COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING

Communicative Language Teaching, an innovation of English language teaching

Diana Carolina Urrego

There has been an increasing interest in learning “English” as a foreign language, which basically considered one of the most important languages in all over the world. People need “English” for their jobs, career, life, travelling, studies, etc. However, the problem was and in some countries is still considering problem in how to learn and how to teach a language including rules of grammar, pronunciation, skills of communication. Few years ago the way to learn and teach English was based in a traditional method where the focus was on mastery of different items of grammar and practice through controlled activities such as memorization of dialogue and drills, towards the use of pair work activities, role plays and group work activities. Fortunately these activities started to be in process of changing with other activities that involve real communication in which language is used for carrying out meaningful communication promoting learning such as role plays and opinion sharing; as a result traditional approach was set aside. What made this approach to get out of the system was a new approach called “Communicative Language Teaching” or CLT.

Communicative Language Teaching is an innovation of foreign language teaching, aiming at improving students’ Communicative competence, which makes a greater emphasis on the use of the target language in the classroom, and in particular, it entails the exchange of unknown information between interlocutors. It also helps to carry out quality education in foreign language teaching. Meanwhile, with the rapid development of EFL teaching in non-English-speaking countries, As English teachers, It is also important to consider how we are pursuing our teaching preparation because of that, Teaching English poses seven challenges for teachers and teacher educators in the new millennium: language proficiency, diversity of contexts, access or lack of access to resources, implementation of classroom-based research, professional development, networking, and education of teacher educators (González , 2000).

In this way, we have to become more aware that the exclusive use of either the Communicative Approach does not suit all English teaching situations. Also, we need to discover that there is not a single teaching method which deals with everything that concerns the form, the use and the content of the target language. Therefore, we cannot throw away the traditional teaching method altogether.

Communicative Language Teaching is an important and new approach, useful too, and it focuses on needs of teachers, especially in how to teach a foreign language and also in students in how to learn a foreign language. In practical terms, whether assisting mixed-ability classes, aiding motivation, leading from a focus on form to

...