In today’s communications-led and increasingly globalised world, there seems to be an ever-increasing importance placed on the need to communicate well in English, particularly in a business environment. This in turn is causing a re-evaluation of English language teaching (ELT) methods and, in particular, the need for more communicative approaches to be more widely adopted and applied in different contexts. This paper looks at the degree to which a single ‘communicative’ ELT methodology can be used in different contexts. It will draw both on my experience of teaching and teacher development in several contexts and on the early stages of my own research into teaching methodology in the state of Kerala. It will focus on what teachers and teacher educators understand by the term ‘communicative approach’ in relation to ELT and to what extent they feel it appropriate to increasingly use this kind of approach in ELT in their own and in wider contexts.