ABSTRACT
The status of grammar-focused teaching (or as it is currently referred to, formfocused instruction, see Doughty & Williams, 1998) has undergone a major reassessment in the past 25 years. The advent of communicative language teaching ostensibly saw the demise of grammar-based instruction: Grammatical syllabi were superseded by communicative ones based on functions or tasks, grammar-based methodologies such as the Presentation-Practice-Production (PP-P) lesson format underlying the situational approach gave way to function and skill-based teaching, and accuracy activities such as drills and grammar practice were replaced by fluency activities based on interactive small group work. This led to the emergence of a fluency-first pedagogy (Brumfit, 1979) in which priority is given to providing opportunities for information sharing and negotiation of meaning in the classroom, and where students’ grammar needs are determined on the basis of their performance on fluency tasks rather predetermined by a grammatical syllabus. The present chapter examines the issue of the level of language often used by learners during fluency work and reviews approaches to addressing this problem within a communicative methodology.
