To make this point clear to language instructors, some institutions used to require them to study a new language for a week at the start of the semester as part of their orientation program. Such an exercise might be universally introduced. It would lead to realism in assignments and in general presentation. These studies led to a rule of thumb allowing no more than twenty-five to thirty new vocabulary items in any unit. Yet texts and courses are now introducing twice this number or more.
Assignments requiring memorization of long lists of words seem to derive from.
Though sentences should be the prime entities taught, the sentences, like all materials, should represent the culture of the area involved. Sociolinguistic study has made clear the close relationships between utterance patterns and the cultures in which they are produced. Most textbook writers now give lip service to culture. But when externals like place names are stripped away, many of these texts might as well be concerned with Peking as with Paris, with Bombay as readily as with Berlin, and so on. The lessons to be drawn from sociolinguistics may be the most significant ones that still need to be applied to language teaching.