The Communicative Syllabus

This text begins with a survey of approaches to communicative syllabus design, from the functional-notional approach of the early 1970s, through criticism of the functional-notional approach in the early 1980s, to the contemporary search for a process approach to language learning. There has been little discussion of how linguistics could contribute to developing such a process approach, and in the second part of the book a possible role for linguistics is assessed: special attention is paid to systemic-functional linguistics and its concern with social context and language use, and to the need for a "meaning negotiation model" of language. In the following part, a meaning negotiation model is proposed, drawing on the seminal work of Michael Halliday and on work by Fawcett, Martin and Lemke, and the model is illustrated through analysis of a unit from a communicative coursebook. This model confirms the importance of familiarity with cultural frames, social contexts, discourse moves and non-verbal codes in language learning and underlines the inadequacy of structures, functions and notions as a basis for language teaching.
It implies instead an approach based on the "topic" and the "interaction", and in the penultimate part of the book such a topical-interactional approach is exemplified with a variety of teaching material, showing its link with the meaning negotiation model previously proposed, and its similarities with differences from earlier approaches to language teaching. In the final part of the book, the topical-interactional approach is placed within the context of the current debate on language teaching/learning, and its implications are discussed.