WEAKNESSES
Even though the Situational Syllabus is widely used as a replacement for the Grammatical Syllabus to organise language teaching materials, there is still strong criticism against this model:
The main disadvantage of the Situational Syllabus is that it is less appropriate for the students of general English, since it tries to teach language in the context of some specific linguistic situations, which cannot be considered as an all-encompassing yardstick for fulfilling the learners’ general language needs. That is, because it is difficult to guarantee that one specific situation will be useful in another.
Although some situations have a predictable script, unanticipated things can happen in any situation, requiring a change of script or topic. Wilkins points out, that a physical situational setting such as “At the Post Office” or “In a Restaurant” does not necessarily predict the language forms that will be used. One may go into a restaurant not to order a meal but to ask directions to a nearby museum or to change money for a telephone call. While certain language functions will most likely occur in certain situational settings, physical setting cannot really predict language use. It depends on who the students are and where they are learning. Thus determining the appropriate list of situations for a general class is difficult.
Grammar is dealt with incidentally, so the Situational Syllabus may result in gaps in learners’ grammatical knowledge.
The Situational Syllabus does not provide us with clearly defined criteria for the sequencing of teaching items. Little is known about the language used in different situations, so selection of teaching items is typically based on intuition.
The Situational Syllabus is probably most appropriate for short-term special-purpose courses: giving prospective tourists survival skills or preparing service personnel, such as waiters or waitresses, to deal with routine requests or fire fighters to handle emergency situations. It has limited potential for the language learner interested in acquiring global language proficiency. For this reason it is generally used as the component of a Multi Syllabus rather than as the central organising principle for a general language syllabus design.