Finding the evidence: Communicative Language Teaching in Intermediate Phase English Home Language textbooks

Abstract

Addressing the well-publicised literacy crisis in the country’s primary schools has rightly been identified as a national imperative. The causes of systemic underachievement have been variously attributed to teacher pedagogy, and the absence of a culture of reading, amongst other factors. The role of language textbooks, integral to the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS), has been under-explored. This paper analyses the realisation of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), a key language teaching approach endorsed by CAPS, in a series of Intermediate Phase English Home Language textbooks. Our investigation is of a two-week teaching plan in each of the three textbooks. The philosophical paradigm of interpretivism underpins this desk study, which constitutes a special form of qualitative research in its exclusive use of document analysis. The study finds that CLT is only partially realised across the three textbooks. The development of communicative competence is highly uneven, there is an over-reliance on didactic texts, a paucity of opportunities for varied interaction and negotiation of meaning, and somewhat limited integration of the four language skills. The inescapable conclusion is that this series of CAPS-compliant language textbooks necessitates a more principled treatment of the communicative approach if it is to help tackle the literacy crisis.