Having a strong feeling of dissatisfaction with the outcome of the traditional audiolingual and grammar-translation methods, different linguists opted for a change to restore ‘fluency’ at the expense of ‘accuracy’ in the early 1970s. Different studies showed at that time how ‘accuracy’ was achieved at the expense of ‘fluency’. They really had a convincing pretext: students were unable to communicate appropriate social and realistic language. Hence, the main focus of EFL shifted from the code to the message and EFL teaching/ learning approaches introduced the necessary tools to authentic language use, classroom exchanges and real life situations to engage students in real communication.

 
This philosophy has brought about different teaching approaches and trends with a variety of names, including proficiency-based approach, and communicative language teaching approach. The latter has been adopted in Tunisian schools since the beginning of the 1990s.

 
The main objective of the communicative lesson is to provide students with an authentic native-like situation which they are likely to encounter in real life. In the proceedings of the teaching/learning act, students are no more stopped for errors nor taught deductively the linguistic input of the target language. Teachers are forcedly asked to avoid the old audiolingual techniques such as drills, repetition and grammar exercises.

 
Undoubtedly, the fluency-oriented trend, via its emphasis on the smooth flow of English as a second language, has minimized pausing and hesitation in speech as well as writing.

 
Yet, this approach has got its blemishes and constraints. Students are lacking that firm grasp of grammatical structures (accuracy) which are necessary for the production of well-formed utterances and texts (fluency). So, the approach which came into existence to show that ‘accuracy’ was achieved at the expense of ‘fluency’ with the audiolingual theory can be similarly criticised for its favouring ‘fluency’ at the expense of ‘accuracy’.

In my present research, I will try to shed the light on the elusive facet of the communicative approach applied in Tunisia and its direct effect on students’ mastery of certain aspects of the English verbal system. I will delimit my research on ‘THE MISUSE OF TENSES’ as they represent the axis around which the English grammar is built and without which it would be impossible to reach ‘fluency’ and ‘accuracy’.  

I hereby invite all those who are interested in this topic to carry out a new type of an action research- Practitioner teachers, pedagogues and even linguists are the the most welcome to share ideas, articles, exam papers and questionnaires.

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