Sea Change

Course materials have, at long last, moved away from the prescriptions of the traditional course book. A sea change has taken place in recent years in the way language teaching and learning is viewed , and course book writers have become aware of the need to reflect this. The 'natural English' syllabus (Oxford University Press) compiled by Ruth Gairns and Stuart Redman, is a good example of this - for it chimes in with more contemporary theoretical perspectives , which view the acquisition of lexis as the driving force behind language learning.