This article integrates major outcomes of a simulation-based approach to teaching foreign language and links it to learners’attainment of strategic competence. According to existing research, curricula inspired by the approach seem to promote favorable conditions for language acquisition. If language teachers design simulations that help learners to assess the characteristics of the language situation, set communicative goals, plan responses, and control the execution of their plans, they help learners to become strategically competent and pave the way to communicative competence.
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