iscrete-point analysis necessarily breaks the elements of language apart and tries to teach them (or test them) separately with little or no attention to the way those elements interact in a larger context of communication. What makes it ineffective as a basis for teaching or testing language is that crucial properties of language are lost when its elements are separated. The fact is that in any system where the parts interact to produce properties and qualities that do not exist in the part separately, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts... organizational constraints themselves become crucial properties of the system which simply cannot be found in the parts separately.
Norbert Wiener's cybernetics had already concluded likewise.
Spolsky (1976) praised the communicative approach and the coming of the psycholinguistic-sociolinguistic era, that "was in many ways contrary to the allegedly atomistic assumptions of the 'discrete-point' tests." Read (1981) joined the ranks of current teachers of languages when he no
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