Reception
The method by definition has a very limited scope. Because speaking or any kind of spontaneous creative output was missing from the curriculum, students would often fail at speaking or even letter writing in the target language. A noteworthy quote describing the effect of this method comes from Bahlsen, who was a student of Plotz, a major proponent of this method in the 19th century. In commenting about writing letters or speaking he said he would be overcome with “ a veritable forest of paragraphs, and an impenetrable thicket of grammatical rules.”
According to Richards and Rogers, the grammar-translation has been rejected as a legitimate language teaching method by modern scholars:
[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 attempt to relate issues in linguistic, psychology, or educational theory.