HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Historical background

As explained by Jack Richards (1999. pp 33-34), after the failure of the Grammar Translation method, Harold Palmer and A.S.Hornby wanted to develop a more formal and systematic approach to select and organize the content and procedures of a language course They agreed that teaching common vocabulary and basic grammatical structures had to be the first step in a language course. This led to the Oral Approach. It continued to be researched upon and some principles eventually emerged. One of them stated that "new language points are introduced and practiced situationally" (Richards, 1991), giving birth to the situational language teaching and the idea that new words and sentences must belong to a defined context or situation.