Learning to use vs. using to learn

There is, in a sense, a ‘strong’ version of communicative language teaching, much closer to the original proposals than the ‘weak’ version now largely accepted by teachers and textbook writers. In the ‘weak’ version, communicative activities have been accepted as exercises, and most textbooks now contain information-gap activities, role-plays, simulations, games, etc. What is much more problematic is to build a syllabus round communicative interaction, and this is what the ‘strong’ version seems to require. One can describe the weaker version as ‘learning to use English’, the strong version as ‘using English to learn it’. (Howatt, A.P.R.: A History of English Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984: 279)