Add to this my other point that, for the learner, truth is always more powerful than correctness. What the learner wants first is meaning, and language learning comes a distant second. They will resort to Portuguese rather than not get their meaning across, even if the meaning to be communicated is something as banal as the colour of Mr Brown's dog. So, it seems, given the combination of both teachers' and learners' obsession with 'successful communication' at the expense of language development, we are heading for a fossilisation extravaganza. We have always known that learners don't learn the things we teach them, but do learn the things we don't teach them.
Research continues to show that little formal instruction is effective.
Our methodology still contains direct theoretical opposites left over from see-saw battles between synthesis and analysis, instruction and acquisition, use and usage, form and notion, etc. I think the main reason for this self-assured timidity is the result of making EFL into a product. Books used to be methodologies. Each new coursebook used to signal a dramatic change. Headway clone became Headway clone became Dolly the Sheep.