The Functional vs. the structural syllabus: she 'New Toy' effect

This paper aims to demonstate that structural and functional syllabuses are two sided of the same coin; they both endeavor to reduce language to definable units. It is shown that neither the structural nor the functional syllabus takes account of the facts it is meant to, for the programmatic nature of both syllabus types falls short of covering the diversity of form and function in human language. Besides, many language facts are out of the reach of the reductionistic approach embraced by both; such facts would be taken care of only if the focus is shifted from the figure 'language form' and/or 'language function' to the ground 'context of situation enveloping a piece of discourse' such that the figure is always viewed in rela-tion to the ground. For example, the paper draws a distinction between the variability of context sensitive-ness within a language function, on the one hand, and the variability of a language function within a lan-guage form, on the other. Finally, the paper calls for discourse-based syllabuses and urges that the reduc-tionistic approach to foreign language teaching give way to a holistic approach that incorporates the reduc-tionistic but that goes well beyond it by shifting the emphrasis from the discrete units to the communicative acts, that is, language in operation