Communicative Language Teaching
05.22
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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.
Background
Societal influences
Communicative
language teaching has been prominence in the 1970s and early 1980s as a result
of many disparate developments in both Europe and the United States. At that
time, there was an increased demand for language learning, particularly in
Europe. The advent of the European Common Market led to widespread European migration, and
consequently there was a large population of people who needed to learn a
foreign language for work or for personal reasons. At the same time, children
were increasingly able to learn foreign languages in school. The number of
secondary schools offering languages rose worldwide in the 1960s and 1970s 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 meant that almost all children had the
opportunity to study foreign languages.
This
increased demand put pressure on educators to change their teaching methods.
Traditional methods such as grammar translation 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 by
schoolchildren who were less academically able. Educators realized that to
motivate these students an approach with a more immediate payoff was necessary.
The
trend of progressivism in education provided a further pressure for educators
to change their methods. Progressivism holds that active learning is more
effective than passive learning, 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 that could
better embody this shift in thinking.
Academic influences
The
development of communicative language teaching was also helped by new academic
ideas. In Britain, applied linguists began to doubt the efficacy of situational language
teaching, the
dominant method in that country at the time. 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
creativity and variety evident in real communication. In addition, British
applied linguists such as Christopher Candlin and Henry Widdowson began to see that a focus on structure was
also not helping language students. They saw a need for students to develop
communicative skill and functional competence in addition to mastering language
structures.
In the
United States, the linguist and anthropologist Dell Hymes developed the concept of communicative competence. This was a reaction to Chomsky’s concept of
the linguistic competence of an ideal native speaker. Communicative
competence redefined what it meant to “know” a language; in addition to speakers
having mastery over the structural elements of language, according to
communicative competence they must also be able to use those structural
elements appropriately in different social situations. This is neatly summed up
by Hymes’s statement, “There are rules of use without which the rules of
grammar would be useless.” Hymes did not make a concrete formulation of
communicative competence, but subsequent authors have tied the concept to
language teaching, notably Michael Canale.
Communicative syllabuses
An
influential development in the history of communicative language teaching was
the work of the Council of Europe in creating new language syllabuses. Education
was a high priority for the Council of Europe, and they set out to provide
syllabuses that would meet the needs of European immigrants. Among the studies
used by the council when designing the course was one by the British linguist, D. A. Wilkins, that defined language using “notions” and “functions”, rather
than more traditional categories of grammar and vocabulary. Notional categories
include concepts such as time, location, frequency, and quantity, and
functional categories include communicative acts such as offers, complaints,
denials, and requests. These syllabuses were widely used.
Communicative
language-learning materials were also developed in Germany. There was a new
emphasis on personal freedom German education at the time, an attitude
exemplified in the philosophy of Jürgen Habermas. To fulfill this goal, educators developed
materials that allowed learners to choose what they wanted to communicate
freely. These materials concentrated on the various different social meanings a
given item of grammar could have, and were structured in such a way that
learners could choose how to progress through the course themselves. The
materials were used in teacher training courses and workshops to encourage
teachers to change to using a communicative syllabus. Two similar projects were
also undertaken by Candlin at Lancaster University, and by Holec at the University of Nancy.
Meanwhile,
at the University of Illinois, there was a study that investigated the
effects of the explicit teaching of learning strategies to language learners.
The study encouraged learners to take risks while communicating, and to use
constructs other than rote memorized patterns. At the study’s conclusion,
students who were taught communicatively fared no worse on grammatical tests
than students that had been taught with traditional methods, but they performed
significantly better in tests of communicative ability. This was the case even
for beginners. As a result of this study, supplemental communicative activities
were created for the French CRÉDIF course
Voix et Visages de la France. These materials focused on classroom
autonomy, and learners were taught various phrases they could use to negotiate
meaning, such as “What’s the word for …” and “I don’t understand”.
Classroom activities
Classroom
activities used in communicative language teaching can include the following:
- 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. William Glasser's "control theory" exemplifies his
attempts to empower students and give them voice by focusing on their basic,
human needs: Unless students are given power, they may exert what little power
they have to thwart learning and achievement through inappropriate behavior and
mediocrity. Thus, it is important for teachers to give students voice,
especially in the current educational climate, which is dominated by
standardization and testing (Simmons and Page, 2010).
Outline
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.
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 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 practise and develop language functions, as well
as judicious use of grammar and pronunciation focused activities.
In the
mid 1990s the Dogma 95 manifesto influenced language teaching through the Dogme language teaching movement, who proposed that published materials
can stifle the communicative approach. As such the aim of the Dogme approach to
language teaching is to focus on real conversations about real subjects so that
communication is the engine of learning. This communication may lead to
explanation, but that this in turn will lead to further communication.
read more http://www.myenglishpages.com/blog/communicative-language-teaching-communicative-approach/
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