Revisiting Wilkins' Notional Syllabuses

Abstract

One of the innovations that we have recently introduced in our reviews section is to include reviews of books that were published some time ago. The aim of the 'classics' reviews is to indicate how far these older works are still relevant to current thinking, how far we have or have not moved on, and generally to serve as an occasion for a critical reappraisal. The intention is to publish these reviews on a significant anniversary of the original publication, and as 2006 is the 30th anniversary of David Wilkins's Notional Syllabuses, we have asked Keith Johnson to launch the series with a review of this book.

Thirty years later: Henry Widdowson's Teaching Language as Communication

“…These messages were compelling and sounded like magic to us all. They also complemented perfectly the related ideas about functional and notional syllabuses, which had appeared in publications of the Council of Europe and reached the wider ELT world in 1976 in David Wilkins’ Notional Syllabuses (recently reviewed in these pages by Johnson, 2006). ‘Bliss was it, in that dawn, to be alive.’…”