With the greater interest in mordern languages

[시너먼]

for communication the inadequacy of grammer-translation methods became evident.

Students who devoted years to the study of a foreign language were in most cases unable to use it.

They developed a distaste for the language and an inferiority complex about language learning in general.

These failures are readily understood today.

Translation as a class activity was erroneously equated with understanding, speaking, reading and writing, which are very different skills and need to be learned as such.

The ability to talk about the grammer of a language, to recite its rule, is also very different from the ability to speak and to understand a language or to read and write it.

Often those who can use a language are unable to recite its rules, and those who can recite its rules may be unable to use it.