Between Grammar and Communication: Teaching L1 in the Czech Republic and England

Abstract

Like others in this book, this chapter deals with the basic question of What is the role of L1 teaching in the global era? In many parts of the world, L1 teaching has evolved from Classics, i.e. from a common base. Even though the divergent and turbulent development of society in the twentieth and twenty-first century has brought various paradigms for looking at L1 instruction, and despite the fact that the various national L1 teaching models have come up with various solutions, they all have certain problems in common. The chapter elaborates on the topic of the main aims of teaching L1 (in a narrower sense, grammar or knowledge about language) in the era of globalisation, extremely fast technological development and altering communication patterns. Using examples, a traditionally grammar-based approach to teaching Czech (and to a large extent also Slovak, Polish and Hungarian) is compared with a skills-based approach to teaching English (in England and other English-speaking countries). The comparison presents the historical (political, linguistic, didactic, etc.) milestones on the path to the current situation where the grammar-based systems are looking for functionality and communicatively-oriented solutions, and the skills-based systems have, to a smaller or larger extent, decided to implement more grammar teaching. What are the underlying reasons and policies? As these cases show, and as is obvious from other chapters in this book, this problem is highly topical not only in Central Europe and the English-speaking world, but also elsewhere.