This paper reviews the teaching of English as a second language in the secondary schools in the Transvaal, the syllabuses which have been in use since 1956-57, and the importance of an audiolingual approach. In attempting to discover the reasons for students' failure to attain a satisfactory standard of bilingualism, the author examines (1) the syllabuses and the teacher (the teachers are not linguistically trained); (2) the syllabuses and the pupil (the emphasis should be shifted to achievement of "articulacy" in language); and (3) the syllabuses and examinations (it is the examination even more than the syllabus that determines the kind of teaching which is carried out in all but the best schools, and an improved syllabus can therefore only be effective if the examination permits it to be so). Questions concerning which current linguistic theory to follow and whether to use traditional or audiovisual language teaching methods must be decided before revising the syllabuses. These two decisions will involve the whole hierarchy of the educational system in the Transvaal and South Africa--the administrators, the provincial authorities who will install the language laboratories, the examining boards who will have to devise new language proficiency examinations, university departments of English who will have to train linguists to write contrastive analyses of English and Afrikaans, and teacher trainers. (AMM)