The upbeat claims of these scholars on the way this scientific discipline would put language teaching on a firmer footing inspired our research and teaching. The teaching methods influenced by this linguistic/scientific orientation were understood to be shaped by systematic and objective research. Moving to the audiolingual method from grammar translation, and then progressively moving to other methods like task-based teaching, scholars always backed up their proposals with empirical research on the manner in which grammatical properties should be in traduced to students for successful acquisition (see Sheen, 1994, for a critique).