ABSTRACT

There would appear to be a considerable theoretical gulf between the first three quotations above and the last one. Why should this be? For the past 10 years or so there has been a vigorous, sometimes acrimonious, debate about how much the foreign language should be used in the foreign language classroom. Why should this be? Are the answers not obvious? Why should use of the target language (TL), particularly by the teacher, have become such an over-arching methodological principle? Have the answers

not been provided by our curriculum planners, our teacher educators and by our inspectors?