ABSTRACT
For some time, under the influence of the audio-lingual approach to language teaching, it has been conventional wisdom to regard speech as being of primary importance, with writing being placed a poor second. Indeed, writing was regarded as being a somewhat inferior form of the language, a pale imitation of speech. When zealously applied, this viewpoint has had a number of unfortunate consequences for the learner. To begin with, he was often denied the support of the written language during the early phases of learning. This could be very frustrating to a literate adult, used to learning from written sources. Secondly, the learner who wished to acquire a reading and writing control of the language had to proceed through a lot of spoken practice before getting down to the written form. Thirdly, writing practice, when it was introduced, tended to be an extension of spoken practice even though, as is quite obvious when we think of it, we do not often write exactly what we say.
