Teaching compound verbs in second language learning using grammar-translation method

Although grammar-translation method has been disqualified by most recent scholars and although audio-lingual and communicative methods are backed up by many of people involved in teaching second languages, it still seems that the former method is applicable at least for some specific purposes in teaching a second language. In this study, the grammar-translation method has been used to teach compound verbs in Persian (an Indo-European language) to English speaker students. Compound verbs in Persian are like idioms in which the meaning of single components is different from the meaning of the whole verb. Learning the meaning of these verbs is always a challenging task for Persian learners. In this study, two different lists of compound verbs were prepared. One list was taught by using the current communicative and audio-lingual methods where the verbs were taught as a whole without telling about single components' meaning. The other list was taught by using literal translation of the verbs. That is, for each verb, first the meaning of its components and then the verb as a whole were taught to the students. The results showed that using the latter method helps the students learn the verbs faster and maintaining the meaning of the verbs is longer than in the other methods. That is, when the learners know about the meaning of the components of the verb, they learn the meaning of the whole verb faster and easier.

Key Phrase: English Education, Literacy and Languages (including TESOL, LOTE and ESL)