As a prototypical example of a set of foreign language teaching principles often assumed to be universal, this paper focuses on the 'communicative approach' in language education (henceforth, 'CLT' – Communicative Language Teaching). CLT has been well-established for almost 50 years and has dominated both language teaching professional discourse and language teaching practice in many contexts worldwide. However, with the exception of brief accounts in Howatt with Widdowson (2004: 326ff.) and Hüllen (2005: 140ff.), there have been no serious attempts to research the origins of CLT, in particular the ways it developed differently in various European contexts in its early stages, and the ways it was promoted and recontextualized. Educational policy makers commonly assume that CLT is easily applicable everywhere, i.e. in a multitude of teaching contexts in different nations or in different kinds of institutional setting therein. In this spirit, the highly influential Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR; Council of Europe) from 2001 defines six levels of communicative language proficiency independently of any specific language and in a context-free manner. The document's – and CLT's – underpinnings in the notion of 'communicative competence' therefore seem to deserve further investigation.
In Anglo-American applied linguistics, the origins of the term 'communicative competence' have been commonly traced back to Dell Hymes' (1972) work in the field of anthropology/sociolinguistics. Yet, there are strong indicators that 'teaching for communicative competence' or CLT has been interpreted differently in relation to the teaching of English in German secondary schools, where the notion originated in Hans-Eberhard Piepho's (1974) Kommunikative Kompetenz als übergeordnetes Lernziel im Englischunterricht, drawing not just on Hymes but on Habermas' sociological and emancipatory notion of 'kommunikatives Handeln' (Habermas & Luhmann 1971). In the British applied linguistic/ELT context, although most accounts of the development of CLT highlight the influence of sociolinguists like Hymes and the philosophy of speech acts (e.g. Austin 1962), there were various neglected strands of influence (including influence from practitioners as well as theorists), which the paper will aim to uncover. Among these were influences from progressive primary school education and advocates for social justice (cf. Rixon & Smith (2012) on the early work of textbook writers Abbs and Freebairn). However, the notion of communicative competence seems to have been largely recontextualised in British ELT to serve and create an international market for UK publishers and institutions like the British Council and Cambridge Assessment, which facilitated the export of English language teaching experts and expertise around the world.
On a surface level, then, these two fields of activity (Fremdsprachendidaktik and British applied linguistics/ELT) appear to be strongly influenced by a common conception of communicative competence but at another level appear incommensurable. Since the 1970s, indeed, a significant body of work – largely in German – has emerged in the field of Fremdsprachendidaktik but this has almost never been referred to within UK applied linguistics/ELT, where continental European influences and contributions, generally, have tended to be ignored (van Essen 1989). At the same time, in the field of Fremdsprachendidaktik itself, an apparently unique understanding of certain core notions – including communicative competence – seems to have emerged (Doff 2008) which continues to colour the way international work is read and 'recontextualised'. It is therefore justified, necessary and innovatory to examine the transnational (Anglo–German) development and construction of CLT as part of joint historical research into the late-20th-century period of apparent integration in language teaching in Europe and beyond, and to ask what the fields of Fremdsprachendidaktik and applied linguistics/ELT in fact share, how they have differed in their development, and, on this basis, what they can potentially offer to one another. In this paper, we report on points of comparison and outline possible implications for conceptualizations of communicative competence and CLT within (English) language teacher education programmes worldwide, as well as potential impact of our comparative approach on the way historical research is done within the emerging fields of HoLLT (History of Language Learning and Teaching) and HoAL (History of Applied Linguistics).
References
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Council of Europe (2001): Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Rixon, Shelagh & Smith, Richard (2012): The work of Brian Abbs and Ingrid Freebairn. ELT Journal 66(3), 383-393.
