Functional Approaches in Language Pedagogy

Abstract

In a retrospective survey, it is helpful to use the wisdom of hindsight to impose neat categories and descriptive labels on the movement of professional ideas. The past is thus made to make much more sense than when it was the present. In terms of language pedagogy, the years surveyed in ARAL I (the late seventies) might be characterized as the era of the functional/notional syllabus. If one is seeking a similar global label to characterize the period since then, one might well speak of the return of methodology