AT a time when there is a recognised need in language teaching to give adequate attention to language use as well as language form,

various notional-functional or so-called communicative approaches to language teaching are being advocated. In this context, the present paper is offered as a set of proposals in an effort to define the nature of communicative language teaching.

Any teaching curriculum is designed in answer to three interrelated questions: What is to be learned? How is the learning to be undertaken and achieved? To what extent is the former appropriate and the latter effective? A communicative curriculum will place language teaching within the framework of this relationship between some specified purposes, the methodology which will be the means towards the achievement of those purposes, and the evaluation procedures which will assess the appropriateness of the initial purposes and the effectiveness of the methodology.

This paper presents the potential characteristics of communicative language teaching in terms of such a curriculum framework. It also proposes a set of principles on which particular curriculum designs can be based for implem entation in particular situations and circumstances. The diagram summarises the main areas with which this paper will deal. In discussing the purposes of language teaching, we will consider (1) communication as a general purpose, (2) the underlying demands on the learner that such a purpose may imply, and (3) the initial contributions which learners may bring to the curriculum. In disc ussing the potential methodology of a communicative curriculum, we will consider (4) the process of teaching and learning, (5) the roles of teacher and learners, and (6) the role of content within the teaching and learning. Finally (7) we will discuss the place of evaluation of learner progress and evaluation of the curriculum itself from a communicative point of view. I

Inevitably, any statement about the components of the curriculum runs the risk of presenting in linear form a framework which is, in fact, characterised by interdependence and overlap among the components. In taking purposes, methodology, and evaluation in turn, therefore, we ask readers to bear in mind the actual interdependence between them.

What follows is a consideration of those minimal requirements on comm unicative language

learning and teaching, which, in our view, must now be taken into account in curriculum design and implementation.

1.

WHAT

IS

THE

PURPOSE

OF

THE

CURRICULUM?

The communicative curriculum defines language learning as learning how to communicate as a member of a particular socioecukurai group. The social conventions governing language form and behaviour within the group are, therefore, central to the process of language learning. In any communicative event, individual participants bring with them prior knowledge of meaning and prior knowledge of how such meaning can be realised through the conv entions of language form and behaviour.2 Since communication is primarily interpersonal, these conventions are subject to variation while they are being used. In exploring shared knowledge, participants will be modifying that knowledge. They typically exploit a tension between the conventions that are established and the opportunity to modify these conventions for their pare ticular communicative purposes. Communicating is not merely a matter of following conventions but also of negotiating through and about the cona ventions themselves. It is a convention-creating as well as a convention- following activity. So, in learning how to communicate the learner is confronted by a variable process.

In communication, speakers and hearers (and writers and readers) are most often engaged in the work of sharing meanings which are both dependent on the conventions of interpersonal behaviour and created by such behaviour. Similarly, the ideas or concepts which are communicated about contain diff erent potential meanings, and such potential meanings are expressed through and derived from the formal system of text during the process of comm unication. To understand the conventions which underlie communication, therefore, we not only have to understand a system of ideas or concepts and a system of interpersonal behaviour, we have to understand how these ideas and this interpersonal behaviour can be realised in language -in connected texts. Mastering this unity of ideational, interpersonal and textual knowledge allows us to participate in a creative meaning-making process and to express or interp ret the potential meanings within spoken or written text.3

There is an additional characteristic of this unified system of knowledge. The social or interpersonal nature of communication guarantees that it is

permeated by personal and sociocuIturaI attitudes, values and emotions. These different affects will determine what we choose to communicate about and how we communicate. The conventions governing ideas or concepts, inter- personal behaviour, and their realisation in texts all serve and create attitudes, judgements and feelings. Just as communication cannot be affectively neutral, learning to communicate implies that the learner will come to terms with the new learning to the extent that his own affects will be engaged. At that point, the learners affects become further involved in a process of negotiation with those affects which are embodied within the communicative performance of the target community. So, affective involvement is both the driving-force for learning, and also the motivation behind much everyday communication and the inspiration for the recreation of the conventions which govern such communication. Communication in everyday life synthesises ideational, interpersonal, and textual knowledge- and the affects which are part of such knowledge. But it is also related to and integrated with other forms of human behaviour. In learning how to communicate in a new language, the learner is not confronted by a task which is easily separable from his other psychological and social experiences. The sharing and negotiating of potential meanings in a new language implies the use and refinement of perceptions, concepts and affects. Furthermore, learning the conventions governing communication within a new social group involves the refinement and use of the social roles and the social identity expected by that group of its members. Thus, learning to corn-

municate is a socialisation process. In much of his previous experience the learner has seen communication as the basic means whereby human activity and consciousness is shared and reflected upon socially. Therefore, it makes sense for the teacher to see the overall purpose of language teaching as the development of the learners communicative knowledge in the context of WHAT personal UNDERLIES THE and ULTIMATE social DEMANDS ON THE development. LEARNER?

A language teaching curriculum, from a communicative point of view, will pecify its purposes in terms of a particular target 4 Different curricula will hopefully select. their own particular repertoires from a pool of communicative performance on the basis of a sociolinguistic analysis of the target situation. This does not imply that any one curriculum will be neces sarily entirely distinctive in the target repertoire to which it is devoted. At the surface there will be inevitable overlap among different repertoires. However, underlying any selected target repertoire there will-be an implicit target com petence. It is this target competence which we may define as the capacity for actual use of the language in the target situation. So, in specifying the purposes of the curriculum, a requirement for the communicative approach would be to make an initial distinction between the target repertoire ultimately demanded of the learner and the target competence which will underlie and generate such a repertoire.

How can we characterise this target competence? We have already proposed that learning to communicate involves acquiring a knowledge of the con- ventions which govern communicative performance. In addition, we have proposed that such communicative knowledge can be seen as a unified system

of ideational, interpersonal, and textual knowledge, which incorporates a range of affects. We have also suggested that communication and learning how to corn- municate involve the participants in the sharing and negotiating of meanings and conventions. Such sharing and negotiating implies the existence of par- ticular communicative abilities as an essential part of competence. Therefore, we may identify within competence both the knowledge systems and the abilities which call upon and act upon that knowledge. These abilities can be distinguished

within competence more precisely. In order to share meaning, the individual participant needs to be able to interpret the meanings of others and to express his own meanings. However, such interpretation and expression will most often take place in the context of interpersonal and personal negotiation. The ability to negotiate operates between participants in corn- munication and within the mind of the individual participant i-the latter negotiation is perhaps more conscious during new learning. More obviously, participants in communication negotiate with one another. But, in en- deavouring to interpret and express with a new language, the learner will himself negotiate between the communicative competence he already possesses and that which underlies the new learning. 5

We suggest, therefore, that the communicative abilities of interpretation, expression, and negotiation are the essential or primary abilities within any target competence. It is also likely that these three abilities continually inter- relate with one another during communicative performance and that they are complex in nature. They will involve psychological processes for the handling of rich and variable data - the attention and memory processes for example and they may contain within them a range of secondary 6

The use of these communicative abilities is manifested in communicative per- formance through a set of skills. Speaking, listening, reading and writing skills can be seen to serve and depend upon the underlying abilities of interpretation, expression and negotiation. In this way we are suggesting that the skills repres ent or realise underlying communicative abilities. The skills are the meeting point between underlying communicative competence and observable comm unicative performance; they are the means through which knowledge and abilities are translated into performance, and vice versa.

In selecting any target repertoire, therefore, a communicative curriculum also distinguishes and specifies the target competence on which the per- formance of such a repertoire depends and through which it is achieved. This specification would indicate the ideational, interpersonal and textual con- ventions and the affective aspects of such conventions as a related and underlying system of knowledge which is shared and developed within the target community. The specification would also indicate the demands upon the learners communicative abilities of interpretation, expression, and negotiation similarly underlying communicative performance in the target community and the range of skills which manifest these abilities. Such a specification would account for what the learner needs to know, and how the learner needs to be able to use

such knowledge. The ultimate demands on the learner in terms of some specific target repertoire will, in our view, derive from and depend upon this underlying competence of communicative knowledge and communicative abilities.