Christopher Brumfit

From Defining to Designing: Communicative Specifications versus Communicative Methodology in Foreign Language Teaching

This paper attempts to explore some of the implications of viewing language learning as a process that deals with a product that is not static. Language, we can increasingly see, is not a set of definable and prearranged tokens but a process of linguistic and cultural negotiation of meaning. Students have to develop their innate ability to use language for their own purposes in interaction with the purposes of other language users. Communicative syllabuses have been discussed partly through a recognition of this need, but a discussion of syllabus organisation is not enough, for the methodological implications are much more important. If languages are not, in principle, discrete, language teaching will not be served well if it is based on the assumption that we can specify the learners product exactly. All syllabuses tend to concentrate on the product, or content. This paper argues that it is time to move away from syllabus definition, which has been adequately discussed for the current state of classroom practice.

Reading skills and the study of literature in a foreign language

Abstract The teaching of literature in a foreign language has been little discussed in recent years, yet such teaching can provide a valuable basis for fully communicative advanced work in language. But for this to be effective requires a clear understanding of the purpose of literature teaching. An attempt is made to define the nature of literature teaching in general, and to modify the simple model developed towards literature work in a foreign language. Through this discussion, criteria for the selection of appropriate texts can be established.

Notional syllabuses—A reassessment

Abstract Notional syllabuses have been much discussed in recent years. This paper examines critically the arguments which have been used, particularly in Wilkins (1976), to support a change in attitudes to syllabus design. The claim that substitution of a semantic categorization for a syntactic one will make syllabuses more appropriate is rejected. It is argued that learners need to acquire a generative system and that there is, as yet, no way of describing notions, and particularly categories of communicative function, in generative terms. It is suggested that long-term syllabuses will need to continue to be syntactically based, but the value of incorporating notions from a checklist, so that all appropriate notions are systematically covered, is accepted.