Structural Approach vs. Functional-Notional Approach
with Special Reference to Engtish Teaching in Japan
Hiroshi YONEKURA and Hideshi SATO
Department of English, Nara University of Education, Nara, Japan
(Received November 30, 1983)
O. The aim of this paper is (1) to discuss the merits and demerits of the traditional
structural approach and syllabus that have been widely prevalent for the past two decades
and (2) to make a critical survey of functional-notional approach and syl}abus that have
beenintroducedanddiscussedinrecentyears,which mightbe adapted and integrated in
classroom work at junior and senior high schools in Japan.
1 .1 . The Course of Study Reviewed
Firstly, we shall make a brief review of the history of the Course of Study prepared
by the Ministry of Education, which outlines the structural sequences rather precisely
and limits vocabulary items and the number. Each and every textbook expected to be used
at public high schools in Japan can be rejected outright unless it complies with the line
stipulated by the Ministry of Education.
In 1947, for the first time after World War II, the Course of Study was prepared by
the Ministry of Education, which is known to have been originally written by an American
linguist who was familiar with the meritorious work of H.E. Palmer, direct' precursor to
the audio-lingual method that flourished between about 1950 arKi 1965.
The first Course of Study was titled "A Suggested Course of Study in English for
Secondary Schools", recommending the teaching method that Palmer and his IRET (now
IRLT) staff had advocated here in Japan in prewar days.
In 1951, the Suggested Course of Study was revised and expanded to three volumes,
with 759. pages in a}1. All the chapters and appendixes were written both in English and in
Japanese. The preface runs as follows:
"The decision to write the Course in English as well as in Japanese was made so
that it might be of value in seminars and to foreign teachers who cannot read Japalr
nese.
We should take note of the attributive in the title "Suggested", which means that
the Course of Study was considered to be mere suggestions, and not legally compelling regulations as we see it today. This "democratic" idea is explicitly stated in the
Preface: '
"As the chapter entitled `Adaptation of the Course of Study to Local Needs'
would show, this Course of Study is intended for adaptation according to local needs.
In order to give the Course breadth and flexibility, questionnaires were sent out to
all the people concernedacrossthe country. and the ideas and suggestions made by
many professional people were taken into consideration. Furthermore, there is no
intention that this Course of Study should be considered mandatory in any sense, and
no expectation or desire that it will be used as it is. Each teacher is free to make
whatever adaptations that may seem desirable."
It is a pity that a majority of younger teachers today do not know that the Course
of Study prepared by the Ministry of Education was once "not mandatory" and that
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each and every teacher was once free to adapt it.
The year 1958 saw a turning point in the history of English teaching in postwar
Japan; the Suggested Courseof Study was drastically revised and completely changed
in character. It turned out to be very brief, rigid, inflexible and compelling. The
greatest difference between the old Course of Study and the new one lies in the fact
that the latter was no longer a suggestion buta syllabus imposed by law. Whether
they like it or not, public school teachers throughout the country have been expected
formorethanaquarterofacentury tousethe textbooks compiled by course- or
syllabuswriters who must comply with each item stipulated in the Course of Study.
This situation peculiar to Japan will not change for many years to come, in spite of
the strong opposition on the part of a growing number of teachers and college professors,who have persistently voiced their demands to do away with the specification
of grammatical items and sentence patterns to be presented to each grade. It is quite
natural that so many teachers are opposed to the limitation of the maximum vocabulary of 1,050 words to be learned at junior high schools, and 1,9oo words at senior high
schools, both decided on by the Ministry of Education. Under the present system, 7th
graders (lst year students of junior high schools) do not learn the Past Tense by the
end of their school year, so that after a year's study they cannot formulate a simple
but obviously useful statement like Iwas sick yesterday. / I watched TV oresterday
evenlng.
1.2. Junior High School Textbooks Reviewed
Since the linguistic materials to be taught in each grade are definitely specified, eve-
ry textbook must follow those specifications step by step without deviations. That is
the tightest regulation ever made and it has made textbook writing more difficult and
laborious than ever. This rigid control by the Ministry of Education has obviously dis-
couraged any innovation and experimentation in developing new teaching materials
which should be, first of all, communication-oriented, interesting, and suitable to the
needs of the learners.
Junior high school textbook writers today make up a graded list of the grammatical
items to be presented in their textbook and then they think of the content in each lesson.
They are sometimes forced to modify the plot of the story in order to present a cer-
tain sentence pattern or grammatical' item on the page.Because the language materials to be contained are all specified in the Course of Study, they are common to all
the textbooks now published by five publishing companies.
Such being the case, all the textbooks natura}ly become similar in contents, so far
as the first and the second year books are concerned.
As for the format of the textbooks in junior high schools, "one section on one page
in one period" principle is followed by almost all the syllabus writers. They pay more
attention to structural aspects of Eng}ish rather than functions or fiotions, so that
they recognize the importance of small steps in learning. Then they divide one legson
into several parts, usually three to five, and each part is allotted at least one target
sentence which includes a new grammatical item.
In spite of the tragic reduction of teaching hours in junior high schools from four
to three per week, which has been put into effect since 1981,.the Ministry of Educa-
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tion has set up lofty objectives for teaching English in junior and senior high schools.
The three main objectives are as follows:
1) To develop fundmental skM in understanding oral and written English and ability in ex-
pressing ideas in English in spoken and written form.
2) To arouse and deepen the students' interest in language by studyinga foreign language, thus making them reflect on, and giving them more understanding of, our mother
tongue.
3) To help them understand the cultures, the ways of living and thinking of English
speakingpeoples, thus fostering international understanding.
No one can doubt the validity of these objectives. The problem is how we can develop all of these fundamental skills and awareness in such difficult circumstances.
2.1. Structural Approach and Audio-Lingual Method Reviewed
In the middle of the 1950s, Charles Fries, modern ancestor of structural }inguistics,
came to Japan as a consultant to the English Language Exploratory Committee (ELEC) that had started preparing teaching materials to be used at junior high schools.
Examining all the textbooks in use at that time, he remarked that they were as old
as twenty years or more, in that the structures were presented in an arbitrary sequence with little or no justification and studied as separate and distinct items rather
than as a coherent and integrated system of related parts, proposing two principles
fer the presentation of the teaching materials to Japanese students of English, which
are summarized in his "A New Approach to Language Learning" (1960) .(1)
(a) These structure-centered materials have been put into a closely integrated sequence to provide for a steady progress of the small steps for Japanese learners.
(b) These materials have been embedded in dialogs that provide a continuity of
meaning situations as the frames in which to practice and use the English that is being learned. This continuity of situations makes it easy to carry forward aH that has
been learned and to use it in the new situations.
According to Fries, the most efficient materials are "those that are based upon a
scientific description of the language to be learned, carefully compared with a parallel
description of the native language of the learner."(2)
On the other hand, Michael West proposed his"Realistic Method", combining struc-
t with situational approach.(3)
tural approach
An example of the type of lesson along this line is as follows:
A. Structural approach
Put your ( 1 )( 2 ) your ( 3 ). Where is your ( 1 )?
My(1)is(2)my(3).
1. (pen, pencil, right hand, etc.)
2. (on, in, under, behind, ete.)
3. (book, desk, seat, pocket, head, etc.)
B. Behavioural dialog
X is an old man. Y is his wife: she is bored because X is always losing his glasses. Y, sitting in front of the fire, has her back to X who is sitting near the table.
X speaks more and more irritab}y Y speaks quietly in a bored manner.
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X: Where are my glasses?
Y: Look on the table.
X: They are not on the table.
Y: Hhl (sigh) then look under the table,... in front of your chair.
X: Nol Not under the table. Where ARE they?!
Y: Behind you, in your chair.
X: Oh yes. (He gets up•) No! They are not in the chair.
Y: Then they are out in the garden.
X: They are NOTI They are somewhere IN THIS ROOM!
Y: Hal In your pocket. That's where they are!
X: Not in this pocket... Not in that... Oh! Here they are!
Y: Where? (She turns round•)
X: On my nose!
Y: Wel}!1! (Anger) Heh!! (Resignation.)
Language-teaching materials have called themselves `situational' for many years,
but a situational syllabus calls for a re-appraisal of the content of a course. Many
`situational' approaches introduced into English textbooks intended for junior high stu--
dents are in fact structural in conception. A structure is analyzed out of the target
language and presented to the students in a contrived `situation' which is designed
both to bring out the `meaning' of the structure and to make it easily memorable.
The following is an example of introducing the Future Tense in Book 2 of a junior
high school.(4)
Lesson8 ThelnternationalClub
He plays tennis every day.
He will play tennis tomorrow. (He will e He'll)
Roy: What are we going to do for the next meeting of our club?
Ellen: I have an idea. I got a letter yesterday. It was from Masao, my pen pal in To-kyo.
R: What did the letter say?
E: He'11 come to Seattle with his parents next month.
He'll stay here for a week. Perhaps he'll come and talk to our club before he leaves
this city.
(N.B. The students have already learned the form be going to.)
Then the following `grarnmatical target sentences' are introduced within a context
of situations, respectively.
He will play soccer tomorrow WM he play soccer tomorrow?
Yes, he will. No, he will not (will not-won't)
He is busy today. He will be busy tomorrow.
One of the features of this series of textbooks authorized by the Ministry of Education in 1982 is that the students are asked to recite the model dialog in one of the
Exercise questions, and produce their own dialog, using the grammatical items or sentence patterns they have learned in the lesson.
Example: Let's recite the following dialog and create youc own dialog modifying
the model.
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A: Will yott be busy tomorrow evening?
B: No. Why?
A: Our Music Club witl have a rock concert tomorrow evening.
Will you come with me?
B: Yes,Iwill. That 'll be fun.
It is often pointed out that the concept of need has been largely ignored by structu-
rally based syllabus. Structural materials the world over normally follow a fixed pro-
gression of verb tenses beginning usually with be and have, regardless of what the
student will need to use or understand in the target language. The students may be
expected to wait months before being taught how to express future or past time, concepts that he is expected to use daily. This is just the case with Japanese junior high
school stadents, who cannot say I wish Ihad enottgh moneor, because the rigid Course
ofStudy preparedby theMinistry of Education prescribes that the Subjunctive
Mood should be presented in High School English H (11th grade).
Although good teachers attempt to present the structures being taught in meaning-ful contexts or situations, textbooks start with the structure and students are expec--
ted to search out a context in which the structure in question is used. Thus the
communicative function is often lost in the concentration on grammatical form or item.
Students often master form without ever learning how the form is used to perform
a communicative act. More often than not, we see students who know the grammar
but just cannot use the language.
2.2.Structural syllabus and Functional-Notionaj syllabus compared
The primary goal of the structural syllabus is to build language competence through
what H. Widdowson terms USAGE knowledge of linguistic rules (1978:3) . The
starting point of structural materials is HOWutterances are formed, and the start-
ing pointof the Functional-Notionalsyllabus is WHAT is being expressed and
WHAT communicative purpose the utterance fulfills.(5)
Christopher Brumfit (1978) compares the traditional model with the FunctionalNotional model as follows:
The traditional model presented new items, in a relatively isolated form, and then
practised them in increasingly contextualized situations. It may be that the greatest
real change as a result ofthe communicative approach will rest in the simple reversal
of the procedures, as the following diagram illustrates:
Traditional:
I
ll
M
Present Drill Practice in context
Communicative:
Communicateasfar
aspossiblewithall
availableresources
Presentlanguage
itemsshowntobe
necessary toachieve
effectivecommunication
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Drillifnecessary
The functional approach or communicative approach is a student-centered or
student-determined approach to language education. The major premiseunderlying
the functiona1 approach is that the sole object of language is purposeful communication.
So what needs to be taught is defined by the failures to communicate at the first stage,
which wdl offer the teacher a diagnosis, while they wil1 give the students a strong motivation for learning. This emphasis on student needs suggests that each and every teacher will
have to become a syllabus designer and materials writer, which is a terribly demanding
task
D.A. Wilkins(1976:19) maintains that "the admntage of the notional syllabus is that it
takes the communicative facts of language into account from the beginaing without losing
sight ofgrammaical and situational factors. It is potentia11y superior to the grammatical
syllabus because it wM produce a communicative competence and because its evident concern
with the use of language wru sustain the motivation of the learners. It is superior to the
situational syllabus because it can ensure that the most important grarnmatical forms are
included arxl because it can cover all kinds of language functions, not only those that typically occur in certain situations•"(itatics a(lded)
2.3 Application of the Functional-Notional Approach
We know that language is a very complex structure, much more complex than has
hitherto been thougl]t, and that language behavior is a complex affair that cannot be explained by linguistic disciplines alone. If that is the case, foreign language teaching wil] be a
highly complex business, irrvolvirrg many factors that are beyond the reach of 1inguistics or
psychology alone.
Though great attention has been given to the idea of the notional approach or syllabus,
we must use our discretion in applying it to our English classroom. A syllabus, bowever
{pal it is, cari only specify what is to be offered to the stuclents; it carmot predict exactly
how the students wdl learn what is offered. Only the teacher wM be able to respond to the
reactions of the students. No syllabus can be flexible enough to predict the various ways
each of the students will learn.
Taking everything into consideration, we cannot help believing that good foreign language
syllabuses wil1 a}ways be basically grammatical, and at the sarne time practically functional.
We would rather take to grammatical-functiona} approach, giving situational and functional
considerations to grarnmatical selection arKi grading.
Christopher Brumfit(1981) proposes the following syllabus model in which grammatical
items and funcions or notions are integrated.
"The syllabus wM be specified grammatically, because syntax is the only generative
system so far described for language, and ----since time is at a premium a generative
system wil1 be more economical as a way of organising language work for student learn-ing than a non-generative taxonomy of items(such as a list of functions is at the moment
bourKl to be), or a random selection of items unsystematically collected. However, any
attempt to contextualise or situationalise the grammatical items wil1 irrvolve a variety of
language functions being usod arKl a variety of notions being realised. It wil1 not be difficult
to bergain appropriate functions or notions (if they appear to be unduly neglected or omitted altogether) against the syntactic forms being used. That is, the ordering of items in
the syllabus wM be determined by a cross-fertilisation between functional arKl grarnmatical
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categories, butwiththegenerative system fundamental. You could thus conceive of the
syllabus as a grammatical ladder with a functional-notiona} spiral around it."C6)
6
6
5
5
Grammatical items
4
4
3
3
2
F"
i'
{
1
1
Functions
Though rather abstract, Brumfit's idea is worth paying attention to. We can make use
of the F-N approach by developing creative activities such as dialog, role-playing, drama-
tization and others without discarding our grammatical-contextualized syllabus that we
have adopted for over twenty years.
Summary
Consideration has recently been given to defining the content of language-teaching
activities in other than 1inguistic terms.
In this article merits and demerits of structural approach along with those of situatiomal
approach are discussed. Functional-Notional approach which seems to provide a stimulating way of deve}oping communicative competence in real situations is considered, with spe-
cial reference to Japanese classroom situations. Our conclusion is that Brumfit's idea
(1981) is a realistic presentation in applying the F-N approach to our English teaching.
Notes
(1) Fries,C.C.1960, A New Approach to Lariguage Learning in Applied Linguisistics
and 'the Teaching of English, p.217 T. Yambe ed. ELEC,1970
(2) Fries,C.C.1945, Teaching and Learning English as a Iibreign Language, p.9 The University of Michigan press, Ann Arbor
(3) West, Michael, 1960, Learning English as Behaviour in Teaching English as a Second
Language p.160 H.B.Allen ed. Mcgraw-Hill, 1965
(4) New Prince English Course, 1983, H.Sato et al .,Kairyu-do Publishing Co.
(5) Salimbene, Suzanne, 1983, From Structurally Based to Functionally Based Approaches to Language Teaching in English Teaching Forum XXI.,pp2-7, ELEC
(6) Brumfit, Christopher, 1981, The Basis for a SecorKlary School Syllabus in Communi-
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cation in the Classromm, KJohnson and K.Morrow eds., pp. 46-51, Longman,
References
Finocchiaro, Mary and Brumfit, Christopher, 1983, The Functional-Notional Approach
from Theory to Practice, OUP
Johnson, Keith and Morrow, Keith, 1981,Communication in the Classroom, Longman
Van EkJA. 1976 The Threshotd Levei for Modern Language Teaching in Schools, Longrnan
Widdowson, H.G. 1978i Teaching Langutrge as Communication,OUP
Wilkins, D.A. 1976Notional Syllabuses, oUp
RELC Journal VoL13 No.1 June 1982 /VoL13 No2 December 1982 /
The English Teachers' Maga2ine, VoLXXXII No.8, October 1983
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