Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) is an approach to the teaching of second and foreign languages that emphasizes interaction as both the means and the ultimate goal of learning a language. It is also referred to as “communicative approach to the teaching of foreign languages” or simply the “Communicative Approach”. In education, teachers are those who teach students or pupils, often a course of study or a practical skill. ... A foreign language is a language not spoken by the indigenous people of a certain place: for example, English is a foreign language in Japan. ... Interaction is a kind of action that occurs as two or more objects have an effect upon one another. ...

Relationship with other methods and approaches

Historically, CLT has been seen as a response to the Audio-Lingual Method (ALM), and as an extension or development of the Notional-Functional Syllabus. // Audio-Lingual Method The Audio-Lingual Method, or the Army Method or also the New Key[1], is a style of teaching used in language instruction. ... A notional-functional syllabus is more a way of organizing a language learning curriculum than a method or an approach to teaching. ...

The Audio-Lingual Method

The Audio-Lingual Method (ALM) arose as a direct result of the need for foreign language proficiency in listening and speaking skills during and after World War II. It is closely tied to behaviorism, and thus made drilling, repetition, and habit-formation central elements of instruction. Proponents of ALM felt that this emphasis on repetition necessitated a corollary emphasis on accuracy, claiming that continual repetition of errors would lead to the fixed acquisition of incorrect structures and non-standard pronunciation. Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tōjō Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000... Behaviorism (also called learning perspective) is a philosophy of psychology based on the proposition that all things which organisms do — including acting, thinking and feeling—can and should be regarded as behaviors. ... Look up practice, practise in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

In the classroom, lessons were often organized by grammatical structure and presented through short dialogs. Often, students listened repeatedly to recordings of conversations (for example, in the language lab ) and focused on accurately mimicking the pronunciation and grammatical structures in these dialogs. A dialog or dialogue is a reciprocal conversation between two or more persons. ... The language laboratory is an audio or audio-visual installation used as an aid in modern language teaching. ...

Critics of ALM asserted that this over-emphasis on repetition and accuracy ultimately did not help students achieve communicative competence in the target language. Noam Chomsky argued "Language is not a habit structure. Ordinary linguistic behaviour characteristically involves innovation, formation of new sentences and patterns in accordance with rules of great abstractness and intricacy". They looked for new ways to present and organize language instruction, and advocated the notional functional syllabus, and eventually CLT as the most effective way to teach second and foreign languages. Avram Noam Chomsky (Hebrew: אברם נועם חומסקי Yiddish: אברם נועם כאמסקי) (born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher, political activist, author, and lecturer. ...

The Notional Functional Syllabus

A notional-functional syllabus is more a way of organizing a language learning curriculum than a method or an approach to teaching. In a notional-functional syllabus, instruction is organized not in terms of grammatical structure as had often been done with the ALM, but in terms of “notions” and “functions.” In this model, a “notion” is a particular context in which people communicate, and a “function” is a specific purpose for a speaker in a given context. As an example, the “notion” or context shopping requires numerous language functions including asking about prices or features of a product and bargaining. Similarly, the notion party would require numerous functions like introductions and greetings and discussing interests and hobbies. Proponents of the notional-functional syllabus claimed that it addressed the deficiencies they found in the ALM by helping students develop their ability to effectively communicate in a variety of real-life contexts. For a curriculum vitae, see Résumé. In formal education, a curriculum (plural curricula) is the set of courses, and their content, offered at a school or university. ...

Overview of CLT

As an extension of the notional-functional syllabus, CLT also places great emphasis on helping students use the target language in a variety of contexts and places great emphasis on learning language functions. Unlike the ALM, its primary focus is on helping learners create meaning rather than helping them develop perfectly grammatical structures or acquire native-like pronunciation. This means that successfully learning a foreign language is assessed in terms of how well learners have developed their communicative competence, which can loosely be defined as their ability to apply knowledge of both formal and sociolinguistic aspects of a language with adequate proficiency to communicate. Communicative competence is a linguistic term which refers to a learners L2 ability. ... Sociolinguistics is the study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used. ...

CLT is usually characterized as a broad approach to teaching, rather than as a teaching method with a clearly defined set of classroom practices. As such, it is most often defined as a list of general principles or features. One of the most recognized of these lists is David Nunan’s (1991) five features of CLT:

1. An emphasis on learning to communicate through interaction in the target language.
2. The introduction of authentic texts into the learning situation.
3. The provision of opportunities for learners to focus, not only on language but also on the learning process itself.
4. An enhancement of the learner’s own personal experiences as important contributing elements to classroom learning.
5. An attempt to link classroom language learning with language activities outside the classroom.

These five features are claimed by practitioners of CLT to show that they are very interested in the needs and desires of their learners as well as the connection between the language as it is taught in their class and as it used outside the classroom. Under this broad umbrella definition, any teaching practice that helps students develop their communicative competence in an authentic context is deemed an acceptable and beneficial form of instruction. Thus, in the classroom CLT often takes the form of pair and group work requiring negotiation and cooperation between learners, fluency-based activities that encourage learners to develop their confidence, role-plays in which students practice and develop language functions, as well as judicious use of grammar and pronunciation focused activities. The Term Learning Management is the capacity to design pedagogic strategies that achieve learning outcomes in students. ... Communicative competence is a linguistic term which refers to a learners L2 ability. ...

Classroom activities used in CLT

Example Activities

• Role Play
• Interviews
• Information Gap
• Games
• Language Exchanges
• Surveys
• Pair Work
• Learning by teaching

However, not all courses that utilize the Communicative Language approach will restrict their activities solely to these. Some courses will have the students take occasional grammar quizzes, or prepare at home using non-communicative drills, for instance. In professional education learning by teaching designates a method which centers on student voice, allowing pupils and students to prepare and teach lessons or parts of lessons. ...

Critiques of CLT

One of the most famous attacks on Communicative Language teaching was offered by Michael Swan in ^[1]. Henry Widdowson responded in defense of CLT, also in the ELT Journal (1985 39(3):158-161). More recently other writers (e.g. Bax ^[2]) have critiqued CLT for paying insufficient attention to the context in which teaching and learning take place, though CLT has also been defended against this charge (e.g. Harmer 2003^[3]).

The Communicative Approach often seems to be interpreted as: if the teacher understands the student we have good communication. What can happen though is that a teacher who is from the same region, understands the students when they make errors resulting from first language influence. Problem with this is that regular speakers of the target language can have great difficulty understanding them. This observation asks to rethink and adapt the communicative approach. The adapted communicative approach should be a simulation where the teacher pretends to understand only that what any regular speaker of the target language would, and should react accordingly.^[4]

See also

• Task-based learning
• Learning by teaching
• Language education
• Teaching English as a Foreign Language
• English as an additional language

Task-based learning is a language learning method popularised by N. Prabhu while working in Bangalore, India. ... In professional education learning by teaching designates a method which centers on student voice, allowing pupils and students to prepare and teach lessons or parts of lessons. ... Language education refers to the teaching and learning of a language. ... TEFL or Teaching English as a foreign language refers to teaching English to students for whom it is not their mother tongue (see English language learning and teaching, which explains the distinctions between different kinds of teaching of English to non-native speakers). ... It has been suggested that Teaching English as a Second Language be merged into this article or section. ...

References

• Brown, H. Douglas (1994) Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy. Prentince Hall.

• Brown, H. Douglas (1994) Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. Prentice Hall.

• Krashen; Stephen D. (1987) Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition Prentice-Hall

• Krashen; Stephen D. (1988) Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning Prentice-Hall

• Gower, Roger; Walters, Steve; Phillips, Diane (1995) Teaching Practice Macmillan ISBN

• Nunan, David. (1991) Communicative tasks and the language curriculum. TESOL Quarterly 25(2), 279-295.

• Nunan, David. (1999) Second Language Teaching and Learning. Boston: Heinle &. Heinle.

• Nunan, David. (2005) Important Tasks of English Education: Asia-wide and Beyond. The Asian EFL Journal Vol7(3)

• Richards, Jack C.; Renandya, W. A. (2002) Methodology in language teaching. New York: Cambridge University Press.

• Richards, Jack C.; Rodgers, Theodore S. (2001) Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching Cambridge University Press.

• Rodgers, T. S. (2001) Language Teaching Methodology. Center for Applied Linguistics Digest. Retrieved Sept. 27, 2004

• Szesztay, Margit; Ryan, Christopher (1994) Selected Readings in ELT Methodology and Classroom Studies Centre for English Teacher Training at Eötvös Loránd University From: http:www.btk.elte.hu/cett/DOWNEX/Jed2.doc

• Willis, Dave and Jane (2007) Doing Task-based Teaching OUP