STRUCTURAL APPROACHES Presented by ENGLISH DEPARTMENT Dr. N. G.

P College of Education

STRUCTURAL APPROACH
The structural approach is a new approach to the teaching of English. It is the result of researches made by experts at the University of London Institute of Education. It emphasizes structural words and sentence patterns in teaching of English for structural approach. Structural approach is helpful in enabling learners to frame their own sentences. English has to be taught principally as a language of comprehension rather than as a library language. The students need working knowledge of English.

IMPORTANCE OF STRUCTURAL APPROACH

The structural approach is better describes as a syllabus of graded structures and controlled vocabulary, taught through the oral approach. Structural approach says language is a structure system.

THE MEANING OF STRUCTURAL APPROACH

French says that when we talk about the structure of language, we are talking about the kinds of material that go to make up a language and the way the materials are put together arranged and used to build up sentences such as statements, questions, commands and explanations from the living language and are the means of expressing, what we feel, want to do talk about and so forth.

TYPES OF STRUCTURES
The English language has three important devices for the construction of meaningful sentences, they are word order, structural words and inflections. i) WORD ORDER Structural approach lays emphasis on word order, which is the most important thing in every English sentence. The word pattern, says French means a model which many things of the same kind and shapes car be made. The word order in English is fixed. Therefore the models for the different kinds of English sentences are fixed also. With the change in this work order, the meaning of the sentence also changed.

Eg. 1. The tiger killed the man, The man killed the tiger. 2. Fish eats Eat fish ii). Structural words Another thing which is very important in structural device is the essential presence of function words or structural words. The structural words are words which do not have any definite meaning in themselves but are very helpful in forming sentences of different kinds. These are the words with the help of which we make sentences. For example, the auxiliary verbs be, do, may , etc., do not have any intrinsic meaning. The meaning is also expressed by a class of words that have no meaning but only grammatical or structural function.

E.g. 1. The boy killed the snake 2. The boy will kill the snake 3. The boy has killed the snake 4. The boy has to kill the snake 5. The boy might killed the snake In learning a language, it is not enough to know the content words. But more important than the content words are the structural words, which help the construction of utterances with content words. Structural words are: pronoun: I. me, he, her, some any, etc. the preposition: in, on, under, at. From, etc. the helping verbs: do, have, be, will, can, may, etc. structural adjectives: a, the this, that, all, each, etc. structural adverbs: ago, again also, even, etc.

iii Inflexions The third aspect is that the English language has got a number of inflexions. Inflexions are the changes or differences in the form of words to show the particular work they are doing in a sentence. The small helping words like at, to, in from, give a different meaning and expression. A) In verbs : B) In nouns : C) In adjectives D) In adverbs : I play, you play, we [play, he plays One girl, two girls. : Quick, quicker, quickest. Quickly.

F.G French calls these three features as the bones of English which support the structure of sentences.

SELECTION AND GRADING OF STRUCTURES

In teaching structures, the teacher should remember that there are four stages in the pupil s learning of them. The learner hears the new speech unit from the teacher. The learner recognizes a speech unit which he has heard before. It is no longer a series of meaningless sounds. The learner is able to imitate the sounds, again perhaps without analyzing individual words. The learner from memory is able to reproduce the speech unit in an appropriate situation.

PRESENTATION
BY
M.Rajasekar., BA., B ED,

Thank you,