COMMUNICATION LANGUAGE TEACHING

Communicative language teaching (CLT), is an approach to language teaching that emphasizes interaction as both
the means and the ultimate goal of study.
The communicative approach has been designed for speaking and for them to use the language as much
as possible so new skills are born.

learning a language is a skill-based activity. And skills can only be developed from practice.

The communicative approach, which started as a reaction against the

grammar translation method, is based on the idea that learning language
successfully comes through having to communicate real meaning. When
learners are involved in real communication, their natural strategies for
language acquisition will be used, and this will allow them to learn to use the
language.

Main Features:
• Communicative interaction for communicative activities .
• Target language used as a natural medium for classroom management
and instruction.
• Classroom should provide opportunities for rehearsal of real-life
situations and provide opportunity for real communication
• Emphasis on oral and listening skills in the classroom
• Use of everyday language
• Use of authentic resources such as newspaper, magazines , manuals,
recipes, videos, etc.
• Communicative competence is the desired goal (i.e., the ability to use
the linguistic system effectively and appropriately).
• CLT emphasizes to engage the learners in real-life situations in the classroom
so that they can understand how to communicate in the real world.

• Normally CLT focuses on the fluency of the learners rather than the accuracy
of the grammar and learners acquire their accuracy gradually and naturally.
• CLT also believes that communication is the fundamental objectives of
language and the learners need to develop all the skills of language (reading,
writing, listening and speaking).
• It offers the opportunity to join in teacher-learner and learner-learner
interaction in the classroom.
• It focuses on the use of techniques which encourage the learners in
participating in the natural environment, for instance, group and pair work
etc.
 • In communicative language teaching, grammar is the second option of the
learners and they discover and internalize the grammatical rules and
functions themselves.
• It uses authentic language materials so that the students find the similarity
between the classroom activities and the real world.

HISTORY :

The origins of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) are to be found in the

changes in the British language teaching tradition dating from the late 1960s. Until
then, Situational Language represented the major British approach to teaching
English as a foreign language. In Situational Language Teaching, language was taught
by practicing basic structures in meaningful situation-based activities.
Language teaching has seen many changes in ideas about syllabus design and
methodology in the last 50 years, and CLT prompted a rethinking of approaches to
syllabus design and methodology. We may conveniently group trends in language
teaching in the last 50 years into three phases:

Phase 1: traditional approaches (up to the late 1960s)

Phase 2: classic communicative language teaching (1970s to 1990s)
Phase 3: current communicative language teaching (late 1990s to the present)

Objectives :

• The main objective is to prepare students for real-life communication through oral
practices and cooperation.
• CLT improves communicative proficiency of all the skills
including reading, writing listening and speaking.
• Gradually it focuses on the grammatical, discourse, functional, sociolinguistic
of communicative competence.
• It used to engage the learners in the pragmatic and functional use of
language.
• It enhances the productivity of the language in scientific ways.
• CLT usually appreciates the learners to engage in linguistic interaction with
real-life objectives.
• Fluency is the first priority rather than accuracy.
• CLT increase the communication ability of the learners in order to enable
them to cope with their communicative needs in target situation .
• Adopting this approach allow students how to use language for a
range of different purposes and functions and how to vary the
language according to setting
Techniques

Teachers have to use any activity that engages learners in authentic communication .

Functional communication activities in which communication is involved

Social interaction activities such as conversation and discussion session and dialogue .

Have plenty of communicative student-student activities (pair discussions, role-playing,

puzzle-solving, and other collaborative tasks) so that each student is constantly exposed
to the target language

Practice different formal and informal interactions through games, role-play, and
problem-solving tasks.

ASSUMPTIONS :

There are some core assumption of CLT:

❖ Second language learning is facilitated when learners are engaged in interaction

and meaningful communication
❖ Effective classroom learning tasks and exercises provide opportunities for
students to negotiate meaning, expand their language resources, notice how
language is used, and take part in meaningful intrapersonal exchange
❖ Meaningful communication results from students processing content that is
relevant, purposeful, interesting and engaging
❖ Communication is a holistic process that often calls upon the use of several
language skills or modalities
❖ . Language learning is facilitated both by activities that involve inductive or
discovery learning of underlying rules of language use and organization, as
well as by those involving language analysis and reflection
❖ Language learning is a gradual process that involves creative use of language and
trial and error. Although errors are a normal product of learning the ultimate
goal of learning is to be able to use the new language both accurately and
fluently
❖ Learners develop their own routes to language learning, progress at different
rates, and have different needs and motivations for language learning
❖ Successful language learning involves the use of effective learning and
communication strategies
❖ The role of the teacher in the language classroom is that of a facilitator, who
creates a classroom climate conducive to language learning and provides
opportunities for students to use and practice the language and to reflect on
language use and language learning
❖ The classroom is a community where learners learn through collaboration and
sharing
 ADVANTAGES:

CLT delivers a clear and obvious benefit to learners – they’re actually able to use the
skills they’ve learnt to communicate in their target language

. CLT is not about learning just for learning’s sake, it has a clear and definable purpose.
Students become competent communicators, able to use the right grammar, vocabulary
and sentence structure in different real-life contexts.

Communicative approach is much more learner-orientated, because it is based on

learners’ needs and interests.

Seeks to use authentic resources. And that is more interesting and motivating for
children.

Learners acquire grammar rules as a necessity to speak so is more proficient and

efficient.

CLT is a powerful teaching approach to encourage the development of the four macro
skills in language learning— speaking, listening, reading and writing

CLT also has a highly positive impact on the relationships between teachers, students
and their peers.

CLT typically places less emphasis on learning of detailed grammatical rules in favour of
gaining greater fluency in the target language. Students are assessed on their level of
communicative competence rather than on their ability to regurgitate information.

This approach also enables learners to quickly gain confidence when interacting with
other people, which helps them enjoy using their new-found language skills.

DISADVANTAGES
Lack Of Context
The context of the learning and teaching atmosphere is not taken into
account.

False Interpretation
The approach is often interpreted as “if the teacher understands the
student we have good communication” but native speakers may not
understand them.
Lack of Accuracy
The main focus of the approach is on fluency rather than language
accuracy.

Lack of Errors Reduction

The approach does not focus much on removing the errors of the
learners.

Incoherence
Since their errors aren’t corrected, learners are likely to produce incorrect
grammatical sentences.

The communicative approach to teaching English is used worldwide. It is

easier to incorporate it in a class with few students and with trainer
teachers, this strength can increase

.CONCLUSION

CLT became something usual already; however it is not recognised by all

specialists in the language teaching sphere. Many teachers still find it hard
to use the CLT method in the class, because of having too different
personalities among students.

, communicative language teaching has become popular in the 21st

century because of its success in helping .Learners, using this
methodology feel more comfortable which increases their language
productivity. Student’ input increases which results in increasing the
output.