Grammar-translation language teaching
In the schoolrooms of Europe at the close of the nineteenth century, the teaching of modernforeign languages was heavily influenced by the more established and prestigious academicstudy of the dead classical languages, Latin and Ancient Greek. Curriculum aims were largely amatter of consensus, and thus seldom spelled out as they would be today. Modern languagelearning, it was assumed, brought students into contact with the great national civilizations andtheir literatures. It trained minds in logical thought, developed elegant expression, and perpetuated the study of the language as an academic discipline. The best—if inimitable— examples of the language were its greatest writers: Shakespeare for English, Dante for Italian,Pushkin for Russian, and so forth.