Since the late 1960's, we've seen Hymes refute the focus on grammatical competence, highlighting instead the importance of communicative competence. We've had Michael Long talk about the role of interaction in language acquisition and we've heard variations on Ellis's proposition that teachers should not pre-determine the linguistic content of a lesson. We claim we've moved into a communicative era of language teaching, but how far are we really from the grammar syllabi of the 1950's.

About the speaker: Chia Suan Chong is a general and business English teacher and also runs teacher training courses such as the CELTA and the Cert IBET, in addition to cultural training courses. She is a regular conference presenter on topics such as English as a Lingua Franca, Dogme ELT, systemic functional grammar and intercultural pragmatics. She is passionate about languages - she currently speaks 5 - and is fascinated by the interplay between culture, communication, language and thought. Chia blogs regularly at chiasuanchong.com