Communicative language teaching revisited: discourses in conflict and foreign national teachers

Abstract

In this paper I discuss some of the competing and conflicting discourses of language education that exist at present in England. I begin by focussing on two of these discourses, one emanating from the Department for Education and Skills (DfES), via the National Curriculum, and the other, put forth by foreign language specialists at British universities. I then move on to discuss data collected during my ongoing study of French, German and Spanish nationals teaching foreign languages in London secondary schools. These data form a third competing discourse of language education, one that is more akin to that of academics than that of the DfES. I end by suggesting that as their numbers increase, these teachers might act as catalysts for change in foreign language education, in particular as regards the role of grammar.