Characteristics of Grammar Translation Method

31 method fail to express themselves adequately in spoken English. Event at the undergraduate stage they feel shy of communicating through English. It has been observed that in a class, which is taught English through this method, learners listen to the mother tongue more than that to the second foreign language. Since language learning involves habit formation such students fail to acquire habit of speaking English. Thus, they have to pay a heavy price for being taught through this method.

c. Exact translation is not possible

Translation is indeed, a difficult task and exact translation from one language to another is not always possible. A language is the result of various customs, traditions and modes of behavior of speech community and these traditions differ from community to community. There are several lexical items in one language, which have no synonyms equivalents in another language. For instance, the meaning of the English word „table’ does not fit in such expression as the „table’ of contents „table of figures’, „multiplication table4, „time table’ and „table the resolution’, etc. English preposition are also difficult to translate. Consider sentences such as „We see with our eyes’, „Bombay is far from Delhi’, „He died of cholera’, „He succeeded through hard work’. In these sentences „with’, „from’, „of, „through’, can be translated into the Hindi preposition „se’ and vice versa. Each language has its own structure, idioms and usage, which do not have their exact counterparts in another language. Thus, translation should be cons idered an index of one’s proficiency in a language.

d. It does not give pattern practice.

A person can learn a language only when he internalize its patterns to the extent that they from his habit. But the Grammar Translation method does not provide any such practice to the learner of a language. It rather attempts to teach language through rules and not by use. Researchers in linguistics have proved that to speak any language, whether native or foreign entirely by rule is quite impossible. Language learning means acquiring certain skills, which can be learnt 32 through practice and not by just memorizing rules. The person who have learnt a foreign or second language through this method find it difficult to give up the habit of first thinking in their mother tongue and then translating their ideas into the second language. They, therefore, fail to get proficiency in the second language approximating that in the first language. The method, therefore, suffers from certain weakness of which there is no remedy 24 .

3. Vocabulary

Before discussing vocabulary use, first of all we should know the meaning of it. Vocabulary is total number of words which with rules for combining them make up a language, or range of words known to, or used by, a person, in trade, profession, etc 13 . The word “use” has a meaning as the function or the advantage. So we can say that from the definition-above the vocabulary use is the function or the use of words which are used in language. It means that when we use words, we should know the function or the use of our words our vocabularies because it can guide us in understating the language which we learn. Moreover, vocabulary is central to both the system and the use of language. The words that we pronounce write and organize into sentences and other grammatical combinations. Words are also, what ordinary users think of as language. For, they are accessible and reflected more fully the whole culture and respond more quickly to changes in society than do other aspects of language 14 . Mastering vocabulary is the ability to get or and to receive lots of words. By having and mastering vocabulary, we will know the meaning of vocabulary in the context. It can also help to avoid making the mistakes in identifying a language with the dictionary and guide us in making the equivalence of the second language to the native language. 24 http:purwarno-Linguistics.blogspoi.com20Q6Qlgrainniar-lranslation-method- 13.html 13 Hornby, Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary., p. 1959 14 Suzanne Romaine, The Cambridge History of the English Language, Vol. IV Cambridge: UK, 1998, P. 57