1. Translation has been an important part of English language teaching for a long time,
but it has been abandoned since communicative methodologies became dominant
Throughout the history of the teaching of foreign languages, the didact’s have tried to
structure the processes of teaching or learning of a foreign language, through a series of
methodological principles that establish the objectives, contents and procedures of the
language class. Due of this research, many methods, approaches or methodological
conceptions have been born which program the teaching of languages and put it into practice.
This methodological evolution has not been linear, because the methodological currents have
been overlapping in time and some very different have coexisted and coexist in the same
period.
The method of the grammatical translate has some mistakes because doesn´t existed no
attention was paid to the teaching of pronunciation. Its purpose was not to develop oral
communication, but to instruct the person in the knowledge of a language, without
developing a communicative competence.
Since the 80´s decade begun the need that the students use the foreign language as part of his
real and everyday live, is that this manner that is developed the comprehension and the oral
expression in the classroom, the objective is to be able to transmit the appropriate message
related to the context and for this the teaching has a special focus in the diverse uses of diverse
phrases and structures.
As conclusion in my opinion the new communicative methodologies are a good form of
teaching English but sometimes we will need to translate some words as a guide in other
words the translation is implicit in all methodologies but the variation is the frequency with
we use this tool.