The importance of being... communicative

With our classes we, as teachers, intend that our students acquire the language and the capability of communicating with other people, right? Here precisely we have the important thing for our classes: there must be communication in the target language among the teacher and the students, even among the students... It's obvious, anyway, this means that someone says something to someone else. Rebecca Oxford (1990) (1) says that many teachers didn't use to be prepared to establish this real communication in the class. Are we like those teachers of the past? Let's stop and think about this point... Do my classes reduce in the end to just giving the grammar and a lot of words...? Are my students able to hold communication with others, with native speakers? And I mean not merely simulated communication (which is necessary as well), but real communication... English classes must have the goal of preparing our students for that communication.

Just one more hint: in my classes I used to make a warm-up at the beginning where I asked my students about their activities of a few days before and further related questions.

(1) Cfr. page x from OXFORD, Rebecca (1990) Language Learning Strategies. What Every Teacher Should Know. Boston: Heinle & Heinle Publishers.