Teacher training was based mainly on observation of actual teaching sessions, reinforced by micro-teaching to equip the trainees with discrete teaching skills. While these practices are still found in teacher-training courses, important changes have been introduced at the theoretical level. Communicative language teaching, for instance, is usually presented as a reaction against former approaches and as a reinforcement and justification for new teaching procedures. Student teachers who receive such training are made to believe that the main objective of the course is to preach communication-oriented teaching. Resistance to change Despite all this, schools are still full of grammar-oriented teachers who refuse to embrace the new trend.
Some teachers reject the new trend only because it is new.
As in other domains, traditionalists refuse to change the status quo. Some teachers think that the new approach has introduced an element of disorganization into the materials. In their opinion the merit of structural materials is that they are based on sound criteria of selection and grading. Another category of teachers simply feel more secure with the presentation-drilling techniques that they have been manipulating for years. Others fail to understand the purpose of the new strategies adopted in the design of materials and in the techniques of implementation in the classroom.