Vocabulary vs Grammar

It was some considerable time before vocabulary managed to establish itself as an area of language study in its own right. A succession of past methodologies ranging from the Grammar Translation Method of the 1920s-30s, the situational and structurally based Audio Lingual Method (1940s-50s) through to approaches arising from the functional and notional syllabuses(1), in vogue in the 70s, viewed the study of lexis from a narrow perspective, very much as a subordinate discipline to that of grammar. It was not until the mid 1980s that these constraints were swept aside.