Effectiveness of grammar activities in Portuguese teaching: An exemplar

The majority of second language (L2) textbooks claim that they promote communication; they use such terms as communicative language teaching, communicative competence, interactive, and meaningful in their introductions. However, recent offer evidence that the instructional methods adopted in these textbooks (be they Spanish, French, Italian, etc.) ignore what is known about second language acquisition (SLA). This evidence demonstrates that learners need opportunities to comprehend language in order to be able to communicate, and the activities used to practice grammar in these texts do not allow students the opportunity to do this; they are not communicative. In order to demonstrate this, the current article examines a top-selling introductory Portuguese postsecondary textbook for exercises that teach two grammatical forms (i.e., preterit and imperfect). The findings support previous research that the activities in L2 textbooks overwhelmingly fall short of leading learners to communicative competence (that is, comprehension and proficiency).