language teaching. More recently in

language teaching. More recently increasing attention has been paid to what
this might mean if taken seriously.1 The implied charge that only lip-service
has normally been paid to the aim of communication is difficult to prove, but
perhaps not so difficult to accept, given that it does seem generally accepted
that language teaching, globally, has not led to a sat'-factory level of communicative
skill in the vast majority of cases. Inspection of textbooks and national
syllabuses (as well as of actual teaching) suggests that this failure could be
blamed on the apparent failure to ensure that communicative skill is adequately
. represented in language courses. Textbooks and national syllabuses, typically,
and for obvious reasons, present an analysis of language rather than of communicative
skill. To put the position very simply, 'communication' has become fully
accepted as an essential and major component of the 'product' of language teaching,
but it has not yet been given more than a token place (with some very honourable
exceptions of course2), as an essential and major component of the 'process'.
A logical extension of the argument would suggest that if communication is THE
aim, then it should be THE major element in the process. The question could be
put:
Are we teaching LANGUAGE (for communication)?
OR
Aro we teaching COMMUNICATION (via language)?
Most teachers would probably quickly respond that they are first and foremost
LANGUAGE teachers, by training and also by inclination, and they might at the
same time object to the question, since it suggests that the two possibilities
are mutually incompatible. My point is somewhat different. The two are not
directly incompatible of course, but there is a logical relationship between
them that demands attention. It is the same relationship as that which holds
between linguistic competence and communicative competence. A diagram will
, make the point more clearly.