1. The Oral Approach And
Situational Language
Teaching
Presented By Mr. Sisomxay, MA Student in TEFL, 7th Batch
At faculty of letters, National university of Laos

2. Content of this presentation
1. Background
Vocabulary control
Grammar control
2. The oral approach and situational language
teaching
Approach
Design
Procedure
3. Conclusion

3. 1. Background
 The origins of this approach:
 British Applied Linguists: Harold Palmer And
A.S. Hornby (1920s to 1930s)
 Development a more scientific foundation for
oral approach to teaching English than the
Direct Method.
 There are two main contents of this
development: Vocabulary control and Grammar
control

4. 1. Background (Cont.)
 Vocabulary control:
 Two quarters:
 Emphasis on Vocabulary
 Emphasis on Reading skills
 Vocabulary was seen as an essential component of
reading proficiency.
 Great assistance in reading a foreign language
 General Service List of English Words (West,1953) 
1st attempts to establish principles of syllabus design
in language teaching

5. 1. Background ( Cont.)
 Grammar control:
 Focus on the grammatical content of a language
course by teaching basic grammatical patterns
through an oral approach.
 Classify the grammatical structures into sentence
patterns (substitution tables )
 One universal logic formed the basis of all
languages and the teacher’s responsibility was to
show how each category of the universal grammar
was to be expressed in the foreign language.

6. 2. The Oral Approach And Situational
Language Teaching
 This method involved the systematic principles of
 Selection by which lexical and grammatical
content was chosen,
 Gradation by which the organization and
sequencing of content were determined,
 Presentation by which techniques used for
presentation and practice of items in a course.
 This was not to be confused with the Direct Method,
although it used oral procedures, lacked a systematic
basis in applied linguistic theory and practice.

7.  The main characteristics of the approach:
1. Language Teaching begins with the spoken language. Material is
taught orally before it is presented in written form.
2. The target language is the language of the classroom.
3. New language points are introduced and practiced situational.
4. Vocabulary selection procedures are followed to ensure that an
essential general service vocabulary is covered.
5. Items of grammar are graded following the principle that
simple forms should be taught before complex ones.
6. Reading and writing are introduced once a sufficient lexical
and grammatical basis is established.
2. The Oral Approach And Situational
Language Teaching (Cont. )

8.  Approach
Theory of language underlying Situational Language Teaching can
be characterized as a type of British “ structuralism”.
 Speech was regarded as the basis of language.
 Structure was viewed as being at the heart of speaking ability,
and must be linked to the context and situations in which
language is used.
 'Word order, Structural‘ Words, the few inflexions of English,
and Content 'Words will form the material of our teaching”
(Frisby 1957:I 34)
 In contrast to American linguist, language was viewed as
purposeful activity related to goals and situations in the real
world.
2. The Oral Approach And Situational Language
Teaching (Cont. )

9.  Approach ( cont.)
 Theory of learning is a type of behaviorist habit-learning theory. It
addresses primarily the processes rather than the conditions of
learning.
 There are three processes in learning a language (Palmer):
 Receiving the knowledge or materials.
 Fixing it in the memory by repetition.
 Using it in actual practice until it becomes a personal skill.
 French likewise saw language learning as habit formation.
 Like the Direct Method, Situational Language Teaching adopts an
inductive approach to the teaching of grammar.
2. The Oral Approach And Situational
Language Teaching (Cont. )

10.  Design
Objectives is to teach a practical command of the four
basic skills of language.
 Accuracy in both pronunciation and grammar.
 Basic structures and sentence patterns is
fundamental to reading and writing skills.
The syllabus
 Basic to the teaching of English in Situational
Language Teaching is a structural syllabus and a
world list.
 A structural syllabus is a list of the basic structures
and sentence patterns of English.
2. The Oral Approach And Situational Language
Teaching (Cont. )

11.  Design ( cont. )
 Types of learning and teaching activities
 A situational approach to presenting new sentence patterns.
o Use of concrete objects, pictures, and realia, and together
with actions and gestures.
 A drill-based manner of practicing new sentence patterns.
o guided repetition and substitution activities, including
chorus repetition, dictation, drills, and controlled oral-based
reading and writing tasks.
 Learner roles: The learner is required simply to listen and
repeat what the teacher says and to respond to questions and
commands.
2. The Oral Approach And Situational Language
Teaching (Cont. )

12. 2. The Oral Approach And Situational
Language Teaching (Cont. )
 Design (cont.)
 Teacher roles
 Serves as a model
 Setting up situations
 Modeling the new structures for students to repeat
 The role of instructional materials is dependent of both a textbook and
visual aids.
 The textbook should be used “only as a guide to the learning
process. The teacher is expected to be master of his textbook”
 Visual aids may be produced by the teacher or may be commercially
process.

13.  Procedure
 Vary according to the level of the class, but
at any level aim to move from controlled to
freer practice of structure and from oral use
of sentence patterns to their automatic use
in speech, reading, and writing.
 Example for the pattern being practiced:
“There’s a NOUN+ of + (noun) in the box.
2. The Oral Approach And Situational
Language Teaching ( Cont. )

14. Procedure
 Please add example of the lesson plan in brief!

15. Sequence of activity…..

16. 3. Conclusion
 Procedures associated with Situational Language
Teaching in the 1950s and 1960s were an extension
and further development of well-established
techniques.
 “P-P-P” lesson model was the essential feature in
the 1980s and early 1990s.
 Presentation: Introduction of a new teaching
item in context.
 Practice: Controlled practice of the item.
 Production: A freer practice phase.

17. 3. Conclusion ( cont.)
 The principles of Situational Language
Teaching:
 emphasized mainly on oral practice,
grammar, and sentence patterns, and
 conformed to the intuitions of many
language teachers and offer a practical
methodology suited to countries where
national EFL/ESL syllabuses continue to
be grammatically based.

18. Thank for your kind attention