(5) The contents of texts are usually neglected. Instead the texts are often used as the material for teachers to explain
those long and detailed grammatical problems.
(6) Students are required to start to read classics at an early stage.
(7) Students usually only do one kind of exercise. That is translation.
C. Evaluation of Grammar Translation Method
Today, when we look back to reevaluate grammar translation method again, it gets the following judgments:
(1) It exaggerated the function in the learning of a foreign language.
(2) It emphasized too much on the knowledge of language, ignored the training the language skills.
(3) The whole process of foreign language teaching is mechanical, out of the touch of real language environment, no
practical meaning.
(4) It pays attention only to written language instead of spoken language.
Anyhow, people shall never forget that grammar translation method have already done so much for foreign language
teaching. Its contribution is still great.
II. STRUCTURALISM
A. Why Did Structuralism Come into Being?
Some scholars gradually became not satisfied with structuralism when they got to see clearly about the flaws of
traditional grammar. They thought it blocked the way of further research of language. It eventually would cause
negative effect on language development and the development of linguistics. They looked for new approaches to
language study, and this brought about structuralism (structural linguistics).
B. What Is Structuralism?
According to Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics, Structuralism is ―an approach to
linguistics which stresses the importance of language as a system and which investigates the place that linguistic unit
such as sounds, words, sentenced have within this system‖.
Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, called as the father of modern traditional linguist, is widely respected as the
founder of structuralism. He is a major modern linguist who made preparations for structuralism. Saussure affirmed the
validity and necessity of diachronic approaches used by former linguists and then introduced the new synchronic
approach, drawing linguists’ attention to the nature and composition of language and its constituent parts. That is to say,
Saussure holds that language is a highly organic unity with internal and systematic rules.
III. DIFFERENCED BETWEEN TRADITIONAL GRAMMAR AND STRUCTURALISM
If we study the two approaches carefully, we find they have the following differences:
(1) Traditional grammar consider written language to be the first place, spoken language the second. But for
structuralism, it’s just the opposite.
(2) Traditional grammar is prescriptive. It holds that pure language must be in accordance with grammar, otherwise it
corrupts language. Structuralism is descriptive. They think if we want to study language, we must describe language
first. Whether a language is pure or not is just a matter of how we set the criteria.
(3) Traditional grammar classifies languages into different levels according to their closeness to Latin. Latin and the
language of classics are considered to be the perfect languages, the rest are languages of less perfection. Structuralism
denies this. It considers any language of any nation of minority is kind of well-developed communication system.
(4) The description of languages by traditional grammar was a total mess. It often describes languages of different
time together. Structuralism holds that only languages of the same time can be studied, it prefers diachronic study of
languages.
(5) Traditional grammar does study about the inner part of languages independently, it does not view the different
parts of a language are closely related with each other. Structuralism gives systematic study to all the layers of a
language as a general principle.
(6) The description of language by traditional grammar is always subjective because its research is often based on the
meaning rather than language form. However, structuralism gives objective description of language materials. Any
subjective involvement in the description of language is not allowed.
From the above comparison, we can see that their differences are rather huge. Their difference has made us realized
that it was basing on the total destroy of traditional grammar that structuralism came into being. It’s more scientific than
traditional grammar. It more objectively describes languages on a whole. Because of all these, it was welcomed by
scholar since the end of the 19th century, and soon became popular in the whole world.
IV. TWO SCHOOLS OF STRUCTURALISM
Structuralism has two schools, European school and American school. They are not quite the same. Let’s have a look
at them respectively.