What is

communicative
language teaching?
JUUP STEMA P R E S E N T E D B Y: S A L I M A M I L A D
What does “communication” mean?
What is its origin?
*COMMUNICATION is the exchange of ideas, facts,
emotions, or, opinions between two or more people.
*The word communication came from the Latin words
“communicare” and “communis” which means to share or to
participate.
What is communicative language teaching?
The communicative language teaching or CLT is a teaching approach
that highlights the importance of real communication for learning to
take place.
The background to the CLT:
The origin of the CLT can be traced back to the late 1960s and early 1970s as a
reaction to traditional Language Teaching Approaches such as “Audio-lingual
language teaching and situational language teaching” in order to use language
effectively in real world communicative situation, in stead of focusing on the
study of language as a system and extensive practice in language structures.
* Language was studied as a tool for communication rather than a
system in the mind.
* Since that time, a central aspect of CLT has been how to understand
the concept of communication and how it should inform language
teaching.
The three perspectives of CLT:
This chapter studies how CLT might be understood when
considering communication from a number of different
perspectives, they are:
*Communication as Competence.
*Communication as process.
*Communication in context.
Communication as Competence:
*Communicative competence is the ability to understand and use
language effectively.
*Since the early 1970s, communication is regarded to be of language
teaching. Hence, understanding communicative competence is one
way of understanding CLT.
*Communicative competence includes not only grammatical
competence but also, sociolinguistic, discourse and strategic
competence.
Assumptions and Stelma’s judgments of CLT:
( Juup Stelma is a lecturer at the university of Manchester)
* Language can be represented in a few abstract constructs.
This is wrong because language use across varieties and situation is complex.
* Communicative competence can be defined as a fixed thing.
This is wrong because societies and communication constantly change.
* It is possible to define learners’ needs.
This is wrong because a group of learners may have very different sets of
needs, or may have no clearly defined needs.
Communication as Process
To understand CLT methodology the CLT has turned to use language
through communicating.
* Hence, understanding what is involved in the process of
communication is a second way of understanding CLT.
* The communication process has some models they are:
- The linear model.
- Interaction model.
- Transaction model.
The Linear Model or “Shannon model”:
* It is known also as “the transmission model”.
* It deals with the transmission of messages, with one person sending
information through some sort of channel of communication and
another person receiving this information.
* Productive and receptive language skills mirror the model’s focus
on sending and receiving messages.
* The oral (channel of) communication with speaking or writing as
the productive and listening or reading as the receptive skill.
Five principles for communicative exercises
These principles were suggested by (Johnson, K. (1982) :
* The information transfer principle.
* The information gap principle.
* The jigsaw principle.
* The correction for content principle.
* The task dependency principle.
Two treatments of CLT:
1- Nunan (1989): (Daivd Nunan an Austrailan linguist)
Communicative tasks should involve comprehending, manipulating,
producing and interacting in the target language.
2- Savignon (1991): (Sandra J. Savignon a professor of French and English as an international
language at the university of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign)

Defined CLT as involving negotiation, interpretation and expression

of meaning in the target language.
Communication in Context:
* The spread of CLT from western countries was criticized because its
‘democracy, individuality, creativity and social expression’(McKay 2002)
fails to response to local teachers and students’ needs and backgrounds.
* The western origin of communication theory and CLT has been used
as part of an argument against exporting CLT to non-Western contexts.
* CLT is defined with a fixed set of techniques. This means that when
the fixed techniques of CLT are exported to non-Western contexts they
will not fit.
* An alternative view is “ communication is universal; how we understand it,
how it is affected by changes in technology and society, and how it is intertwined
with context and culture, is more complex”.
*According to this more critical view, rejecting CLT for certain parts of the
world because prevailing descriptions of communication are western would be to
“ throw out the baby with the bathwater”.
*Rather, actual communication is a situational and cultural dynamic that cannot
be ignored in any context.
Conclusion:
This chapter has explored how three perspectives on
communication seem to inform language teaching.
This is by no means the only way to approach what
CLT is or is not.