JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE TEACHING AND RESEARCH
grammatical rules and vocabulary of the target language using bilingual word lists. It seems that the advocates of this
approach had chosen the principles of Faculty Psychology as the basis for their learning theory (Chastain, 1988). It was
thought that memorizing vocabulary items, grammatical rules, and translation would provide language learners with
useful mental exercise, which would enhance their intellectual growth. Although the prescriptive grammatical rules and
their exceptions formulated by traditional grammarians were taught in this approach, it lacked a justified theory of
language or learning (Richards & Rodgers, 2003).
Vocabulary lists are a familiar part of the lesson in this approach and a typical exercise is to translate lexical items or
sentences from the target language into their mother tongue using dictionaries to (or vice versa). Another exercise given
to the students is a list of words which they are required to find their antonyms or sometimes their synonyms in the
reading passage they are studying or define the words that they encounter in the reading passage. Recognizing cognates
is an exercise mostly given to students in this approach, which means they should identify and learn the spelling or
sound pattern that corresponds between the target language and mother tongue (Larsen-Freeman, 2000).
Although along with teaching grammatical rules deductively emphasis was placed on vocabulary, the main objection
to this approach was that it lacked realistic oral language and the result of this approach was an in ability on the part of
the student to use the language for communication. Zimmerman (1997) states that these objections hold implications for
vocabulary instruction. One of the critics of this approach in the 1860s was Prendergast, in his manual he described how
children learn languages in ready-made chunks and listed what he believed to be the most frequently used words in
English. Prendergast (1864) emphasized that the high frequency words should be taught in ready-made chunks.
Unfortunately, his interest for teaching vocabulary did not catch on.