Equal Footing

Vocabulary, at long last, saw its importance placed on an equal footing with both grammar and phonology. The inception of COBUILD* in 1980 testified to this newfound status.


* i.e. Collins Birmingham University International Language Database – a project set up in 1980 that saw the creation of the world’s first electronically stored corpus of modern English (built up from authentic sources: books, magazines, newspapers, transcribed natural speech, etc.) and designed as a reference for language learners, teachers and linguists. The content is descriptive, not prescriptive and is a record of how the language is actually used, in all its richness. Both the research findings and the dictionaries that have emerged from the project have shed a great deal of light on such things as the relative frequency of different uses of language item; and not only have they caused a reappraisal of how vocabulary is tackled in teaching materials, but they have proved to be an invaluable resource for both teachers and language learners. The current corpus, known as Bank of English, runs to tens of millions of words.

The study of vocabulary gains momentum

A more practical approach to the development of receptive and productive skills emerged, with the study of vocabulary seen as integral to nurturing these - endorsing Wilkins’ dictum that ‘without grammar very little can be conveyed; without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed’.


*2 D.A. Wilkins, Linguistics in Language Teaching – Edward Arnold, 1972.

Behaviourism's loosening Grip

This was due to innovations in classroom practice whose influences were no longer in thrall to the behaviourist doctrine that had previously held sway. Teachers now became concerned with promoting greater student mental engagement with the language, focusing on student needs and individual learning strategies, encouraging greater learner autonomy and self-reliance.