 2007: 16-17, quotation marks in original) And Omaggio Hadley (2001), too, states in convinced terms: 1 I am using L“2”and “S”LA also to refer to third, and further, language instruction and acquisition. Very few, if any of the elements hypothesized to contribute to the development of proficiency are present in the grammar-translation method. … [G]rammar- translation methodology is not necessarily conducive to building toward proficiency and may, in fact, be quite counterproductive. (Omaggio Hadley 2001: 106-107, italics in original) Along with the ousting of the GTM as a whole, its component parts, grammar and translation, have also been widely questioned by the fields of L2 instruction and SLA, although translation has been more roundly rejected than grammar. Grammar cannot actually be ignored when using a language. One can attribute the difference in the fates of grammar and translation after the decline of the GTM’s widespread use to the fact that by definition every language has a grammar that its users agree upon. By implication, a language’s grammar must be learned if that particular language is to be learned. But since a translation of itself is not an essential aspect to any language, no translation must necessarily be learned for learning any one, particular language. (Translation in L2 pedagogy traditionally speaks to the interaction of two languages, not just the operation of one.) Thus, rather than rejecting and banning grammar – which was the fate of translation – L2 instructors and SLA practitioners have instead been developing novel presentations of grammar, often, for example, more intuitive by design, in an effort to avoid associations with the traditionally rote and deductive grammar presentations of the GTM. Therefore, whether one sides with the camp of Universal Grammar espoused by Chomsky (1975) and the subsequent proponents of Language “Acquisition” (as opposed 2 to Language “Learning”) such as Krashen (1981), for whom grammar and language development are considered to be unique human processes separate from other human learning, or with the more recent cognitive camp, who understand grammar and language development not as separate, but rather akin to all human learning and development, knowledge of grammar remains an active goal in language teaching. Or even if one sides with other camps, such as those of the Direct Method, the Audio-Lingual Method, or Communicative Language Teaching (CLT – today’s dominant method), for all of whom the imparting of grammar still remains a goal, even though their inductive approach frowns upon the explicit use of grammar explanation, especially at the beginning stages of language acquisition – grammar has clearly survived in some form or another within the practice of L2 instruction and SLA. Translation, defined much by its use in the GTM, is dispensable. Yet, as opposed to their retention of some form of eventual grammar instruction, the prevailing opinions towards translation in L2 instruction and SLA today can be described as overwhelmingly dismissive, or at best skeptical. Indeed, as G. Cook (2010) notes: Translation in language teaching has been treated as a pariah in almost all of the fashionable high-profile language teaching theories of the 20th century. (G. Cook 2010: xv) However, this dismissive attitude seems undeserved and begs its own skepticism, when we consider that what counts as translation in L2 instruction and SLA literature has typically been understood in overly narrow terms or has been left wholly undefined. 3 At one extreme, some L2 and SLA literature scarcely even mentions translation, as is the case with Lee and VanPatten (2003), who treat translation only twice in their text on language teaching. First, in an unanswered