One size does NOT fit all. Despite the fact that there is a continuous push for teachers to adopt a more communicative approach to language teaching since communication is the ultimate goal of learning a second language, it seems that this is not always the case with our learners who may or may not opt for communicative classroom activities and, surprisingly enough, prefer a more teacher-centered atmosphere. Here is what Schmidt, Boraie, & Kassabgy (1996) have to say on this:
“Determined learners prefer classes in which there is a balance between different skill emphases and a balance between teacher control and student centeredness, together with activities that are challenging. Anxious students, on the other hand, would rather not participate actively in class and don’t like activities that force them to, but prefer to be silent. The strongest relationship, supported both by the results based on factor analysis and by those based on multidimensional scaling, is that language learning enjoyment and its opposite, anxiety, are related to attitudes toward traditional class structures and contemporary, communicative ones. Students who score high on the affect dimension of motivation welcome communicative classes; students who score low on this dimension are resistant and tend to reject group and pair work and other aspects of the communicative classroom”. (p. 56)
Schmidt, R., Boraie, D.,
& Kassabgy, O. (1996). Foreign language motivation: Internal structure and
external connections. Language learning motivation: Pathways to the new century, 2, 9-70.