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of structures. "What was required was, a closer study of the language itself and a return to the traditional concept that utterances carried meaning in themselves and expressed the meanings and intentions of the speakers and writers who created them"似owatt, 1984: 280). Scholars who advocated this view of language, such as Christopher Candlin and Henry Widdowson, drew on the works of functional linguists (e.g. John Firth, M. A. K. Halliday), and works in sociolinguistics (e.g. Dell Hymes, John Gumperz, and Wilkins' (1972). Notional Syllabuses (Wilkins, 1976) had a significant impact on the development of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). CLT aims to "(a) make communicative competence the goal of language teaching and (b) develop procedures for the teaching of the four language skills that acknowledge ,the Chapter One A Survey Study on Various Approaches of FLT in China interdependence of language and communication"洲chards and Rodgers, 1986: 66). CLT has rich theory base. Sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, psycholinguistics and functionalism promote its development. It influences and changes our view on teaching completely (Gui, 1988: 51). CLT has no single, coherent view of how L2 learning occurs. There are two main points of view The first is that the L2 learning is, in many ways, similar to L1 acquisition and is a process of creative construction. Learners gradually build up an increasingly correct picture of L2 structure through hypothesis building and testing. Learners can see whether they appear to interpret what is said to when correctly and by whether listeners react to their utterances as intended. The extent to which different researchers feel that such "creative construction" can occur without any formal teaching of the L2 structure varies. The most extreme is Krashen's claim that acquisition of L2 is inevitable, provided that learners are well motivated and receive enough of the right'type of input. The second view is that of L2 learning as "skill learning". Learning a language is like learning any other new skills, for example, riding a bicycle. When people learn to ride a bicycle, they start with the basis; keep their balance, turning corners, stopping and starting when the basics have been fully automised and they no longer need to think consciously about them, they then move onto the crowded and unpredictable cycle lanes in the city and deal with real life cycling. The same happens when learning a.language. The learners begin with the basics, grammar and vocabulary and then, after controlled and free practice at using the meaningful context, these become sufficiently automised to be available for use in unpredictable natural interaction with others. } As far as learning theory in CLT is concerned, Richards and Rodgers state, that, the following three principles might be helpful. (a) Communication principle: Activities that involve real communication promote learning; (b) Task principle: Activities in which language is used for carrying out meaningful tasks promote learning. (c). Meaningfulness principle: Language that is meanin卿to the learner supports the learning process (1986: 73). Savignon (1983) surveys second language acquisition research as a source for learning theories and considers the role of linguistic, social, cognitive, and individual variables in language acquisition as the basic process involved in developing language proficiency. It seems that,