Communicative Competence: Theory and Classroom Practice

This ground-breaking text, which stresses the use of meaningful language at all stages of language acquisition, is about texts and contexts in second language learning. It is intended for teachers and teachers-in-training as an introduction to the theoretical basis for communicative language teaching and as a guide to building a program consonant with those theories.

Sandra J. Savignon is Professor of Speech Communicaton and Director of the Graduate Program in English as a Second Language at The Pennsylvania State University. Prior to coming to Pennsylvania, she was founding dirctor of the multidisciplinary doctoral program in Second Language Acquisition and Teacher Education(SLATE). She was founding editor of Addison-Wesley Second Language Professional Library and served on the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language)Committee of Examiners for the Educational Testing Service and has been a consultant on language testing to various state and national commissions. Sheis past President of the American Association for Applied Linguistics and currently convenor of the Scientific Commission for Teacher Education of the International Association for Applied Linguistics. Among her previous publications is the first edition of Communicative Competence: Theory and Classroom Practice, winner of the Modern Language Association of America Kenneth W. Mildenberger Medal for a Distinguished Research Publication in the Teaching of Foreign Languages and Literatures. She lectures frequently and has offfered seminars and workshops for language teachers in the United States, Canada, South America, Europe and Asia. Her nonprofessional life revolves around her family: her husband Gabriel, their three children, Daniel, Catherine, and Julie, and grandchildren Joseph, Caitlin, and Madeleine.