Teaching English as a Foreign Language, Second Edition

Selection and grading
In common with every other subject of the curriculum,
English language teaching requires that decisions are made
about what is to be taught: the process of selection; and
about the breaking down of that body of knowledge or skills
into teachable units: the process of grading. Whilst decisions
of this kind are usually made for the teacher by textbook
writers and syllabus designers, his teaching is inevitably
structured and controlled by the underlying theories.
Language teaching presupposes a theory of language, and
this is supplied by applied linguistics. The traditional view
that the English language consisted of a battery of
grammatical rules and a vocabulary book produced a
teaching method which selected the major grammar rules
with their exceptions and taught them in a certain sequence.
This was the grammar-translation method whose rules with
examples, its paradigms (like those in the classroom of
Chapter 2) and related exercises have for so many years
produced generations of non-communicators. The later
structural theory of language described the syntax of English
as a limited number of patterns into which the lexis or
vocabulary could be fitted. Selection and grading them
consisted of identifying the major structural patterns and
teaching them in a suitable sequence. In its extreme form, the
structural approach enabled many learners to use ‘language-
like behaviour’, reflecting a one-dimensional, and essentially
non-communicative, view of the nature of language.
Such approaches to language teaching are about as
practical as driving lessons in an immobilised car. Language,
as a form of human social behaviour, functions within a
context of situation. Recognition of this second dimension,

---

Basic Principles
40
and the fact that it is difficult to divorce linguistic forms from
their setting, gave rise to situationalised language teaching,
or the situational approach. Here, the processes of selection
and grading are applied not only to syntax and lexis, but
identify a series of appropriate settings: in the classroom, at
home, in the shop, at the railway station and so on. Clearly,
however, whilst selection from a finite set of rules or
structures is possible, it is more difficult to select from an
infinite range of situations.
The third dimension of language, which has most recently
received the attention of linguists, is that of linguistic
functions and notions. The argument is that linguistic
forms—sounds, words and structures—are used in situations
to express functions and notions.
 
It is possible to identify a wide range of notions: of time,
number, length and quantity; of agreement and disagreement,
of seeking and giving information, suasion, and concession, to
name a few; and thereafter select and grade them into a
teaching sequence of communicative goals. The sociolinguistic
developments which have in recent years made language
teachers more conscious of the functional dimension of
language usage have had a number of other effects. At one
level, they have given the death-blow to the naive assumption
that a particular linguistic form is identifiable with a particular
function. As Widdowson (1971) points out:
One might imagine, for example, that the imperative mood
is an unequivocal indicator of the act of commanding. But
Figure 4

---

Basic Principles
41
consider these instances of the imperative: ‘Bake the pie in a
slow oven’, ‘Come for dinner tomorrow’, ‘Take up his
offer’, ‘Forgive us our trespasses’. An instruction, an
invitation, advice and prayer are all different acts, yet the
imperative serves them all.
 
At another level, acknowledgment of the functional
dimension has given greater complexity to the basic principle
of grading and selection. If these processes are equally
applicable to all the three dimensions of Figure 4, which is to
have primacy? All must be represented in language courses,
but in our present state of knowledge it is the language
dimension that is the most completely understood system.
The result is that for most non-specialised English teaching in
the world today, the principle of grading and selection are
applied to the prime dimension of linguistic structure, before
those of situation and function.