Much practice material in EFL courses is tightly controlled and somewhat mechanical–necessarily so as learners cannot be expected to manipulate large quantities of language in the early stages of learning. What we need to look for in coursebooks is whether the practice material stops at the stage where language practice is there for language practice’s sake or whether it is recognized that this is only a transitional stage before the learner achieves some degree of communicative competence: the ability to use language for his own purpose, appropriately and confidently.

The sentence fragment at the end of the text – the ability to use language for his own purpose, appropriately and confidently – refers back to