The Communicative Syllabus

This book 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 appraoch 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.