in working with colleagues around the world, with teachers and trainees on MA and initial TEFL courses, and with modern languages teachers in the UK, I am constantly struck by the very disparate perceptions they have of CLT. There are, I think, a number of reasons for the confusion, not least the fact that CLT has developed extremely rapidly over the past fifteen or so years and has now moved a considerable distance from its original practices (though without substantially changing its original principles).