Introduction
Grammar translation (hereafter GT) was originally associated with the teaching of Latin and – to a much lesser extent - ancient Greek. Interestingly, as Howatt (1984:131) points out, 'grammar' and 'translation' are actually not the distinctive features of GT, since they were already well-accepted as basic principles of language teaching. What was new was the use of invented, graded sentences rather than authentic(!) literary texts in order to make language learning easier.
The aim of teaching Latin and Greek was (and is) obviously not so that learners would be able to speak them. The aims were/are rather: