Four questions concerning the communicative approach are addressed: (1) What are its theoretical foundations? (2) How does the new approach force teachers to reexamine the stated goal of helping learners communicate? (3) How does it modify teaching methods? (4) What are the implications of adopting a European teaching model? (MSE)

The Flexible Business Language Curriculum is a curriculum model designed for customization of foreign language instruction for businesses and commercial organizations. It uses traditional language content areas (grammar and functions) but in contexts less familiar to language teachers. The model is based on the communicative approach, with…

Many teachers feel that the primary goal of language education is the development of communicative rather than linguistic competence. This shift in focus has affected syllabus design. However, no single syllabus appears satisfactory by itself. The grammatical syllabus is effective to instill in learners automatic production of accurate structural…

A proposal for introducing basic communication courses into China's foreign language curriculum argues that it is a change needed to meet the new objectives of foreign language teaching in that country. Four suggestions for a smooth transition include: (1) basing the communication courses on what already exists in the curriculum; (2) using a large…

The language laboratory could make a larger impact than it does on undergraduate language study. The growth of attractive new technology makes even more important the careful evaluation and exploitation of existing technology. A major obstacle in doing this is the lack of careful and rigorous research about the effectiveness of the language…

The first part of a discussion of curriculum for advanced business Arabic outlines the need for development of such a course, arguing that traditional courses do not meet the vocational needs of the growing audience for Arabic instruction. The second part describes a methodology for a newly designed course that uses problem-solving and guided…

This report presents the results of a research development project to establish a suitable structural framework for the development of a European policy in the field of adult language learning. The report is divided into six sections: (1) the introduction in which the purpose of the work and the operative questions are discussed; (2) a discussion…