The Communicative Period

The 1970s saw the emergence of two main methodological developments. Adopting Marcel’s distinction of synthetic and analytic teaching approaches, Wilkins argued that a synthetic approach led to a structural syllabus, and an analytic approach led to a situational syllabus. However, he criticized the situational syllabus for limiting opportunities for processing. Instead, he proposed a notional-functional syllabus with three distinct categories of language: semantico-grammar, modal meanings, and communicative functions. While he ultimately had to admit that the approach lacked a receptive component, the syllabus made a major contribution to later communicative approaches. In the late 1970s, American Linguist Steven Krashen introduced his controversial Natural Approach. This involved five hypotheses. Academics disputed two of the hypotheses: the Acquisition-Learning Hypothesis, which stated that the explicit learning of grammar could not become acquisition, and the Monitor Hypothesis, which stated that a learner could only use such knowledge when they had enough time to do so. However, the other three—the Natural Order Hypothesis, the Input Hypothesis, and the Affective Filter Hypothesis—were generally accepted. The major contribution of the Natural Approach to language teaching was its foregrounding of comprehensible input.