Approaches to teaching a foreign language reflect changing fashions. In the past few years we have seen course books that have followed various approaches: a grammar-translation one, a functionalsituational one, a communicative, a lexical or a task-based one, or, in an attempt to reach the ideal approach, a combination of all of these. Teachers’ experience has proved that this kind of ‘perfect’ approach is unobtainable, as different things work with different students in different educational contexts. The best approach to any language approaches and techniques, choosing and shaping them in ways that are appropriate to teachers’ particular students.