Cecle-Murcia 2001 classifies the major trends in language teaching in the twentieth century into nine approaches namely Grammar-Translation Direct Reading Audiolingualism Oral-situational cognitive affective-humanistic comprehension-based and communicative. The importance given to vocabulary and the way it was taught within each of these approaches are briefly discussed in the next part.
Grammar Translation Approach
Grammar translation an extension of the approach used to teach classical language to the teaching of modern languages dominated foreign language teaching from the 1840s to the 1940s . in its modified from this approach continues to be widely used in some parts of the word to day. The fundamental goal of learning a foregin language in grammar translation approach is to be able to read its literature. In order to do so students are expected to learn the grammatical rules and vocabulary of the target language using bilingual word lists. It seem that the advocate of this approach had chosen the principles of faculty Psychology as the basis for their learning theory. It was thought that memorizing vocabulary items grammatical rules and translation would provide language learners with useful mental exercise which would chance their intellectual growth. Although the prescriptive grammatical rules and their exception formularted by traditional grammarian were taught in this approach it lacked a justifiend theory of language or learning
Vocabulary lists are a familiar part of the lesson in this approach and a typical exercise is to translator lexical items or sentence from the target language into their mother tongue using dictionaries to .another exercise given to the student is a list of word which they are required to find their antonyms or sometime their synonyms in the reading passage they are studying or define the word that they encounter in the reading passage. Recognizing cognates is and exercise mostly given to student in this approach which means they should identify and learn the spelling or sound pattern that corresponds between the traget language and mother tongue .
Although along whit 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 states that this objection hold implication for vocabulary instruction. One of the critics of this approach in the 1860 was Prendergast in his manual he described how children learn language in ready-made chunks and listed what he believed to be the most frequently used word in English. Prendergast emphasized that the hide frequency word should be taught in ready-made chunks. Unfortunately his interest for teaching vocabulary did not catch on.
Direct approach
By the end of the nineteenth century Direct Approach or method as reaction to the grammar translation approach and its failure to produce learner who could communication in the foreign language they were studying. This approach stressed the ability to use rather than analyze a language as the goal of language instruction or in other word approach stressed the ability to use rather than analyze a language as the goal of language instruction or in other word the main goal was to train students to communication in the target language and to have an acceptable pronunciation. In this approach the learner are expected to imitate and practice the target language until they become fluent and accurate speakers and as there is so translation it is assumed they that will learn to think in the target language.