Teaching the concept of necessity

The language teaching materials which are referred to as functional, notional or
communicative are often interpreted as signaling the death of grammatical mastery as a primary
goal of language teaching. This interpretation has led to opposing reactions. Those teachers who
felt bored or uncomfortable with the teaching of structure have embraced the functional approach
because of its emphasis on “conversations” while those with a strong grammatical orientation
have rejected it because they believe that functional syllabi have replaced functional sequence
with an arbitrary resentment of conversational or situational topics, which they fear will never
lead to competence in the language. Both groups have misunderstood the organization and intend
of the functional communicative approach.
The functional communicative approach does not deny the importance of mastery of the
grammatical system of the language, nor abandon a systematic development of structural
mastery in the presentation of materials.
Grammatical form is taught, not as end in itself, but as means of carrying out
communicative intent. This change emphasis has sometimes obscured the concern for
grammatical aspects in the language because traditional concepts of grammatical preposition no
longer apply.
Structural patterns that are normally considered “advanced” because of relative
complexity are often presented at the beginning of functional-communicative courses because
they are used to perform the communicative function being presented.
Apparently complex and unattractive, teaching grammar, especially Modal Verbs, in a
communicative way proves to be a challenging and rewarding experience.
Originally our work was meant to have a twofold value: both to demonstrate the
advantages of communicative teaching on students’ communicative competence and to be a
good scientific and methodological aid resource for all those interested in teaching modal verbs
successfully.
Now, in the end, taking into account students’ good command of modals in
communication as well as their good results in oral and written examination clearly show that we
have finally reached the target of our work.