User:Mr. Stradivarius/SLT

Situational language teaching (also known as the structural-situational approach and the oral approach) is a language-teaching method that began in the United Kingdom in the 1920s and 1930s. It emphasises the functions that language has in communicative situations, and presents new language in a highly-structured way.

Background
Situational language teaching began with attempts by British applied linguists in the 1920s and 1930s to find a scientific basis for teaching English. Researchers, chief among them Harold Palmer and A. S. Hornby, made several investigations into the best ways to organise vocabulary and grammar in language courses. The result was an approach to language teaching based on careful selection of vocabulary, a structured gradation of grammar by perceived difficulty, and techniques for the presentation and practice of language in the classroom.

At the time there was a consensus among applied linguistics that learning vocabulary was one of the most important aspects of foreign-language learning. The Coleman Report, a report on the state of language education of the time, also recommended that emphasis be placed on vocabulary. These factors led to a great deal of research on the subject. Researchers found that the frequency of vocabulary words was of particular importance, and from their findings developed the principle of vocabulary control.

The learning of vocabulary was one of the first aspects of language teaching that was studied. Due to the importance given to developing students’ reading skills as part of the Coleman report, and also because the scholars of the time