Towards a receptive paradigm in foreign language teaching

There are a growing number of language teaching experts and practitioners who assert that the Communicative Language Teaching has failed to meet the expectations of language teachers and students. The article attributes this failure to the theories of “language” and of “language learning” underlying the Communicative Language Teaching. Particularly problematic in this regard is the general human learning theory of “cognitivism”, which, when applied to language teaching, encourages production practice from the very beginning on the basis of the domain-general assumption that practice makes perfect. Studies on language acquisition, however, have demonstrated that when learners are allowed to remain silent at the beginning level and are given ample amount of input, their subsequent language development is much faster and healthier. Currently, there is a paradigm shift in the making,a shift towards receptive methodologies. Research highlights the importance of receptive experience in language development via extensive listening and reading, and strongly suggests that use of our general learning ability does notwork well for language acquisition. Rather, optimal language acquisition, first and second, is the result of the functioning of adomain specific mental capacity nourished via rich receptive experience, not through premature production practice