Since the introduction of audio-oral and audio-visual methods in foreign language teaching, the necessity to develop oral comprehension and production has been systematically emphasized. This assertion finds its full justification in the postulate that one of the ultimate goals of foreign language teaching is to lead the learner towards an autonomous participation in oral communication which subsumes both production and comprehension. However, if one analyzes the didactic material used towards this objective, one is struck both by the disparities in the approaches, and the low degree of systematization. This tangible contrast between the objective and its realization leads us to raise the following questions: if communication is the central element, what is the elation holding between communicative competence on the one hand, and oral and written understanding and production on the other. If we limit ourselves to the level of understanding, does the variety in the didactic approach used imply that the approach is random or that it follows the identification of sub-objectives, necessary intermediate steps towards auntonomous understanding in the target language?
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