Tina throws a wrench into the thinking of those who think that they are teaching to the standards when they are really doing skill building activities:
The communicative activity where they practice doing Task X in Language Y using Phrases A, B, and C is skill-building. Recently Dr. Krashen said on FB that the real enemy is T1, Skill-Building. I then asked him if backwards-planning from a novel or a high-frequency word list and then using that language to build stories, such as having a list of three structures on the board and building a story in which I repeat them over and over while kids count on baseball clickers, if that was T1, skill-building. He replied yes, a list seems like T1 to me. So then I realized that what I did for years, eight years, is skill building.
So, true communication is the only thing left after that. And true communication is not, to me, based on trying to say the same thing 50-75 times. In fact, when you communicate for real, time stands still, you delight in the sharing of ideas, of human creativity, and your focus is on the PEOPLE involved, learning about them and from them, sharing with them, getting to know them and humanity better as you talk. True communication is, of course, non-targeted.