ABSTRACT
In recent years critical comments about the prevalent approach to foreign language (FL) teaching in secondary education in the UK, i.e. particular interpretations of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) implicit in grass-roots developments of the late 1970s and 1980s (i.e. the Graded Objectives movement leading to the GCSE), as well as national policy in the 1990s (i.e. the National Curriculum Modern Foreign Languages Orders), are increasingly being voiced by commentators and practitioners alike.
