Some linguists may well feel that it is inappropriate to devote an entire issue of the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics to a movement exclusively within language teaching. It would certainly be inaccurate to see language teaching as simply an application of linguistics, and some parts of this issue of ARAL will necessarily survey material that is not exclusively applied linguistics. Nonetheless, one particular tradition of applied linguistics has been heavily committed to the development of effective second language teaching strategies, and communicative language teaching has been responsive to changes in our approach to language study in its most central tenets and beliefs.

Language teaching has traditionally adopted one of two complementary orientations towards its subject matter. It has either taken the view that language is a system and the primary objective of teaching must therefore be to insure that the system is mastered or it has taken the view that language is essentially a set of artifacts (texts and the like). System oriented language teaching (e. g., the grammar-translation method or the structural approach) has typically emphasized the generality of linguistic rules and attempted to describe and teach “the language as a whole,” whereas text-oriented approaches (such as, for instance, situational and communicative language teaching) have attempted to teach an appropriate sub-set of relevant texts which are taken to define “what the learner really needs.” The characteristic fault of system-based approaches. which explains how otherwise sane men were able to produce absurdities like “ The pen of my aunt is in the sporran of the Scotsman” [A good example of the genitive, my boy!] or pattern practices like “Are you English?” (cue: my brother) trained to fall victim to these little nonsenses, but what are the equivalent crimes of text-based language teaching? They are less easy to spot, but they generally take the form of “wasting police time.” If, as text-based teaching impliesm every text is potential grist to the learning mill, there is no reliable way of distinguishing between texts which are important because they stretch the learner's command of the target language and those which merely have been obvious.

It is not a simple matter to determine the contours of syllabus design for second/foreign languages in the late 1980s. Definitions are disparate, the field diffuse. For example, in the abstracrs in Language Teaching over the last five years, the area which was traditionally thought of as syllabus design (cf., Shaw 1982:78) is treated under Theory and Principles, Curriculum Planning, Syllabus/Course Design, Materials Design, and even Teaching Methods. This is not surprising, for there is no longer a standard definition of syllabus Accordingly, I shall begin this survey of the state of syllabus design in the late 1980s with the question of definition, then look at the growing literature on syllabus types, their implementation and evaluation, and conclude with some notes on applications of theory.

Five years ago book-length studies of the craft of English for Specific Purposes comprsied Munby's Communicative Syllabus Design (1978) and Robinson's ESP (English for Specific Purposes) (1980), substantive additions to this very short list had been made by widdowson (1984), Kennedy and Bolitho (1984), McDonough (1984), Trimble (1985), and Hutchinson and task-orinented collections of papers (Swales 1985b, Peterson 1986), several conference proceedings (e.g., Tickoo 1986) and comprehensive survey articles such as that by Maher (1986) on English for Medical Purposes. Nor has there been any abatement in the steady stream of ESP-related articles, papers, theses, and monographs.

The word Communicative has, unfortunately, become so widespread that it has suffered the fate of words like democracy and freedom. At worst it has lost any precise meaning and comes to refer to any set of characteristics considered by its user to be good, modern, progressive. At best, the word is invested with precise meaning, but what is meant by it differs from user to user so that it becomes impossible to make generalizations on the topic which would satisfy all those who use the term. Indeed, any attempt at generalization is likely to lead to more divisive debate than it is to bring warring parties together.

In 1978 Merrill Swain and I had the opportunity to review theory and practice in the emerging communicative orientaitons to second language teaching and testing. The immediate outcomes of that review were published by the Ontario Ministry of Education in the form of a theoretical position paper (Canale and Swain 1979; see also Canale and Swain 1980) and a bank of sample items and techniques for measuring communication skills in French as a second language (Ontario Ministry of Education 1980). Although the limitations and problems in various communicative approaches have become increasingly evident since 1978, communicative competence has nonetheless become one of the most productive, influential, and complex paradigms in applied linguistics. Nowhere is this more true than in the relatively isolated area of measurement of communicative competence. It is thus appropriate to review activity in this area over the past decade.

Recent developments in the teaching of foreign languages at school level have been primarily, if not exclusively, concerned with attempts to move away from the more academic form-focused views of language and language teaching that prevailed well into the 70s, towards the more practical and communicatively-oriented approaches in vogue today. Many projects have added useful insights in this areas, and it would be impossible to do justice to them all. It is proposed, therefore, to limit the scope of this chapter to the description of a rather as a subject rather than as a medium of instruction. It is hoped that these will be seen as representative of the much wider range of school foreign language teaching developments that have taken place across the world in recent years. First, however, a brief attempt will be made to outline the background from which these more communicatively-oriented approaches have emerged.

Language continues to play a central role in discussion about education and is still offered as a key to understanding educational success and failure. Its importance can be seen in the current publisher's catalogues, each with its offereings on language and education, in the many language courses and conferences attended by teachers, and in the recent government initiatives focusing attention on the requirments of language (specifically, English) teaching.

The problems of research into communicative language teaching are a special case of the problems facing research into any kind of foreign language pedagogy. They also overlap to a considerable degree with those facing any research in teaching, regardless of subject matter. This article reviews a range of research approaches which have been, or might be, used in researching various dimensions of communicative language teaching. It draws on the general literature on educational research methods to some extent, and on the general language pedagogy research literature, as well as on the growing body of research literature on communicative language teaching. This is not an exhaustive survey, however; instead, a limited number of studies are chosen for discussion so as to exemplify the major research problems and approaches.

In this section we shall look at ‘movements’ or ‘approaches,’ other than the communicative approach, which have influenced language teaching at the same time as the communicative approach has been dominant. Some definitions of the communicative approach include some of the concerns discussed here, while others exclude them, but an understanding of these alternative response to perceived deficiencies in earlier language teaching practices should clarify the context of the communicative movement.

Surprisingly little has been written on the role of materials and the uses that teachers may make of them. General books in this area include Madsen and Bowen (1978), Cunningswoth (1984), and Sheldon (in press). The only references which particularly consider communicative langauge teaching are Grewer, Moston, and Sexton (1981), which incorprates a theoretically motivated taxonomy as well as much practical discussion, and apattison (1987), which is a practical handbook with materials in English, French, and German.