There were several constraints on the course, which may seem extreme,
but which doubtless have parallels elsewhere. These must be taken into
account, since there is little point in providing students with impractical
ideas. First, a communicative approach to foreign language teaching requires,
to all intents and purposes, native speaker competence in the
teacher. It is worth remembering that the communicative approach was
developed very much through courses in ESP where native English speakers
were developing basically study skills courses for improving reading ability
to handle written academic English (EAP). There are considerable dangers
in having non-native speakers produce texts for teaching purposes. For a
teacher who has less than native speaker competence, the safest method
may well be to base teaching firmly on given texts. Much teaching in China is
very traditional and text-based, for this and other reaons. Many of the ideas
in the course therefore aimed to provide students with ways of manipulating
naturally occurring texts.