Three of the earliest teaching methods were the Grammar-Translation Method, the Direct Method, and the Audio-lingual Method. Discuss these three methods. Also, explain their shortcomings which led to more current approaches in the teaching of grammar to L2 speakers.
1. i) Grammar Translation Method (GTM): Grammar-translation method is the extension of the Classical method which began in Germany (Prussia) in the late 18th century. It was then become popular in the early 19th century. It is one of the earliest teaching methods and was considered as the first institutionalized and the oldest method of language teaching. This is because; GTM was an adopted language teaching method in various schools. In the book, “The Empirical Evidence
But there are children who learn more with visual rather than their oral-aural sense like ears and tongue. Other than that, the method ignores systematic written work and reading activities while sufficient attention is not paid to reading and writing. Besides that, in this method, grammar is closely connected with the reader. Thus, difficulty is experienced in providing readers of such kind. In addition, there are few trained teachers who are interested in teaching English using this method. This is because; this method may not hold well in higher classes where the Translation method is found suitable. Moreover, in larger classes, this method is not properly applied. Therefore, teaching this method may not suit or satisfy the needs of individual students. Due to these weaknesses in Direct method, linguist has come out with a new set of method that is known as Audio Lingual method.

3. i) Audio-Lingual Method (ALM): In the early 1940s, much of education gets their influenced from the Behaviorism theory. The Audio-Lingual method of teaching was originally introduced during the World War II when it is known as the Army method. This method was also called the Aural oral approach. Audio-Lingual method or ALM is based on the structural view of language and the behaviorist theory of language learning. The purpose of this method is to teach the soldiers L2 such as German or Japanese. Following this principles, ALM