A STRUCTURAL APPROACH vs. A SITUATIONAL APPROACH TO FOREIGN‐LANGUAGE TEACHING¹

Abstract

Two approaches to foreign‐language instruction were compared in an experiment in which American children learned Japanese. In the “structural approach,” materials were sequenced in order of increased difficulty of grammatical and lexical forms. In the “situational approach,” the same materials were presented in the form of meaningful dialogues; sequencing did not depend upon the relative difficulty of grammatical and lexical items. The principal findings of the experiment were: (1) that the situational approach produced results equal to or better than those of the structural approach, (2) that the situational approach produced significantly better results among students of high language aptitude and intelligence; and (3) that there was no significant difference between approaches among students of lower aptitude and intelligence. A major implication of this study for foreign language teaching is that in elementary courses for children, it is unnecessary to sequence content materials according to the linguistic difficulty of grammatical and lexical forms. In classes which are heterogeneous or of generally high intelligence and language aptitude, sequencing by situations is more beneficial than sequencing according to relative linguistic difficulty.