The Oral Approach and Situational Language Teaching

Oral Approach or Situational Language Teaching refer to an approach to language teaching developed by British applied linguist  fron the 1930s to the 1960s. Even though neihter term s commonly used today, the impact of the Oral Approach has been long lasting and it has shaped the design of many widely used EFL/ESL textbook and courses, including many still being used today.
The origin of this approach began with the work of British applied linguists in the 1920s and 1930s. Beggining of this time a number of outstanding applied linguist developed the basis principled approache to methodology in language teaching.

• Vocabulary Control

One of the first aspects of method design to receive attention was the role of vocabulary. In the 1920s and 1930s several large scale investigations of foreign language vocabulary  were undertaken. Vocabulary was seen as an essential component of reading proficiency.

• Grammar Control

Parralel to the interest in developing rational principles for vocabulary selection was a focus on the grammatical content of a language course.The main characteristic of this approach were as follows :
- language teaching begins with the spoken language. material is taught orally before it is presented in written form
-the target language is the language of the classroom.
-new language points are introduced and practiced situationally.
-selection procedures are followed to ensure that an essential general service vocabulary is covered.
-items of grammar are graded following the principle that simple forms should be taught before complexs ones.
-reading and writing are introduced once a sufficient lexical and grammatical basis is established.