Situational Language Teaching

Situational Language Teaching (Oral Approach)

The Oral Approach or Situational Language Teaching is an approach developed by British applied linguists in the 1930s to the 1960s. It is little known by many language teachers although it had an impact on language courses and was still used in the design of many widely used EF/ESL textbooks in the 1980s such as Streamline English (Hartley and Viney 1979).
The Oral Approach and Situational Language Teaching relied on the structural view of language. Both speech and strucure were seen to be the basis of language and, especially, speaking ability. This was a view similar to American structuralists, such as Fries. However, the notion of the British applied linguists, such as Firth and Halliday, that structures must be presented in situations in which they could be used, gave Situational LanguageTeaching its distinctiveness.

Vocabulary and grammar control

One of the outstanding features of the method is its emphasis on vocabulary and reading skills learning. This led to the development of principles of vocabulary control. Frequency counts showed that a core of about 2000 words occurred frequently in written text and that a mastery of such an inventory would lead to better reading skills.
Likewise, it has been believed that an analysis of English and a classification of its principal grammatical structures into sentence patterns (or situational tables) could be used to assist learners to internalize the rules and sentence structures.

Behavioristic background

Situation Language Teaching held a is behavioristic stand to language learning. It dealt with the processes rather than the conditions of learning. These processes englobe three stages:

recieving the knwoledge or material
fixing it in memory by repetition
and using it in actual practice until it becomes a personal skill.

The principles of the behavioristic theory of learning can be summerized as follows:

language learning is habit-formation
mistakes are bad and should be avoided, as they make bad habits
language skills are learned more effectively if they are presented orally first, then in written form
analogy is a better foundation for language learning than analysis
the meanings of words can be learned only in a linguistic and cultural context

SLT objectives
Situational Language Teaching aims at the achievement of these objectives:

a practical command of the four basic skills of a language, through structure
accuracy in both pronunciation and grammar
ability to respond quickly and accurately in speech situations
automatic control of basic structures and sentence patterns.

The syllabus, tecniques and activities
Situational Language Teaching uses a structural syllabus and a word list and relied on structural activities including situational presentation of new sentence patterns and drills to practice the patterns. Typical procedure in Situational Language Teaching include

Procedures that move from controlled to freer practice of structures
Procedures that move from oral use of sentence patterns to their automatic use in speech, reading and writing.

A typical situational Language Teaching lesson would start with stress and intonation practice. Then the main body of the lesson might consist of four parts:

revision (to prepare for new work if necessary)
presentation of new structure or vocabulary
oral practice (drilling)
reading of material on the new structure, or written exercises.

Advantages

Although Situational Language Teaching was developed during the 1930s, it still attracts the interest of many teachers. Its strong emphasis on oral practice, grammar and sentence patterns conform to the intuitions of many practically oriented classroom teachers.

Disadvantages

The views of language and language learning underlying Situational Language Teaching were called into question. Chomsky (1957) showed that the structural and the behaviouristic approaches to langauge were erronous and do not account for the fundamental characteristic of language namely the creativity and uniqueness of individual sentences. Children do not acquire their mother tongue through repetition and habit formation. There must be, however, an innate predisposition that lead them to a certain kind of linguistic comptence."PPP" (or the "3Ps") stands for Presentation, Practice and Production - a common approach to communicative language teaching that works through the progression of three sequential stages.

Presentation represents the introduction to a lesson, and necessarily requires the creation of a realistic (or realistic-feeling) "situation" requiring the target language to be learned. This can be achieved through using pictures, dialogs, imagination or actual "classroom situations". The teacher checks to see that the students understand the nature of the situation, then builds the "concept" underlying the language to be learned using small chunks of language that the students already know. Having understood the concept, students are then given the language "model" and angage in choral drills to learn statement, answer and question forms for the target language. This is a very teacher-orientated stage where error correction is important.

Practice usually begins with what is termed "mechanical practice" - open and closed pairwork. Students gradually move into more "communicative practice" involving procedures like information gap activities, dialog creation and controlled roleplays. Practice is seen as the frequency device to create familiarity and confidence with the new language, and a measuring stick for accuracy. The teacher still directs and corrects at this stage, but the classroom is beginning to become more learner-centered.

Production is seen as the culmination of the language learning process, whereby the learners have started to become independent users of the language rather than students of the language. The teacher’s role here is to somehow facilitate a realistic situation or activity where the students instinctively feel the need to actively apply the language they have been practicing. The teacher does not correct or become involved unless students directly appeal to him/her to do so.

The PPP approach is relatively straight forward, and structured enough to be easily understood by both students and new or emerging teachers. It is a good place to start in terms of applying good communicative language teaching in the classroom. It has also been criticized considerably for the very characteristic that makes it the easiest method for ’beginner’ teachers, that is, that it is far too teacher-orientated and over controlled. A nice alternative to ’PPP’ is Harmer’s ’ESA’ (Engage/Study/Activate) - click here to find out more.