-
Communicative language teaching
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Communicative language
teaching
(
CLT
),
or the
communicative
approach
, is
an
approach
to
language teaching
that
emphasizes
interaction
as
both the means and the
ultimate goal of
study. Language learners in environments utilizing
CLT techniques learn
and practice the
target language through interaction with one
another and the instructor,
study of
language learning), and use of the
language in class combined with use of the
language
outside of class. Learners
converse about personal experiences with partners,
and
instructors teach topics outside of
the realm of traditional grammar in order to
promote
language skills in all types of
situations. This method also claims to encourage
learners to
incorporate their personal
experiences into their language learning
environment and focus
on the learning
experience in addition to the learning of the
target language.
[1]
According
to CLT, the goal of language
education is the ability to communicate in the
target
language.
[2]
This
is in contrast to previous views in which
grammatical competence
was
commonly given top
priority.
[3]
CLT also
focuses on the teacher being a facilitator, rather
than an instructor. Furthermore, the
approach is a non-methodical system that does not
use a textbook series to teach English
but rather works on developing sound oral/verbal
skills prior to reading and writing.
Contents
[hide]
?
1
Background
o
1.1
Societal
influences
o
1.2
Academic
influences
?
2
Classroom
activities
o
2.1
Role-play
o
2.2
Interviews
o
2.3
Group work
o
2.4
Information
gap
o
2.5
Opinion
sharing
o
2.6
Scavenger hunt
?
?
?
?
3
Critiques
4
See also
5
References
6
Further reading
Background
[
edit
]
Societal influenc
es
[
edit
]
Language teaching was originally
considered a cognitive matter, mainly involving
memorization. It was later thought,
instead, to be socio-cognitive, meaning that
language
can be learned through the
process of social interaction. Today, however, the
dominant
technique in teaching any
language is communicative language teaching
(CLT).
[4]
It was
Noam Chomsky
's theories in
the 1960s, focusing on competence and performance
in language learning, that gave rise to
communicative language teaching, but the
conceptual basis for CLT was laid in
the 1970s by linguists Michael Halliday, who
studied
how language functions are
expressed through grammar, and Dell Hymes, who
introduced the idea of a wider
communicative competence instead of Chomsky's
narrower
linguistic
competence.
[4]
The rise of
CLT in the 1970s and early 1980s was partly in
response to the lack of success with
traditional language teaching methods and partly
due
to the increase in demand for
language learning. In Europe, the advent of the
European
Common
Market
, an economic predecessor to the
European Union, led to migration in
Europe and an increased population of
people who needed to learn a foreign language for
work or for personal reasons. At the
same time, more children were given the
opportunity
to learn foreign languages
in school, as the number of secondary schools
offering
languages rose worldwide as
part of a general trend of curriculum-broadening
and
modernization, and foreign-language
study ceased to be confined to the elite
academies.
In Britain, the introduction
of
comprehensive schools
,
which offered foreign-language
study to
all children rather than to the select few in the
elite
grammar schools
,
greatly
increased the demand for
language learning.
[5]
This increased demand included many
learners who struggled with traditional methods
such as
grammar
translation
, which involves the direct
translation of sentence after
sentence
as a way to learn language. These methods assumed
that students were aiming
for mastery
of the target language, and that students were
willing to study for years before
expecting to use the language in real
life. However, these assumptions were challenged
by adult learners, who were busy with
work, and some schoolchildren, who were less
academically gifted, and thus could not
devote years to learning before being able to use
the language. Educators realized that
to motivate these students an approach with a more
immediate payoff was
necessary,
[6]
and they began
to use CLT, an approach that
emphasizes
communicative ability and yielded better
results.
[7]
Additionally, the trend of
progressivism
in education
provided further pressure for
educators
to change their methods. Progressivism holds that
active learning is more
effective than
passive learning,
[6]
and as
this idea gained traction in schools there was a
general shift towards using techniques
where students were more actively involved, such
as group work. Foreign-language
education was no exception to this trend, and
teachers
sought to find new methods,
such as CLT, that could better embody this shift
in thinking.
[6]
Academic influences
[
< br>edit
]
The
development of communicative language teaching was
bolstered by new academic
ideas. Before
the growth of communicative language teaching, the
primary method of
language teaching was
situational language teaching. This method was
much more
clinical in nature and relied
less on direct communication. In Britain, applied
linguists
began to doubt the efficacy
of situational language teaching. This was partly
in response
to Chomsky's insights into
the nature of language. Chomsky had shown that the
structural
theories of language
prevalent at the time could not explain the
variety found in real
communication.
[8]
In addition, applied linguists such as Christopher
Candlin and
Henry
Widdowson
observed that the
current model of language learning was ineffective
in
classrooms. They saw a need for
students to develop communicative skill and
functional
competence in addition to
mastering language
structures.
[8]
In
1966, linguist and anthropologist
Dell
Hymes
developed the concept of
communicative
competence
. Communicative
competence redefined what it meant to
in addition to speakers having mastery
over the structural elements of language, they
must also be able to use those
structural elements appropriately in a variety of
speech
domains.
[2]
This
can be neatly summed up by Hymes's statement,
without which the rules of grammar
would be useless.
[5]
The
idea of communicative
competence
stemmed from Chomsky's concept of the
linguistic competence
of an
ideal
native
speaker.
[2]
Hymes did not
make a concrete formulation of communicative
competence, but subsequent authors have
tied the concept to language teaching, notably
Michael
Canale.
[9]
Canale and Swain
(1980) defined communicative competence in terms
of three components: grammatical
competence,
sociolinguistic
competence, and strategic
competence.
Canale (1983) refined the model by adding
discourse competence, which
contains
the concepts of
cohesion
and
coherence
.
[9]
An influential development in
the history of communicative language
teaching
was
the
work
of
the
Council
of
Europe
in
creating
new
language
syllabi. When
communicative language teaching had effectively
replaced situational language teaching
as the standard by leading
linguists,
the
Council
of
Europe
made
an
effort
to
once
again
bolster
the
growth
of
the
new
method.
This
led
to
the
Council
of
Europe
creating
a
new
language
syllabus.
Education
was
a
high
priority
for
the
Council
of
Europe,
and
they
set
out
to
provide
a
syllabus
that
would
meet
the
needs
of
European
immigrants.
[8]
Among
the
studies
used
by
the
council
when designing the
course was one by the British linguist, D. A.
Wilkins,
that
defined
language
using
and
rather
than more
traditional categories of grammar and vocabulary.
The new
syllabus reinforced the idea
that language could not be adequately
explained by grammar and syntax, and
instead relied on real
interaction.
[8]
In the mid 1990s, the Dogme 95
manifesto influenced language teaching through
the
Dogme language
teaching
movement. This proposed that
published materials stifle
the
communicative approach. As such, the aim of the
Dogme approach to language
teaching is
to focus on real conversations about practical
subjects, where communication
is the
engine of learning. The idea behind the Dogme
approach is that communication can
lead
to explanation, which will lead to further
learning. This approach is the antithesis of
situational language teaching, which
emphasizes learning through text and prioritizes
grammar over
communication.
[10]
A survey of communicative competence by
Bachman (1990) divides competency into the
broad headings of
discourse
(or textual) competence, and
sociolinguistic and
illocuti
onary
[11]
Strategic competence is associated with
the interlocutors' ability in using
communication
strategies.
[11]
Classroom activities
[
edit
]
CLT
teachers choose classroom activities based on what
they believe is going to be most
effective for students developing
communicative abilities in the target language
(TL). Oral
activities are popular among
CLT teachers, as opposed to grammar drills or
reading and
writing activities, because
they include active conversation and creative,
unpredicted
responses from students.
Activities vary based on the level of language
class they are
being used in. They
promote collaboration, fluency, and comfort in the
TL. The six
activities listed and
explained below are commonly used in CLT
classrooms.
[6]
Role-play
[
edit
]
Role-play is an
oral activity usually done in pairs, whose main
goal is to develop students'
communicative abilities in a certain
setting.
[5]
Example:
1.
The
instructor sets the scene: where is the
conversation taking place? (E.g., in a
café
, in a park, etc.)
2.
The instructor defines
the goal of the students' conversation. (E.g., the
speaker is
asking for directions, the
speaker is ordering coffee, the speaker is talking
about a
movie they recently saw, etc.)
3.
The students converse in
pairs for a designated amount of time.
This activity gives students the chance
to improve their communication skills in the TL in
a
low-pressure situation. Most students
are more comfortable speaking in pairs rather than
in front of the entire
class.
[5]
Instructors need to be aware of the
differences between a conversation and an
utterance.
Students may use the same
utterances repeatedly when doing this activity and
not