EDUCATION
The grammar translation method instructs students in grammar,
and provides vocabulary with direct translations to memorize.
It was the predominant method in Europe in the 19th century.
Most instructors now acknowledge that this method is
ineffective by itself. It is used by many Latin teachers,
because a dead language is usually only written.
At the
school, the teaching of grammar consists of a training of
the rules of the language which must make it possible to all
the pupils who attend it to correctly express their opinion,
to understand the remarks which are addressed to them and to
analyze the texts which they read. The objective is that at
the exit of the college, the pupil controls the tools of the
language which are the vocabulary, grammar and the
orthography, to be able to read, understand and write texts
in various contexts. The teaching of grammar brings to
examine the texts, and to become aware that the language
constitutes a system which can be analyzed. This knowledge
is acquired gradually, by traversing the facts of language
and the syntactic mechanisms of English, while going from
simplest to most complex.The exercises according to the
program of the course must untiringly be practised to allow
the assimilation of the rules stated in the course.That
supposes that the Master corrects the exercises. The pupil
can follow his progress in practice of the language by
comparing his results. Thus can he adapt the grammatical
rules and control little by little the internal logic of the
syntactic system.The grammatical analysis of the sentences
constitutes the objective of the teaching of grammar at the
school.Its practice makes it possible to recognize a text
like a coherent whole and conditions the training of a
foreign language. The grammatical terminology serves this
objective.Grammar makes it possible each one to understand
how the mother tongue ********s, in order to give him the
capacity to communicate its thought.
Language education in the United States
Most students start learning a foreign language in high
school or late middle school. Students are sometimes
required to take a certain amount (on average two years) of
foreign language study in order to graduate; in some states
or school systems, this is a requirement only of certain
graduation plans (e.g. college preparatory).