The Scientific Period

The Scientific Period covers the half-century from 1920 to 1970. There were five major teaching developments during this period. The first of these was the structural syllabus which was an inventory of the grammatical structures of a language. However, it was criticized for prioritizing form over meaning, and this led to the development of the situational syllabus which focused on situations of language use. This was criticized for providing production opportunities but insufficient processing opportunities. The 1960s saw the appearance of the Audiolingual Method which was an attempt to link theory to practice. However, it was criticized for its overuse of repetitive drills and disappointing results. The 1960s also saw the appearance of Noam Chomsky’s Universal Grammar which focused on the role of cognition in language learning. However, it favoured linguistic competence over performance, and this led to the development of the idea of communicative competence as a goal of language education. Overall, the Scientific Period reinforced the importance of opportunities to process a language, a focus on situations of use, a focus on structural patterns, and opportunities to produce language.