Approaches to Communicative Foreign Language Teaching

In this paper, a brief description is given for some influential approaches to foreign languages (FL) teaching. The proposals for communicative FL teaching fall into two major groups. The group of early approaches covers developments in syllabus design and teaching methodology, while the second group (recent approaches) deals with the issue of teaching methodology. Acknowledging that the knowledge required to achieve communicative competence must include static knowledge, (language system), and dynamic knowledge, (language use). Thus, foreign language teaching (FLT) must aim at achieving and promoting both aspects of knowledge in the learners. In this regard, it is a challenge to FL pedagogy to devise an approach to meet both needs. In order to achieve both objectives, the content of the syllabus and the teaching methodology must be taken into consideration. It is possible to bridge the gap between the knowledge of the language system and its use. It is important that classroom FL teaching offers opportunities for acquisition of explicit knowledge of communicative interaction for the purpose of automizing knowledge. Form-focused aspect will contribute to strengthening the learner’s analysed declarative knowledge, which in turn facilitates the process of proceduralizing in real interacting.