The direct method established a concept of language learning very different from that implicit in grammar-translation. Knowledge of a language was no longer an object of scholarship attainable simply by hard work. Success was to be measured instead by the degree to which the learner’s language proficiency approximated to that of the native speaker, a goal which was not at that time seen as problematic. This led the way to further changes in both popular and applied linguistics ideas about how a language might be learned.