Recent writings in second language acquisition and classroom methodology have raised important questions about language learning and teaching. The observation that many students fail to acquire communicative competence in the target language despite years of language instruction has prompted researchers, theoreticians, and teachers to question the effectiveness of our current approaches: traditional, grammar-based instruction has been widely criticized as being ineffective, and recent notional/ functional syllabuses, although proposed as potentially more viable curricular alternatives, are not without their critics.

In response to the perceived weaknesses of both structural and notional/functional syllabuses in producing communicatively competent speakers, the current literature stresses the importance of providing language learners with more opportunities to interact directly with the target language – to acquire it by using it rather than to learn it by studying it. It has been suggested that when language classrooms focus on task-oriented activities which give students experience in functioning in extended, realistic discourse in the target language, those students are able to learn not only appropriate language use, but real communicative processes as well. But a teaching approach which focuses on real communication also requires a classroom atmosphere in which communication can take place comfortably. Our roles as teachers and our students’ roles as learners therefore become significant considerations. Our particular students’ needs and the dynamics

of our particular classes become major factors in deciding what to teach and how to teach it.

(Slightly adapted from Teaching ESL: Incorporating a Communicative, Student-Centered Component, by Barry P. Taylor in Methodology in TESOL: A Book of Readings, by Michael H. Long and Jack C. Richards (eds.), Newbury House Publishers)