The role of grammar in communicative language teaching: An historical perspective Diane Musumeci  University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

The topic of this teleconference, "The role of grammar in communicative langauge teaching" suggests an uneasy relationship between two elements: namely, grammar on the one hand, and communication on the other. In my remarks I hope to dispel some of the misunderstandings that promote its continuing existence. But, before I address the role that grammar has played in the history of second language teaching, I`d like to first explore the nature of grammar: What is it? Linguists define grammar as a set of components: phonetics (the production and perception of sounds), phonology (how sounds are combined), morphology (the study of forms, or how elements are combined to create words), syntax (how words are strung together into sentences), and semantics or meaning. Because all languages are characterized by these components, by definition, language does not exist without grammar.
However, grammar has not always been defined in these terms. Originally, the term grammar, grammatica, referred to the art of writing, as compared to rhetoric, rettorica, the art of speaking. As used today by many teachers and learners, grammar is loosely understood to be a set of rules that govern language, primarily its morphology and syntax. But morphology and syntax are only two components of grammar. Communicative language teaching has brought a renewed emphasis on the role that semantics plays in the definition of language. Communicative language teaching is fundamentally concerned with `making meaning` in the language, whether by interpreting someone else`s message, expressing one`s own, or negotiating when meaning is unclear. Viewing grammar with all of its components helps us as language teachers understand the complexity of what it means to know the grammar of a language. Clearly, the goal of language learning in the communicative classroom is for learners to acquire the grammar of the second language in its broadest sense, to enable them to understand and make meaning; that is, to become proficient users of the second language. Research and experience have shown that explicit teaching of grammatical rules, even if we were able to formulate them all, does not produce such competence. How, then, should grammar be taught?
You may have noticed that I said that communicative language teaching has brought a renewed emphasis to the role of semantics, especially in the early stages of instruction. The title of my presentation also promises an historical perspective. What I will do now is demonstrate that the goal of developing learners` functional competence in a second language, the goal of communicative language teaching, is not a new idea: it has existed for at least the past five hundred years. And a look at the history of second language teaching will reveal characteristics of pedagogy that have been known to promote functional language competence as well as explain why language teachers have not had access to that pedagogy.
While we are all aware of the status that English currently enjoys as a world language, an international system of communication, it has held that position for a relatively short time. At the beginning of this century, linguists lamented the loss of the only world language that they had known: Latin, and they could not fathom that another language would ever take its place. You see, the rediscovery of the classics during the Renaissance resulted in more than an information explosion in academia; and fluency in Latin represented much more than the ability to edit manuscripts: Latin was a language of considerable usefulness as the language of culture and wider communication, and therefore power. In other words, the reasons for learning Latin in the fifteenth century were not very different from learning English today, in the age of the Global Village.
The importance of acquiring communicative competence in Latin dramatically affected language teaching. An entirely new curriculum was created: the studia humantatis (literally, the study of humanity) in which the goal of learning Latin shifted from the preparation of students who could accurately copy manuscripts or compose in imitation of classical authors to the study of what those authors had to say, in Latin. Far from imparting an aesthetic appreciation alone, the revival of learning was understood to be a practical education. With its emphasis on the study of history, philosophy, and science, the new curriculum was designed to give students access to information necessary for personal, moral, and civic development, while simultaneously developing their second language proficiency in Latin.
Among the most celebrated proponents of the studia humanitatis was Guarino da Verona (1374-1460), an early humanist of the Italian Renaissance, an educator celebrated throughout Europe for his scholarship and his outstanding reputation as a language teacher (Garin, 1958). Guarino argued that if students were going to be able to use Latin to understand the classical texts, as well as to convey new ideas, Latin must be acquired as a living, practical language. Therefore, he proposed that the first emphasis in instruction should be on meaning, rather than on form. Students must acquire "the habit of speaking continually in Latin" in addition to the ability to read and write. He understood that interpretive skills develop sooner than expressive skills and that language learning is a developmental process. He cautioned