Every individual's needs will differ, and a unit/credit system must be designed with sufficient flexibility to ensure that whatever the individual's interest in language learning, the system caters to it. The thesis of this paper is that, while a grammatical approach to language teaching cannot cater to it, a communicative approach can. A communicative approach asks essentially two questions: What are the types of language interaction in which the individual is going to engage and with what purpose? This goes beyond asking what the situations are in which the individual will find himself needing the language, although situational dimensions are important. Whereas the grammatical approach derives a teaching program from the form that utterances have in a particular language, the communicative approach is concerned essentially with the content of utterances. The paper further discusses the value and advisability of considering this approach when formulating a syllabus. (Author)