Advantages

There are some advantages of using the communicative language teaching approach. 
Firstly, it allows learners to use the target language in meaningful contexts, thus bringing the real world into the
classroom. Even at the Beginner level students want to learn English to communicate with people in their community.
They want to be able to make an appointment with their GP in person or on the phone, give reasons for ailments,
speak to their children’s teachers, ask for information or advice and to be able to speak with people in the community.
A second advantage is that this approach can be adapted to any level ranging from Pre-Beginner to Advanced and is
suitable for classes comprising students with different linguistic backgrounds and varying levels of communicative
competence, thus allowing learners to interact with each according to their level of proficiency.
A third advantage is that the CLT approach enables the teacher to step back and take on the role of ‘facilitator’. The
teacher is able to observe individual learning through various tasks and is able to determine and respond to student’s
needs.
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Advantages of communicative language

teaching (CLT)
Posted on 12 Sep 2009

From the Second World War to the mid 1970s language teaching was dominated by the audio-lingual method, and
the learning of grammar and the structure of sentences without recourse to meaning. Priority was given to
grammatical competence with a great deal of repetitive practice and drilling.

By the late 1960s the study of meaning had become a respectable area of study in mainstream linguistics and, under
the influence of CLT theory, grammar based theories and accuracy activities gave way to functional and skills based
teaching and fluency activities based on interactive small-group work (Richards p 8 – 9).

According to Melrose, (1995 p 58), the legacy of communicative language teaching methodology is the realisation
that teaching a language involves far more than simply dealing with its syntactic, lexical and phonological
components because language in use results from the ways people choose to manipulate these components in
discourse.
Language learning does not take place in a vacuum, and therefore needs to be taught in real-life contexts to be
effective. CLTadds the dimension of language functions such as apologizing, persuading, negotiating, and conveying
information that are vital for interaction with others. It enables learners to use language for communicative purposes
in situations with others, and to be aware of the appropriate language to use according to levels of formality, tone,
context, topic, and non-verbal behaviour.

In ESOL contexts students generally have sufficient motivation to learn the English that they are surrounded by in
everyday life, therefore their motivation to participate in authentic communicative activities may well be enough for
this type of approach to be appropriate and successful, however this is not always the case and in my next two posts
I’ll take a brief look at some of the disadvantages of communicative language teaching, and my experiences of the
communicative approach in my teaching.

References
Melrose, R. (1995) The Communicative Syllabus: A Systemic Functional Approach to Language Teaching , London,
Pinter.
Richards, J. Communicative Language Teaching Today, available online at www.cambridge.com.mx/site/EXTRAS/jack
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