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The Structural Approach Method of English Teaching

The arrangement of words in any language is very important. The meaning changes with a change in the word order. For example: there is a sentence ‘You are there’. Consider two other sentences made of the same three words but put in different order ‘Are you there?’ and ‘There you are’. The three sentences, although built of the same three words give different meaning because of a different way in which the words are arranged.
These different arrangement or patterns of words are called ‘structures’. Each language has its own special sentence patterns. For example, there is a sentence in English, ‘They eat mangoes.’ The formula of this sentence is SVO (Subject – Object – Verb). We can frame numerous sentences on this pattern.
However, Hindi does not have the same pattern. The sentence given above, translated into Hindi becomes ‘वेे आम खातेे है ··’. The formula changes to SOV (Subject – Object – Verb). Similarly, in both English and Hindi, adjective come before noun as in ‘red car’, ‘लाल कार’. But in French, it is the other way around. They say ‘car red’ (voiture rouge) in their language.
The Structural Approach is based on the assumption that language can best be learnt through a scientific selection and grading of structures and vocabulary. Hornby has made a study of Sentence 
Patterns or Structures in English. He has found that there are approximately 275 structures in English and the learners of the language must master all of them. But not all the structures can be mastered at once. The stress is on the learning of essential structures of English.

Basic Principal of Structural Approach

• 
  The sentence pattern of English is quite different from the sentence
  pattern of our mother tongue. It can be taught not by telling them the rules of
  arrangement but by giving them ample practice of speaking.
  
• 
  Speech is the most important thing in learning a foreign language.
  
• 
  Pupil’s activity in learning the language is more important than
  the teacher’s activity in teaching the language.
  
• 
  Importance of the child’s activity rather than the activity of
  the teacher. 
  

Aims of Structural Approach

• 
  To lay the foundation of English by establishing through drill
  and repetition about 275 graded structures.
  
• 
  To enable the students to attain mastery over an essential vocabulary of about 3000 root words for active use.
  
• 
  To correlate the teaching of grammar and composition with the
  reading lessons.
  
• 
  To teach the four fundamental skills, namely understanding, speaking, reading and writing in the order named.
  
• 
  To lay proper emphasis on the aural-oral approach, active methods
  and the condemnation of formal grammar for its own sake.
  

2. You should outline the advantages and disadvantages of using that particular approach (method);
The disadvantages of this method are that it requires occurrences from at least three distinct localities, thus excluding many rare taxa, and because the analysis only requires knowledge of age and location, there is no context for evaluating the total geologic record available for sampling.

Advantages

• It can allow you to study a phenomenon you learned about in a linguistics content module ‘in the field’.
• Linguistic research lends itself to quantitative research, which helps you to develop skills such as excel and data analysis which are very transferrable to the world of work.
• It is a fairly ‘scientific’ way of conducting research and suits students who prefer concrete findings and clear processes.