Wim Gombert

CHAPTER 3. This study 47 A STRUCTURE-BASED DESIGN ese coursebooks claim to apply CLT principles and develop all four language skills, and there is no denying they could be used as such, but actual practice in the Dutch classroom puts a focus on grammatical accuracy that logically follows from how the coursebooks are set up. A STRUCTURE-BASED PROCEDURE Each unit consists of a short text to be read for comprehension, a list of expressions and words from the text with their Dutch translations, several exercises in which students are asked to interact with each other using (pre-formulated) questions based on the vocabulary items and text, and a substantial number of exercises in which grammar is o ered and practiced, with a heavy focus on verb forms. In each unit, additionally, a great deal of time is spent on activities targeting the development of comprehension strategies (through reading and listening). ese reading and listening texts provide exposure to linguistic items like (thematic) vocabulary and grammar rules. Following these activities, certain linguistic items (words and rules) are thus highlighted and practised, and word lists have to be memorized. e acquired knowledge is regularly tested, o en by means of discrete-point tests. Most activities on comprehension strategies and linguistic knowledge are conducted in the L1 (Dutch), as it is considered necessary for the students’ comprehension and henceforth make learning more e ective (Van Compernolle, 2015). On thewhole, L2 exposure and active use are rather limited andmost in-class teaching, and interaction is also done through the medium of the L1. Table 5 provides a more elaborate overview of the main characteristics of the method in terms of an SB approach, a design which can best be described as a functional spiral around a structural core (Brum t, 1980) and classroom procedures which not only aimed at developing explicit (grammatical and lexical) knowledge but also at explicitly training comprehension strategies as the central exam is limited to testing reading comprehension.

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