The origins of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)

COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING (Richards and Rogers; Larsen Freeman)

Background

The origins of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) are placed approximately in the late 1960s. During this years, the British language teaching tradition was about to change considerably.

British linguists started to think about the situations which underlined Language Teaching and made emphasis on the functional and communicative potential of language. They saw the need to focus in language teaching on communicative proficiency rather than on mere mastery of structures.

Another reason why these changes may have aroused was the changing educational realities in Europe: the increasing interdependence of European countries brought the need for greater efforts to teach adults the major languages of the European Common Market and the Council of Europe. As a consequence, they needed to articulate and develop alternative methods of language teaching.

Some linguists stated that the aim of learning a new language is that a learner can understand and express himself in a certain context and that for real language use to take place two parties interacting must be present. They also said that there are two systems of meaning lying behind the communicative uses of language: notional categories (time, sequence, location, frequency) and categories of communicative function (complaints, offers, requests). These authors sustain that the functional or communicative approach is the most appropriate one to deal with language teaching.

Principles

1) Goals

 To have one’s student become communicatively competent. Although it has been the goal of many methods, in this approach the notion of what it takes to be communicative competent is much expanded.

 Students need knowledge of linguistic forms, meanings and functions to be able to be communicative competent, that is being able to negotiate meaning and use the appropriate language in a given social context.

2) Role of teachers and students

- Teacher  Facilitator of students learning

 Manager of classroom activities

 Establish situations likely to promote communication

 Organizer of resources

 Advisor (during activities)

 Monitoring (during performance)

 Co-communicator: engaging communicative activities among students

- Students  Communicators/Negotiator: engaging and negotiating meaning (making themselves understood). They learn to communicate by communicating.

 They are more responsible of their own learning (Teacher is less dominant than in a teacher-centered method). The learner should contribute as much as he gains and, thereby learn in an independent way

3) Characteristics of the teaching/learning process

 Everything that is done is done with a communicative intent. Students use the language through communicative activities such as games, role-plays and problem-solving tasks.

 Activities that are truly communicative have three main features:

a) Information gap: it exists when a person in an exchange knows something that the other person doesn’t.

b) Choice: the speaker has a choice of what he will say and how he will say it. If the exercise is tightly controlled, the speaker has no choice and the exchange is not entirely communicative.

c) Feedback: a speaker can evaluate whether or not his purpose has been achieved based upon the information he receives from the hearer. If the listener doesn’t have the opportunity to provide the speaker with such feedback, the exchange is not really communicative.

 Other characteristics of this approach are:

- Use of authentic material: students need to develop strategies for understanding language as it is actually used by native speakers.

- Small groups: these give more time to each student to learn and negotiate meaning.

4) Student-Teacher interaction and Student-Student interaction

 Teacher: He is the initiator of the activities but he does not always himself interact with the students. His main goal is to establish situations that prompt communication among the students. (Sometimes he is a co-communicator).

 Students: they interact a great deal with one another: in pairs, triads, small groups, whole group, etc.

5) Feelings

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