ABSTRACT
The teaching of MFLs is sensitive, perhaps like no other subject, to regular pendulum swings in terms of methodological and pedagogical redefinition. Hawkins’ (1996) review of thirty years of language teaching captured the flavour of the ebbs and flows in recent times whilst Kelly’s epic review (1969) covered twenty-five centuries. Whilst a ‘communicative’ framework has been remarkably constant as a backdrop for some two decades already, this is itself defined variously and idiosyncratically. Grammar has always had a central focus although its role in language learning has been highly contested. The role of grammar within communicative methodology is elusive, sometimes excluded as an irrelevance, sometimes ‘done’ latently in classrooms, sometimes reinvented in what is deemed to be a more accessible, palatable format and centring on a discourse that focuses on language as ‘patterns’.
