ABSTRACT
Foreign language teaching has a long tradition in Germany. Theories on how to teach modern languages most efficiently were developed in the nineteenth century. At the beginning of the twentieth century, methodological approaches based largely on grammar and translation were replaced by a new approach – the so-called ‘direct method’. As explained in chapter 2, this approach was based on such principles as use of authentic materials, focus on content and not on language, and the exclusive use of the foreign language in the classroom. Although the direct method was very popular among language teaching theoreticians until the beginning of the Second World War, practising teachers, in general, preferred to teach modern languages in a fairly traditional way, focusing on grammar and on vocabulary learning and relying on text-books and other materials specially prepared for the classroom.
