COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE THEORY AND CLASSROOM PRACTICE:TEXTS AND CONTEXTS IN SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING (2nd ed.).Sandra J. Savignon. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1997. Pp. v + 287. $40.70paper.

Abstract

Savignon writes in her book, Communicative Competence Theory and Classroom Practice: Texts and Contexts in Second Language Learning (2nd ed.), that the communicative approach to language teaching has become so popular that many materials developers have jumped on the bandwagon, claiming a communicative focus to their materials. She writes, “What ‘nutritious’ and ‘natural’ are today to breakfast foods, ‘communicative’ and ‘functional’ are to language texts. How much change has actually taken place is debatable. Just as cereals containing ‘all natural’ honey are no less sweet, so ‘asking questions’ may be no more than a new label for an old unit on the formation of the interrogative” (p. 138).