Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)

Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)

1. It is defined as a set of principles that involve the following aspects (Richards, 2006)

   • Goals of language teaching
     • It is developed in terms of the communicative competence which emcompases the following aspects of language:
       • -Knowing how to mantain communication
       • -Knowing how to use the language for different purposes and functions
       • -Knowing how to vary the use of language based on the setting and participants
       • -Knowing how to produce and understand different types of texts.
   • How learners learn a language
     • Language learning seems to result from processes of:
       • Interaction between the learner and user of the language and also collaborative creation of meaning.
       • Meaningful and purposeful interaction with language.
       • Negotiation of meaning and getting feedback.
       • Focusing on the input while communicating and trying new forms of expressing things.
   • Roles of teachers and learners in the classroom
     • Now the teacher acts like a facilitator and monitor and students are active participats in the construction of their knowledge.

2. Background of CLT

   • Traditional approaches (up to 1960s)
     • They give priority to grammatical comptences as the basis of language proficiency
       • Audiolinguism and Situational Language Teaching are examples of the approches given in this epoch
   • Classic Communicative language teaching (1970s-1990s)
     • In thise epoch attention was shifted to the knowledge and skills to use grammar and other aspects of language appropriately.
       • Examples of this new focus is learning how to make requests, give advice and make suggestions.
   • Current communicative language teaching (19902 to the present)
     • An interest on real communication, the learner as a center of the learning process, the teacher as a facilitator and a functional perspective of language

3. Classroom activities in CLT

   • The activities must reflect the principles of the communicative methodology and developing fluency and accuracy are goals
     • Some examples of common activities in CLT are: information gap activities, jigsaw activities, task completion, gathering information, opinion-sharing activities.

4. Current trends in CLT

   • Interaction and meaningful communication
   • Communication as a holistic process
   • Language learning is a gradual process.
   • Negotiation of meaning based of effective classroom learning tasks
   • Activities that involve inductive learning of rules from the language

5. Product-Based CLT Approaches

   • Text-Based Instruction
     • It sees the communicative competence as involving the mastery of different types of texts.
   • Competency-Based Instruction
     • It aims to teach students basic skills they need to face everyday situations

6. Process- Based CLT approaches

   • Content-Based Instruction
     • The focus is on a subject or subject matter and this goes from on a topic on science or even a favorite topic of a learner.
   • Task-Based Instruction
     • A focus on classroom processes and the use of especially designed tasks.