structures, but according to (1) the range of concepts or ‘notions’ that a
language can express (such as frequency, duration, and quantity), and (2)
the communicative functions that speakers perform through language
(such as offering, inviting, accepting and declining). Language, then, did
two things: it expressed meanings and it was used in the performance of
tasks. Communicative language teaching materials of this period bear
witness to the impact of Wilkins’ work. ESP textbooks in particular asked
students to express quantities, measure volumes, describe cyclical and
linear processes – in short, to articulate abstract notions verbally. More
general EFL textbooks concentrated more on ‘doing things’, as can be seen
in the titles of books such as Leo Jones’
Functions of English
(1977)
.
The ‘information gap’ or ‘information transfer’ task became the arche-
typal communicative activity. Typically, one learner would be given access
to information that was denied to another learner. Then, in pairs or groups,
the learners would exchange the information. Information gap activities
were intended to ensure ‘genuine’ or ‘authentic’ communication. The
information gap remains fundamental to communicative teaching. Any
exercise or procedure which claims to engage the students in communica-
tion should include some transfer of information or opinion, and one of the
main jobs of the teacher is consistently seen as setting up situations where
information gaps exist and motivating the students to bridge them in
appropriate ways. By the time of Nunan’s
Designing Tasks for the Communi-
cative Classroom
(1989), the information gap task had been analysed into
constituent parts, including goal of task, activity type, input, learner roles,
teacher role and setting, and graded in terms of difficulty. However, it was
still the transactional nature of the task that was emphasised: language was
a medium for getting things done, as can be seen from the example that
Nunan gives of a simple communicative task from a popular textbook
(Maley & Moulding, 1981: 3; Nunan 1989: 11):
Goal:
Exchanging
personal information
Input:
Questionnaire on sleeping habits
Activity:
(i)
Reading questionnaire
(ii) Asking and answering questions about sleeping
habits
Teacher role:
Monitor and facilitator
Learner role:
Conversational
partner
Setting:
Classroom/pair work
This communicative task sets up an information gap activity whereby learners
exchange personal information; however, there is no consideration given in
the textbook or in Nunan’s analysis of the task to
why
learners might want to
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Intercultural Approaches to ELT
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exchange this kind of information. Personal information is exchanged for
its own sake.
That language is primarily a means of exchanging information is not an
unreasonable view, and it is one which was acceptable to the commercial
growth of English language teaching world-wide during the 1970s,
sometimes in cultures which were suspicious of the Western cultural
values espoused by Britain and America. A focus on transactional
functions also made sense to course book publishers, who could promote
the purely instrumental value of their textbooks across a range of cultures.
Even so, the transactional view of language is a narrow one, as Loveday
(1981: 123) observes:
Now English is increasingly recognized as approaching the status of a
world lingua franca and because of this fact there are many involved in
its teaching who seek and support its de-ethnicization and de-
culturalization. Whatever the outcome of this particular debate will be,
L2 teaching should not blindly follow the extreme utilitarianism of the
Zeitgeist and reduce communicative competence to the mere acquisi-
tion of skills. Perhaps this is all that is needed for English as an
international medium, but I doubt it, because the cultural background
of the L2 speakers of English will still be present in their communica-
tive activity if this consists of more than booking into a hotel or
answering business letters or writing scientific reports, and even these
will involve specific cultural presuppositions.
Loveday argues that by focusing only on the transactional level, a communi-
cative language teaching course neglects important cultural information that
can help anticipate and make sense of differences in how even simple transac-
tions operate in different countries. For example, in Moscow in 1988, I found it
difficult to purchase half a dozen eggs in a shop, not only because of my poor
Russian, but simply because the shopkeeper was accustomed to selling eggs in
multiples of ten. Loveday argues that the communicative classroom should
find a place for cultural information of this kind.
Obviously, many good teachers will have been introducing cultural
information during their communicative language teaching lessons,
despite little encouragement from the materials themselves, just as good
teachers during the years of the audiolingual method would have come up
with ‘communicative’ activities before they were systematically incorpo-
rated into the curriculum. Stern calls this kind of
ad hoc
introduction of
cultural information ‘cultural asides’ (1992: 224). A good Russian teacher
might simply have pointed out to a learner, like me, that Russians do not
use imperial measures. However, both teachers and students require sys-
tematic support from language teaching materials, not only in devising
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