THE SITUATIONAL APPROACH TO LANGUAGE TEACHING

 

In spite of the controversies on language learning processes, there is the underlying fact  that the main practical objective of teaching a language is to enable the learners to use it. That is, to know to what real-life situations each particular form of the target language corresponds.

Acquiring linguistic data is not sufficient because the scene is not a linguistic one, as it has to do with people,  objects and events which are present at the moment of communication. In this respect Halliday remarks that “when we acquire our primary language, we do so by learning how to behave in situations, not by learning rules about what to say”¹

 

There is considerable debate among linguists and psychologists as to the nature of  language. Language learning, in particular, is characterized by vicissitude; in the 1930’s, for example, it meant accurate translation of readings, but in the 1950’s it meant facile ability in aural comprehension and oral production. The origin of this vicissitude is rather to be found in the theoretical concepts which in turn cause corresponding shifts in notions of what it means to acquire, teach, or learn a language. ²

 

This leads us to the term “approach” which according to Edward M Anthony is “a set of correlative assumptions dealing with the nature of language teaching and learning.” According to this definition, any approach is basically a collection of intrinsic beliefs which serve as a framework to a specific outlook on language. At this point, we often realize that approaches are in and out of style; that is, because some attempts prove to be more effective than others during a given period. An approach is “in” when widely used methods and techniques are made up according to its principles; and, accordingly, the impact may be traced in current classroom practices.

 

Developed by British applied linguists in the 1930s, the Situational Approach has survived, so far, by completing later approaches and methodologies such as  Audio-Lingual Method, Communicative Language Teaching, Total Physical Response, The Silent Way, Community Language Learning, The Natural Approach, Suggestopedia., etc.

 

According to the Situational Approach, and to insure that the language that is being taught is realistic, all the words and sentences must grow out of some real situation or imagined real situation. Thus, the meaning of words are tied up with the situations in which they are used. The learners know the meaning of the word “blackboard”, not because they have looked it up in a dictionary, but because they have learned the word in situations; by hearing commands such as: “Look at the blackboard!”; “Clean the blackboard!”, “ Write on the blackboard!”. This example stresses the association between the word “blackboard” and the action of “looking at it”, “cleaning it”, or “writing on it. Even if the classroom environment is limited, the teacher’s inventiveness should be put into practice in the pretence of a situation picked up from outside the classroom.

 

Since the purpose of teaching a foreign language is to enable the learners to use it, then it must be heard, spoken, read, and written in suitable realistic situations. Neither translation nor mechanical drills can help if they are not connected to practical life. Drilling words and structures or making a maximum of sentences out of substitution tables would, inevitably, lead to the unreality, boredom, and remoteness of the language process. The difference between American structuralists, such as Fries and the British applied linguists such as Firth and Halliday, lies in the fact that structures must be presented in situations in which they could be used.

 

The situational environment should be presented in such a way that even the slowest learner gets involved in what the teacher or the other learners do and say in the classroom. The idea of making the learners cooperate with one another underlines the social touch of this approach. Learners are always eager to take part in make-believe situations, especially when they assume roles and enact a situation before the rest of the class.

 

The theory backing up the Situational Approach includes the following principles:

• 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

 

Since it is an approach, the tenets of  Situational Language Teaching can be carried out by several methods: i.e. the Audio-lingual Method, the Direct Method, Community Language Learning, etc.

 

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1. M.A.K. Halliday et al., The Linguistic Sciences and Language Teaching (p. 179), 1964.
2. Edward M. Anthony and William E. Norris, “Methods come and go” in Readings On English as a Second Language, (p. 40)

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