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From Structures to Communicative

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 November 2008

A. P. R. Howatt
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Language teaching has traditionally adopted one of two complementary orientations towards its subject matter. It has either taken the view that language is a system and the primary objective of teaching must therefore be to insure that the system is mastered or it has taken the view that language is essentially a set of artifacts (texts and the like). System oriented language teaching (e. g., the grammar-translation method or the structural approach) has typically emphasized the generality of linguistic rules and attempted to describe and teach “the language as a whole,” whereas text-oriented approaches (such as, for instance, situational and communicative language teaching) have attempted to teach an appropriate sub-set of relevant texts which are taken to define “what the learner really needs.” The characteristic fault of system-based approaches. which explains how otherwise sane men were able to produce absurdities like “ The pen of my aunt is in the sporran of the Scotsman” [A good example of the genitive, my boy!] or pattern practices like “Are you English?” (cue: my brother) trained to fall victim to these little nonsenses, but what are the equivalent crimes of text-based language teaching? They are less easy to spot, but they generally take the form of “wasting police time.” If, as text-based teaching impliesm every text is potential grist to the learning mill, there is no reliable way of distinguishing between texts which are important because they stretch the learner's command of the target language and those which merely have been obvious.

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Type
Communicative Language Teaching
Information
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics , Volume 8 , March 1987, pp. 14 - 29
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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