口语教学法

Chapter 4 The Oral Approach

I. Key Points (学习要点)

1. Definition (定义)

The Oral Approach (or Situational Language Teaching) refers to an approach to language teaching developed by British applied linguists from the 1930s to the 1960s. It is a grammar-based method in which principles of grammatical and lexica] gradation are used and new teaching points presented and practiced through meaningful situation-based activities.

口语教学法(又叫情景教学法)，指的是英国实用语言学家于二十世纪30 年代到60 年代发展起来的一种语言教学方法。此法是以语法为基础的教学法，语法与词汇按难易程度分层次教学，新的语言点通过有意义的情景活动得到展示与练习。这种方法虽然今天已不再流行，但许多把英语当作外语(第二语言)而被广泛使用的外语教材，如奥尼尔的《高级核心英语》(1973)，都是根据这一教学法编写的。因此了解这种方法的原则及实践是很有意义的。

2. Background (产生背景)

The Oral Approach originated with the work of British linguists in the 1920s and 1930s. Two of the most important and influential figures of the approach were Harold Palmer and A. S. Hornby. Both of them were familiar with the Direct Method, but they were dissatisfied with its practice, and they had recognized its limitations in their teaching experience of English. Therefore, what they attempted was to develop a methodology of language teaching that was theoretically well-grounded, intellectually ordered and practically workable. The result was the development of an approach to methodology that involved systematic principles and procedures that could be applied to the selection and organization of the content of a language course.

Palmer spent many years in Japan working towards two complementary objectives in English language teaching. The first was the realization of the principles of the Oral Method in a concrete form. Another objectivewas to develop principles of vocabulary control. According to Palmer and some other linguists of that time, vocabulary played one of the most important role in foreign language learning, and frequency counts showed that a core of 2000 words occurred frequently in daily use and written text.

Palmer and Hornby had also paid much attention to the important role of grammar in their writings. In their view, organization of the grammatical content of a language course should be based on the principle of gradation. It was an obvious requirement of any course that it should proceed from easy to difficult without sharp breaks. Hornby and others analyzed the English language and classified its major grammatical structures into sentences patterns which could be used to have oral practice.

口语教学法是二十世纪二三十年代英国应用语言学家们首次提出来的。从那时候开始，不少杰出的应用语言学家都致力于发展这种原则性很强的语言教学，并作出了极大的贡献，其中最重要和最有影响的要算帕尔默与霍恩比。这两位应用语言学家对直接教学法都非常熟悉，但对其教学实践不太满意，他们通过自己的教学实践认识到直接教学法的局限。他们认为直接教学法虽然在教学过程方面提出了一些革新，但缺乏系统的教学法的理论基础。直接教学法强调在教室里只能用目标语，但对所用的口语没有进行分级教学，学生在学习过程中将碰到的困难和在自然环境中习得语言时可能碰到的困难一样多。因此，应用语言学家们试图找到一种既按一定理论进行分级、又符合明智发展的程序，同时实践上又可操作的语言教学法。结果他们创立了这样一种教学途径，这种教学途径有系统的原则和步骤，可用这些原则步骤来选择语言课程的内容。