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Since 1970's communicative approaches have been widely accepted in the field of ESL/EFL teaching. Over the last two decades more and more people have been learning English as a means of communication. In Japan communicative approaches have also become the most influential methodologies of language teaching. The reason of the wide practice of communicative approaches comes from the validity of the linguistic theories which underlie the communicative approaches. In this paper we consider the two most important ideas which has contributed a lot to the development of the communicative approaches: Krashen's 'natural approach' and Wilkins's 'notional syllabus'. Though the process of language learning is not still fully explained, these ideas about language teaching must be incorporated in developing better courses.