Content

Introduction ……………………………………………………………………

1. The communication approach in theory

   1. Origin of communicative approach

   2. Advantages and disadvantages of communicative approach

   3. Definitions and methods of communicative approach in teaching listening

   4. Relationships between listening and communicative approach

   5. Peculiarities of communicative-oriented listening in the intermediate stage

2. The experimental part of the study

2.1 The goals and objectives of the experimental work

2.2 States the stage of the experiment

2.3 Formative stage of the experiment

2.4 Control stage of the experiment

3. Conclusion

4. References

The Communicative Language Teaching, also called the Notional or Functual Approach, is seen rather than a method in language teaching that aims to make the communicative competence goal of language teaching and to develop procedures for the teaching of the four skills that acknowledge the interdependence of language and communication. The Communicative Language Teaching is more comprehensive than any other approaches and methods; it is different n form and status. There is no single or authority on it, nor any single model that is universally accepted as authoritative.

The urgency of the research is defined by the importance of teaching listening through communicative approach in the intermediate stage.

The problem is that teaching listening through communicative-oriented teaching is still weak point of the educational system. Shortage of time for improving listening skills makes students weak at speaking. In attempts to solve the problem the theme of the research is “Teaching listening by means of communicative-oriented teaching”.

The subject of the investigation is the methodology of communicative approach

The object of the investigation is teaching listening activities by means of communicative approach

The aim of the research is to investigate methodology of teaching listening by means of communicative approach

The objectives of the research are:

1) To show origin of communicative approach

2) To compare the advantages and disadvantages of communicative approach

3) To define the definitions and methods of communicative approach in teaching listening

4) To indicate relationships between listening and communicative approach

5) To find out peculiarities of communicative oriented teaching listening in the intermediate stage

The hypothesis is teaching particular methods of implementing complex of exercises in listening and their execution sequence for students in order to achieve listening skills at a high level.

Methods of investigation of my research as following:

• Researching method is used for selecting material for thesis paper.

• Demonstration method is used for showing the importance of the usage of the communicative approach in teaching listening.

• Questioning method is used for finding out the frequency of the English language by teachers during the lesson.

• Testing method is used for observing the attitude of children to the target language usage in the classroom.

The novelty of the research is lies on fact that on the basis of theoretical generalization, we have worked out a set of exercises to train listening through communicative-oriented teaching.

Theoretical value is that students may use the theoretical material while writing term paper, final thesis, reports

Practical value is that students may use listening activities during lessons

Teaching listening through communicative-oriented teaching

What is Communicative Language Teaching? Perhaps the majority of language teachers today, when asked to identify the methodology they employ in their classrooms, mention “communicative” as the methodology choice. However, when pressed to give a detailed account of what they mean by “communicative”, explanations vary widely.

Communicative language teaching can be understood as of principles about the goals of language teaching, how learners learn a language, the kinds of classroom activities that best facilitate learning, and the roles of teachers in the classroom. Let us examine each of these issues in turn.

The Communicative Language Teaching, also called the Notional or Fuctual Approach, is seen rather than a method in language teaching that aims to make the communicative competence goal of language teaching and to develop procedures for the teaching of the four skills that acknowledge the interdependence of language and communication. The Communicative Language Teaching is more comprehensive than any other approaches and methods; it is different n form and status. There is no single or authority on it, nor any single model that is universally accepted as authoritative. [1]

The origins of Communicative language teaching 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 basis structures in meaningful situation-based activities. [2]

By the end of the 1960s it was clear that the situational approach was worn out and that there was no future in language teaching by predicting language on the basis of situational events. Two important points of view led to a new approach to language teaching. Noam Chomsky in his “Syntactic Structures” pointed out that the standard structural theories of language were incapable of accounting for the fundamental characteristics of language, that is creatively and uniqueness of individual sentences. On the other hand, British applied linguists emphasized another fundamental dimension of language that was inadequately addressed in the current approaches to language teaching at that time that is the functional and communicative potential of language. They realized the need to focus in the language teaching on the communicative proficiency rather than on the mere mastery of structures. [3]

Language teaching begins with the spoken language, the material being presented orally before being presented in the written form. The target language items are introduced and practiced situational. Vocabulary selection procedures are followed in order to ensure that an essential general service vocabulary is covered while items of grammar are graded following the principle simple forms should be taught before the complex ones. As to reading and writing they are introduced once a sufficient lexical and grammatical basis has been established.

With the changing educational realities in Europe and the increasing interdependence of European countries, there came the need to teach adults the major language of the European Common Market and the Council of Europe. In this new background, the British linguist D.A. Wilkins proposed a functional or communicative definition of the language that could serve as a basis developing communicative syllabuses in language teaching. His contribution to language teaching was a deep analysis of the communicative meaning that a language learner needs to understand and express, in other words the systems of meanings that lay behind the communicative uses of the language. He described two types of meanings: one of notional categories including concepts such as time, sequence, quantity, location, frequency and another one for categories of communicative function including request, denials, offers, complaints. [4]

In 1971 a group of experts began to investigate the possibility of developing language courses on a unit-credit system, a system in which learning tasks are broken down into “portions or units, each of which corresponds to a component of a learner’s needs and is systematically related to all the other portions”. The group used studies of the needs of European language learners, and in particular a preliminary document prepared by a British linguist, D. A. Wilkins (1972), which proposed a functual or communicative syllabus for language teaching. Wilkin’s contribution was an analysis of the communicative meanings that a language learner needs to understand and express. Rather than describe the core of language through traditional concepts of grammar and vocabulary. Wilkins attempted to demonstrate the systems of meanings that lay behind the communicative uses of language. [5].

For some, Communicative Language Teaching means just a little more than an integration of grammatical and functional teaching. In this respect Littlewood in his “Communicative Language Teaching” in 1981 states that one of the most characteristic features of communicative language teaching is that it plays systematic attention of fuctional as well as to structural aspects of the language. For others, Communicative Language Teaching means using procedures where learners work in pairs or groups making use of the available language resources in problem-solving tasks. What is essential is that at least two parties are involved in an interaction or transaction of some kind where one party has an intention and the other party expands or reacts to the intention. [6]

The work of the Council of Europe; the writings of Wilkins, Widdowson, Candlin, Christopher Brumfit, Keith Johnson, and other British applied linguists on the theoretical basis for a communicative or functional approach to language teaching; the rapid application of these ideas by textbook writers; and the equally rapid acceptance of these new principles by British language teaching specialists, curriculum development centers, and even government gave prominence nationally and internationally to what came to be referred to as the Communicative Approach or simply Communicative Language Teaching (The terms national-functual approach and functional approach are also sometimes used). Although the movement began as a largely British innovation, focusing on alternative conceptions of a syllabus, since the mid-1970s the scope of Communicative Language Teaching has expanded. Both American and British proponents now see it as an approach (and not a method) that aims to

a) Make communicative competence the goal of language teaching and

b) Develop procedures for the teaching of the four language skills that acknowledge the interdependence of language and communication. [7]

Howatt in “A History of English Language Teaching”-1983, distinguishes between a “week” and a “strong” version of Communicative Language Teaching. The “weak” version stresses the importance of providing learners with opportunity to use their English for communicative purposes and attempts to integrate such activities into a wider program of language teaching. The “strong” version communicative teaching claims that the language is acquired through communication, so it is not merely knowledge of the language, but of stimulating the development of the language system itself. So, the former could be described a “learning to use” English and the latter entails “using English to learn” it. [8]

The wide acceptance of the communicative approach and the relatively varied way in which it is interpreted and applied can be attributed to the fact that practitioners from different educational traditions can identify with it and consequently interpret it in different ways. In this line of thought Savignon in “Communicative Competence”- 1982, offers as a precedent of Communicative Language Teaching a commentary by Montaigne on his learning Latin through conversation rather than through the customary method of formal analysis and translation: “Without methods, without a book, without grammar or rules, without a whip and without tears I had learned Latin as proper as that of my schoolmaster’s. This antistructural view can be held to represent the language learning version from a more general learning prospective, usually referred to as “learning by doing” of “the experience approach.”

The focus on communicative and contextual factors in language use has as antecedent in the work of the linguist John Frith. Frith is credited with focusing attention on discourse as subject and context for language analysis. He also stressed that language needed to be studied in the broader sociocultural context of its use which included participants, their behavior and beliefs, the objects of linguistic discussion and word choice.

Another dimension of Communicative Language Teaching, its learner-centered and experience-based view of second language teaching also has forerunners outside the language teaching tradition. For example an important American National Curriculum Commission in 1930 began its report.

With the premise that “Experience is the best of all schools…” so the ideal curriculum should consists of “well-selected experiences”. Like those who have recently urged the organization of Communicative Language Teaching around tasks and procedures the committee tried to suggest that the curriculum should consist of appropriate experiences stretching across the years of school study. Individual learners were seen as possessing unique interests, styles, needs and goals which should be reflected in the design of the methods of interaction.

Common to all versions Communicative Language Teaching is a theory of language teaching/learning that starts from a communicative model of language and language use that seeks to translate this into a design for an instructional system, for materials and their use, for teacher and learner roles and behaviors and for classroom activities and techniques. [9]

A COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH TO LANGUAGE TEACHING – ORIGINS AND Development Marius Narcis MANOLIU1

Communicative language teaching sets as its goal the teaching of communicative competence. What does this mean? Perhaps we can clarify this term by firs comparing it with the concept of grammatical competence. Grammatical competence refers to the knowledge we have of a language that accounts for our ability to produce sentences in a language. It refers to knowledge of the building blocks of sentences (e.g., parts of speech, tenses, phrases, clauses, sentence patterns) and how sentences are formed. Grammatical competence is the focus of many grammar practices using the rule on the other page. This unit of the analysis and practice is typically the sentence. While grammatical competence is an important dimension of language learning, it is clearly not all that is involved in learning a language since one can master the rules of sentence formation in a language and still not be very successful at being able to use the language for meaningful communication. It is the latter capacity which is understood by the term communicative competence.

Communicative competence includes the following aspects of language knowledge:

• Knowing how to use language for a range of different purposes and functions

• Knowing how vary our use of language according to the setting and the participants (e.g., knowing when to use formal and informal speech or when to use language appropriately for written as opposed to spoken communication)

• Knowing how to produce and understand different types of texts (e.g., narratives, reports, interviews, conversations)

• Knowing how to maintain communication despite having limitations in one’s language knowledge (e.g., through using different kinds of communication strategies) [10]

Our understanding of the processes of second language learning has changed considerably in the last 30 years and CLT is partly a response to these changes in understanding. Earlier views of language learning focused primarily on the mastery of grammatical competence. Language learning was viewed as a process of mechanical habit formation. Good habits are formed by having students produce correct sentences and not through making mistakes. Errors were to be avoided through controlled opportunities for production (either written or spoken). By memorizing dialogs and performing drills, the chances of making mistakes were minimized. Learning was very much seen as under the control of the teacher.

In recent years, language learning has been viewed from a very different perspective. It is seen as resulting from processes such as:

• Interaction between the learner and users of the language

• Collaborative creation of meaning

• Creating meaningful and purposeful interaction through language

• Negotiation of meaning as a learner and his or her interlocutor arrive understanding.

• Learning through attending to the feedback learners get when they use the language

• Paying attention to the language one hears (the input) and trying to incorporate new forms into one’s developing communicative competence.

• Trying out and experimenting with different of saying things

With CLT began a movement away from traditional lesson formats where the focus was on mastery of different items of grammar and practice through controlled activities such as memorization of dialogs and drills, and toward use of pair work activities, role play, group work activities and project work. [10]

The type of classroom activities proposed in CLT also implied new roles in the classroom for teachers and learners. Learners now had to participate in classroom activities that were based on a cooperative with listening to their peers in group work and tasks, rather than relying on the teacher for a model. They were expected to take on a greater degree of responsibility for their own learning. And teachers now hat to assume the role of facilitator and monitor. Rather than being a model for correct speech and writing and one with the primary responsibility of making students produce plenty of error-free sentences, the teacher had to develop a different view of learners’ errors and of her or his own role in facilitating language learning. [11]

In planning a language course, decisions have to be made about the content of the course, including decisions about what vocabulary and grammar to teach at the beginning, intermediate, and advanced levels, and which skills and micro skills to teach and n what sequence. Decisions about these issues belong to the field of syllabus design or course design. Decisions about how to best to teach the contents of a syllabus belong to the field of methodology.

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:

Phase1: traditional approaches (up to the late 1960s)

Phase2: classic communicative language teaching (1970s to 1990s)

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

Let us firs consider the transition from traditional approaches to what we can refer to as classic communicative language teaching.

Traditional approaches

Traditional approaches to language teaching gave priority to grammatical competence as the basis of language proficiency. They were based on the belief that grammar could be learned through direct instruction and through a methodology that made much use of repetitive practice and drilling. The approach to the teaching of grammar was a deductive one: students are presented with grammar rules and then given opportunities to practice using them, as opposed to an inductive approach in which students are given examples, as opposed to an inductive approach in which students are given examples of sentences containing a grammar rule and asked to work out the rule for themselves. It was assumed that language learning meant building up a large repertoire of sentences and grammatical patterns and learning to produce these accurately and quickly in the appropriate situation. Once a basic command of the language was established through oral drilling and controlled practice, the four skills were introduced, usually in the sequence of speaking, listening, reading and writing.

Techniques that were often employed included memorization of dialogs, question-and-answer practice, substitution drills, and various forms of guided speaking and writing practice. Great attention to accurate pronunciation and accurate mastery of grammar was stressed form the very beginning stages of learning, since it was assumed that if student made errors, these would quickly become a permanent part of the learner’s speech. [12]

Methodologies based on these assumptions include Audio-lingualism (in North America) (also known as the Aural – Oral Method), and the Structural-Situational Approach in the United Kingdom (also known as word list a grammar lists, graded across levels.

In a typical audio-lingual lesson, the following procedures would be observed:

1. Students first hear a model dialog 9either read by the teacher or on tape) containing key structures that the focus of the lesson. They repeat each line of the dialog, individually and in chorus. The teacher pays attention to pronunciation, and fluency. Correction of mistakes of pronunciation or grammar direct and immediate. The dialog is memorized gradually, line by line. A line may be broken down into several phrases if necessary. The dialog is read aloud in chorus, one half saying out speaker’s part and the other half responding. They student don’t consult the book throughout this phase.

2. The dialog is adapted to the students’ interest or situation, through changing certain key words and phrases. This is acted out by the students.

3. Certain key structures from the dialog are selected and used as the basis for pattern drills of different kinds. These are first practiced in chorus and then individually. Some grammatical explanation may be offered at this point, but this is kept to an absolute minimum.

4. The students may refer to their textbook, and follow up reading, writing or vocabulary activities based on the dialog may be introduced.

5. Follow-up activities may take place in the language laboratory, where further dialog and drill work is carried out. [13]

In a typical lesson according to the situational, a three-phase sequence, known as the P-P-P cycle, was often employed. Presentation, Practice, Production.

Presentation: The new grammar structure is presented, often by means of a conversation or short text. The teacher explains the new structure and checks students’ comprehension on it.

Practice: Students practice using the new structure controlled context, through drills or substitution exercises.

Production: Students practice using new structure in different context, often using their own content or information, in order to develop fluency with the new pattern.

The P-P-P lesson structure has been widely used in language teaching materials and continues in modified form to be used today. Many speaking or grammar-based lessons in contemporary materials, for example, begin with an introductory phase in which new teaching points are presented and illustrated in some way and where the focus is on comprehension and recognition. Examples of the new teaching point are given in different context. This is often followed by a second phase in which he students practice using the new teaching point in a controlled context using content often provided by the teacher. The third phase is a free practice period during which students try out the teaching point in a free context and in which real or simulated communication is the focus.

The P-P-P lesson format and the assumptions on which it is based strongly criticized in recent years, however. Skehan (1996,p.18), for example, comments:

The underlying theory for a P-P-P approach has now been discredited. The belief that a precise focus on a particular form leads to learning and automatixation (that learners will learn what is taught in the order in which is taught) no longer carries much credibility in linguistics or psychology. [14]

Under the influence of CLT theory, grammar-based methodologies such as the P-P-P have given way to functional and skills-based teaching, and accuracy activities such as drill and grammar practice have been replaced by fluency activities based on interactive small-group work. This led to the emergence of a “fluency-first” pedagogy in which students’ grammar needs are determined on the basis of performance on fluency tasks rather than predetermined by a grammatical syllabus. We can distinguish two phases in this development, which we call classic communicative language teaching and current communicative language teaching.

Phase 2: Classic Communicative Language Teaching (1970s to 1990s)

In the 1970s, a reaction to traditional language teaching approaches began and soon spread around the world as older methods such as Audiolingualism and Situational Language Teaching fell out of fashion. The centrality of grammar in language teaching and learning was questioned, since it was argued that language ability involved much more than grammatical competence. While grammatical competence was needed to produce grammatically correct sentences, attention shifted to the knowledge and skills needed to use grammar and other aspects of language appropriate for different communicative purposes such as making requests, giving advice, making suggestions, describing wishes and so one. What was needed in order to use language communicatively was communicative competence. This was a broader concept than that of grammatical competence, and as we saw in Chapter 1, included knowing what to say and how to say it appropriately based on the situation, the participants, and their roles and inventions. Traditional grammatical and vocabulary syllables and teaching methods did not include information of this kind. It was assumed that this kind of knowledge would be picked up informally.

The notion of communicative competence was developed within the discipline of linguistics (or more accurately, the sub discipline of sociolinguistics) and appealed to many within the language teaching profession, who argued that communicative competence, and no simply grammatical competence, should be the goal of language teaching, the next question to be solved was, what would a syllabus that reflected the notion of communicative competence look like and what implications would it have for language teaching methodology? The result was communicative language teaching. Communicative teaching created a great deal enthusiasm and excitement when it first appeared as a new approach to language teaching in the 1970s and 1980s, and language teachers and teaching institutions all around the world soon began to rethink their teaching, syllabuses, and classroom materials. In planning language courses within a communicative approach, grammar was no longer the starting point. New approaches to language teaching were needed.

Rather than simply specifying the grammar and vocabulary learners needed to master, it was argued that a syllabus should identify the following aspects of language use in order to be able to develop the learner’s communicative competence:

1. As detailed a consideration as possible of the purposes for which the leaner wishes to acquire the target language: for example, using English for business purposes, in the hotel industry, or for travel

2. Some idea of the setting in which they will want use the target language; for example, in an office, on an airplane, or in a store

3. The socially defined role the learners will assume in the target language, as well as the role of their interlocutors; for example, as s traveller, as a salesperson talking to clines, or as a student in a school

4. The communicative events in which the learners will participate: everyday situations, vocational or professional situations, academic situations, and so on; for example, making telephone calls, engaging in casual conversation, or taking part in meeting

5. The language functions involved in those events, or what the learner will be able to do with or through the language; for example, making introductions, giving explanations, or describing plans

6. The notions concepts involved, or what the learner will need to be able to talk about; for example, leisure, finance, history, religion

7. The skills involved in the “knitting together” of discourse:

Discourse and rhetorical skills; for example, storytelling, giving an effective business presentation

8. The variety or varieties of the target language that will be needed such as American, or British English, and the levels in the spoken and written language which the learners will need to reach

9. The grammatical content that will be needed

10. The lexical content, or vocabulary, that will be needed

[15]

1.2 Advantages and disadvantages of communication approach

Most groups are enthusiastic about the lesson opportunities which CLT offers. However, some also indicated they felt constrained by the system under which they operated, especially those teaching in settings which are particularly exam-focused. In addition, they queried the relevance of CLT to their situation, where many of the students never used English outside the classroom. In contrast, Rebecca Belchamber had shifted across a spectrum of learners, enthusiastically taking CLT along with her as universally appropriate.

Taking her colleagues’ concerns on board, she began to question the appropriateness of CLT for some of these diverse learner groups. This was supported by current reading on the topic; the titles of some articles made her think she should give up the support for CLT then and there. However, the more she read on the topic, the more she defended the continued stability of CLT. It really does benefit the students in a variety of ways.

Whether CLT should be considered an approach or a methodology is a more abstract debate and here she wants to deal with its more practical aspects. In fact, it is those very elements, and the name itself, which have been used to challenge the future relevance of CLT. Firstly, the label implies a focus on communication and some might argue that this method can’t be employed genuinely with how levels as these is no authentic communication, due to a limited vocabulary and restricted range of functions. Initially, many of a learner’s utterances are very formulaic. As an aside, consider just what percentage of our own English expressions are unique, and how often we rely on a set phrase; just because it is delivered unselfconsciously and with natural intonation does not make it original. The aim is that the length and complexity of exchanges, and confident delivery, will grow with the student’s language ability.

With the emphasis on communication, there is also the implication that spoken exchanges should be authentic and meaningful; detractors claim that artificial nature of classroom-based interactions makes CLT an oxymoron. Nevertheless, a proficient teacher will provide a context so that class interactions are realistic and meaningful but with the support needed to assist students to generate the target language. We need to consider that producing language is a skill and when we learn a skill we practice in improvised settings. For example, before a nurse gives a real injection, they have punctured many a piece of fruit to hone their technique.

It might also be argued that the extent of some of the structures or functions may never be used in real life. On example is adjective order; Rebecca Belchamber has given students an exercise where they have to produce a phrase with a string of adjectives, such as “a strong, orange, Norwegian, canvas tent.” This is very unnatural, as most times we only combine two or three adjectives. The other example is directions – they have students to follow a map and negotiate exhaustive directions which suggest maze-like complexity. In reality, what they are doing with these exercises is exposing students to patterns which they can later activate. [16]

The focus on accuracy versus fluency is one of the issues not often considered in a discussion of CLT. The teacher decides to pay attention to one or other end of this band, depending on the type of lesson, or the stage of a particular lesson, and accuracy is their choice if they want to deal with students getting things right, take an opportunity for correction, or gauge the success of their teaching, for example. Freer speaking involves more choice, therefore more ambiguity, and less teacher intervention. While CLT implies the lessons are more student-centered, this does not mean they are un-structured. The teacher does have a very important role in the process, and that is setting up activities so that communication actually happens. There is a lot of preparation; accuracy practice is the bridge to a fluency activity. By implication, CLT involves equipping students with vocabulary, structures and functions, as well as strategies, to enable them to interact successfully. [17]

The reference to strategies introduces the matter of grammatical versus communicative competence. If we view the two as mutually exclusive, then we are likely to champion one over the other, in terms of approach, curriculum of whatever else determines and defines our classroom teaching. In fact, Canale and Swain’s model of communicative competence, referred to by Guangwei Hu, includes four sub-categories, namely grammatical, sociolinguistic discourse and strategic. They consider someone competent in English should demonstrate both rules of grammar and use.

This returns us to the consideration of who we are teaching, and why. Are our students aiming to learn or acquire English? Do they need to know lexical items and linguistic rules as a means of passing an exam, or do they want to be able to interact in English? For those inclined to maintain the dichotomy between learning and acquisition, and who argue that our primary focus is learners, CLT still has relevance. It is timely to review an early definition of CLT. According to Richards and Rodgers, in Guangwei Hu, CLT is basically about promoting learning.

Then again, Mark Lowe suggests follow Holiday’s lead and drop the distinction between learning and acquisition, and refer to language mastery instead. After all, if the students master the language, they will certainly be able to perform better in exams, if that is their goal. In addition, those who do see a purpose beyond classroom-related English will be better equipped for using the language socially. [18]

One of the constant discussions in all teacher training groups is how to motivate students. This suggests that the focus on passing the exam is not always enough. Motivation relates to engaging students but also includes confidence building. One way of developing this is to allow pair-checking of answers before open-class checking occurs. Another way is to include an opportunity for students to discuss a topic in a small group before there is any expectation that they speak in front of the whole class. Evelyn Doman suggests that “The need for ongoing negotiation during interaction increases the learners’ overt participation …” It is this involvement we need to harness and build on.

Sometimes the participation is hardly what we would define as ‘negotiation’, but merely a contribution. For a few students, just uttering a word or a phrase can be an achievement. Indeed, some of the teachers in the training sessions said this was the goal they set for their more reticent pupils. And I have had students who, after writing their first note or e-mail in English, expressed their pride at being able to do so. Many other tasks which may be more appropriate, such as surveys, using a stimulus picture and prompt questions, or a series of pictures which need to be sequenced before a story is discussed. In this respect, CLT addresses another area which constantly challenges teachers, the mixed-ability class. When the lesson progresses to a freer-speaking activity, students can contribute according to their ability and confidence, although Rebecca Belchamber acknowledges both needs to be stretched. So there is a challenge for the more capable students, while those with an average ability still feel their effort is valid. This compares with the less creative opportunities offered by some textbooks, where students read a dialogue, perhaps doing a substation activity, for example. [19]

A basic responsibility is considering and responding to the needs of students, so if the course book is inadequate we need to employ the following steps” select, adopt, reject, and supplement.

Too often, a ‘new’ approach appears to completely dismiss the previous one. This is not always the intention, but probably more a result of the enthusiasms of practitioners exploring and implementing fresh activities or opportunities. Also, throughout the CLT debate, there seem to be dichotomies which are employed to argue for its irrelevance. It is evident that CLT has gathered a range of characteristics, perhaps more through misunderstanding or by association, but it is actually not as incompatible with other valued practices as it is sometimes made to appear. In practical terms, whether assisting mixed-ability classes, aiding motivation, leading from a focus on form to one of fluency, or supporting learning, it has a lot to offer the EFL teacher.

If teachers consider a activity to be irrelevant or not engaging enough, there are CLT emphasizes learner-centeredness and the use of original materials. Howatt (1984) divided CLT into strong and weak versions.

The strong version is in support of communicative features whereas the weak version suggests the integration of structural practice into the communicative elements. Communicative proficiency will become easier to achieve only when one has grasped the necessary knowledge of language. For societies whose first language is not English, there is still a need for structural practices so that the foundation of linguistic knowledge can be built up before further communicative tasks are given. Yalden (1987:94) suggests the proportional approach in course designing. In this design, student learn more form the meaning at an early stage as time increases, the intervention of communicative functions increases. At this later stage, the emphasis on form can be gradually reduced. [20]

Communicative approach is based on the belief that learners learn best when they are engaged in meaningful communication.

Learners learn being involved in communicative tasks with little support from traditional teaching text and practice. You might encounter this kind of approach when you meet someone you are interested in getting to know yet do not share a common language. Your need to communicate to do simple everyday activities allows you to learn through trial and error.

Weak CLT: Learners learn through a wide variety of activities, texts, exercises and tasks with an emphasis on speaking and listening. You might encounter this approach in a community language exchange setting where a member of the local community is designated as the teacher and you the learner. This type of learning is often supported by texts but quality of the instructor is highly variable and may have a large impaction the amount of learning that occurs.

Making the most out of either situation requires you to understand the differences and learn how to bend the experience to meet your needs. If your instructor can’t name or justify their approach then you have to step in and structure things to your advantage, of find another instructor.

http://zheniciwuel.blogspot.com/2012/05/communicative-language-teaching.html

Nowadays, Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) method has become one of the basic in Indonesian teaching learning process. The principles of CLT have implicitly included into Indonesia Basic Curriculum, especially in the General Principles of Curriculum Development and combine with another method. “The Goal of CLT is to enable students to communicate in the target language.” (Larsen.2000). We can infer that CLT is not only focuses on mastering language elements, but it more emphasizes on the use of the target language communicatively. It has brought many advantages for the improvement of the English education process, however there are also some disadvantages that following.

The implementation of CLT has brought a lot of advantages for English learning process. One, it stimulates students to improve their ability of using English by themselves. Meaning that, it provides students with assignments that allow them to improve their own ideas about what they are going to talk and how they are going to express that. In this activity, the biggest role of the teacher is to facilitate and maintain the students’ activities. Students work by themselves and communicate with others to overcome the assignment.

CLT also engage their students with realistic communication to reach success on the use of English. It is beneficial because by knowing the use of the communication in the real life, students do not feel that what they are learning is useless. There are real circumstances that related to the use of the language. It brings the real life situation of the native English into classroom activities such as role-play and simulation. As Harmer state, “The teacher will not intervene to stop the activity and the materials he or she relies on will not dictate what specific language students use either. (Harmer.2007). it means that teachers let the realistic activity completed, because in the real life, there is no one that intervenes in the middle of conversation just to dictate them that language that should be used.

Besides the advantages above, there are also some disadvantages of using the CLT method. Using CLT restrict students’ understanding about smaller elements of the language, for instance, grammar and syntax system. As an article that published in the internet by Teaching English for all, it presents one of the disadvantages of CLT:

Some people believe that with CLT there is a danger of focusing too much on oral skills at the expense of reading and writing skills, and that there may be too much focus on meaning at the expense of form. It is felt that there is not enough emphasis on the correction of pronunciation and grammar errors. (English for all.2011)

We can infer that, delivering of language elements in CLT is only happened through inductive way which students understand them only from specific contextual materials. Teachers do not explain the elements directly, but they include the elements in order to reach function of what they are going to use, such as order, refuse, etc., therefore it sometime left miss understanding in student’s mind.

Another disadvantage is that CLT needs longer communicative process. CLT activities need a lot of outputs. But if the students do not have sufficient background or knowledge about the activities, teachers have to provide them models to support the activities of communication. Therefore, they are able to process the materials to organize their need to communicate what the classroom activities asked. If it compared with the earlier methods such as Grammar Translation Method and Direct method, it needs longer time of learning process. In traditional teaching system, for instance, Grammatical Translation Method, teachers are the one who gave materials, whether what the students need is only receive what the teachers are given.

There are must be advantages following the development of a system or method, like what is happened in CLT. However, the most important thing is to understand how to optimize the advantages and compress the disadvantages properly in order to achieve the general goal, in this Case is to reach the well teaching learning process.

Reference

Harmer, J(2007). The practice of English Language Teaching . Englan:Longman

Larsen, D. Freeman (2000). Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching. New York: oxford

Teaching English For All (2011). Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) and the Post Method

1.3 Definitions and methods of communicative approach in teaching listening

Wan Yee Sam asserts that Communicative Approach refers to the “beliefs and theories of language teaching which emphasize that the goal of language learning is communicative competence”. Communicative approach is much more pupil-oriented, because it is focused on pupils’ needs and interests.

Communicative approach is not just limited to oral skills. Reading and listening skills also need to be developed to promote pupils’ confidence in all four skill areas. By using elements encountered in variety of ways – language becomes more fluid and pupils’ manipulation of language is more fluent.

In Communicative approach, language learners; needs are given important consideration. According to this approach, students can use the language “accurately” and “appropriately”. Language acquisition would thus be facilitated by the use of “communicative activities” (3).

Classroom activities according to Rebacca Belchamber in her article, the advantages of Communicative Language Teaching, in the internet TESL journal, Vol.x111, №2, maximize opportunities for learners to use the target language in a communicative way for meaningful activities. Belchamber states that “a communicative activity is one which brings the language to life by providing a real basis for speaking, and the interactive exchange of ideas, opinions, and feelings with another person” (Rebecca)

According to Olga Morazán, communicative activities are essential because “They help the teacher to encourage students’ thinking, creativity, imagination, and all the components of cognitive sphere. The motivation, the emotions, the attitudes can either be involved in communication. Students are somehow in activities that give them both the desire to communicate and a purpose which involves them in a varied use of language”.

Communicative activities, according to Jack Richards in communicative language teaching today, published at www.professorkjackrichards.com, refer to the techniques which are employed in the communicative method in language teaching. Communicative activities have real purposes: to find information, break down barriers, talk about self, and learn about the culture. The activities involve ‘doing’ things with language e.g. making choices, and evaluating and bridging the information gap. The language-using activities for communication are not restricted to conversation and may involve listening, speaking, reading, writing or an integration of two or more skulls.

Communicative activities, according to Wan Yee Sam, have the following characteristics:

1. They are purposeful. They are further than strictly practicing particular structures.

2. They are interactive. The activities are often conducted with others and often involve some form of discussion.

3. Authentic materials are used. The situations in which the learners have to use language should be as realistic as possible. The language models given should be authentic.

4. They are based on the information gap principle.

Communicative tasks, according to Doughty and Pica in their article “information gap” (305), have been proved to be effective in teaching a foreign language, since they promote learners’ competence in using the language as needed. Communicative tasks encourage learners to experiment with whatever English pieces they can recall, to try things out without fear of failure, to express themselves with basic fluency and accuracy.

The benefits of using communicative activities according to Dr. Olenka Bilash, a professor of University Alberta are the following”

1. Exposure to Target Language

2. Authentic opportunities to USE the language

3. Fun and interesting for learners

4. Opportunities to use authentic or own learner’s material

Belchamber, Rebecca. “The Advantages of Communicative Language Teaching”.

The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. XIII, No. 2, February 2007. Form: iteslj.org

(method approach pdf)

GAMES AS COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES TO ENCOURAGE

ORAL PRODUCTION IN CHILDREN FROM AGES 10 TO 11 Angйlica Carabajo 40 pages

The communicative approach in language teaching starts from a theory of language as communication. The goal of language teaching is to develop what Hymes (1972) referred to as “communicative competence.” Hymes coined this term in order to contrast a communicative view of language and Chomsky’s theory of competence. Chomsky held that linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-listener in a completely homogeneous speech community, who knows its language perfectly and is unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant conditions as memory limitation, distractions, shifts of attention and interest, and errors in applying his knowledge of the language in actual performance (3.p3) Chomsky, Noam. Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. - The MIT Press, 1965. - 131 p.

For Chomsky, the focus of linguistic theory was to characterize the abstract abilities speakers possess that enable them to produce grammatically correct sentences in a language. Hymes held that such view of linguistic theory easy sterile, that linguistic theory needed to be seen as part of more general theory incorporating communication and culture. Hymes’s theory of communicative competence was s definition of what a speaker needs to know in order to be communicatively competent in a speech community. In Hymes’s view, a person who acquires communicative competence acquires both knowledge and ability for language use with respect to

1. whether (and to what degree) something is formally possible;

2. whether (and to what degree) something if feasible in virtue of the means of implementation available;

3. whether (and to what degree) something is appropriate (adequate, happy, successful) in relation to a context in which it is used and evaluated;

4. whether (and to what degree) something is in fact done, actually performed and what it’s doing emails

This theory of what knowing a language entails offers a much comprehensive view than Chomsky’s view of competence, which deals primarily with abstract grammatical knowledge.

Another linguistic theory of communication favored in CLT is Halliday’s functional account of language use. “Linguistics is concerned with the description of speech acts or texts, since only through the study of language in use are all the functions of language, and therefore all components of meaning, brought into focus (5 p 145) Halliday, F.E. Wordsworth and His World. – 1st edition – London: Thames & Hudson, 1970. In a number of influential books and papers, Halliday has elaborated a powerful theory of the functions of language, which on CLT (2 p30broughton brumfit), Johnson 1979; Savignon 1983). He described (4p11-17) Halliday, F.E. The excellency of the English tongue. – 1st edition – London: Gollancz, 1975. – 128 p seven basis functions that language performs for children learning their first language:

1. the instrumental function: using language to get things;

2. the regulatory function: using language to control the behavior of others;

3. the interactional function: using language to create interaction with others;

4. the personal function: using language to express personal feelings and meanings;

5. the heuristic function: using language to learn and to discover;

6. the imaginative function: using language to create a world of the imagination;

7. representational function: using language to communicate information.

Learning a second language was similarly viewed by proponents of Communicative Language Teaching as acquiring the linguistic means to perform different kinds of functions.

At the level of language theory, Communicative Language Teaching has a rich, if somewhat eclectic, theoretical base. Some of the characteristics of this communicative view of language follow.

1. Language is a system for the expression of meaning

2. The primary function of language if for interaction and communication

3. The structure of language reflects its functional and communicative uses

4. The primary units of language are not merely its grammatical and structural features, but categories of functional and communicative meaning as exemplified in discourse

Theory of learning

In contrast to the amount that has been written in Communicative Language Teaching literature about communicative dimensions of language, little has been written about learning theory. Neither Brumfit and Johnson nor Littlewood, for example, offers any discussion of learning theory. Elements of an underlying learning theory can be discerned in some CLT practices, however. One such element might be described as the communication principle: activities that involve real communication promote learning. A second element is the task principle: Activities in which language is used for carrying out meaning full tasks promote learning. A third element is the meaningful principle. Language activities are consequently selected according to how well they engage the learner in meaningful and authentic language use. These principles, we suggest, can be inferred from CLT principles. They addressed the conditions needed to promote second language learning, rather than the processes of language acquisition. Broughton, Geoffrey. Brumfit, Christopher. Flavell, Roger. Hill, Peter. Pincas, Anita. Teaching English as a Foreign Language. – 2nd edition – New York: Routledge, 1980. – 248 p.

More recent accounts of Communicative Language Teaching, however, have attempted to describe theories of language processes that are compatible with the communicative approach. Savignon surveys second language acquisition research as a source for learning theories and considers the role of linguistic, social, cognitive and individual variables in language acquisition. Other theorists (e,g, Stephan Krashen, who is new directly associated with Communicative Language Teaching) have developed theories cited as compatible with the principles of CLT. Krashen sees acquisition as the basic process involved in developing language proficiency and distinguishes this process from learning. Acquisition refers to the unconscious development of the target language system as a result of using the language for real communication. Learning is the conscious representation of grammatical knowledge that has resulted from instruction, and it cannot lead to acquisition. It is the acquired system that we call upon to create utterances during spontaneous language use. The learned system can serve only as a monitor of the output of the acquired system. Krashen and other second language acquisition theorists typically stress that language learning comes about through using language communicatively, rather than through practicing language skills.

Johnson (1984) and Littlewood (1984) consider an alternative learning theory that they also see as compatible with CLT – a skill-learning model of learning. According to this theory, the acquisition of communicative competence in a language is an example of skill development. This involves both a cognitive and a behavioral aspect:

The cognitive aspect involves the internalization of plans for creating appropriate behavior. For language use, these plans derive mainly from the language system – they include grammatical rules, procedures for selecting vocabulary, and social conventions governing speech. The behavioral aspect involves the automation of these plans so that they can be converted into fluent performance in real time. This occurs mainly through practice in converting plans into performance. (7 p 74) Littlewood, W.T. Foreign and Second Language Learning. – Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. – 114 p.

This theory thus encourages an emphasis on practice as a way of developing communicative skills.

Objectives

Piepho (1981) discusses the following levels of objectives in a communicative approach:

1. an integrative and content level (language as a means of expression)

2. a linguistic and instrumental level (language as a semiotic system and an object of learning)

3. an effective level of interpersonal relationships and conduct (language as a means of expressing values and judgments about oneself and others)

4. a level of individual learning needs (remedial learning based on error analysis)

5. a general educational level of extra-linguistic goal (language learning within the school curriculum)

These are proposed as general objectives, applicable to any teaching situation. Particular objectives for CLT cannot be defined beyond this level of specification, since such an approach assumes that language teaching will reflect the particular needs of the target learners. These needs may be in the domains of reading, writing, listening, or speaking, each of which can be approached from communicative perspective. Curriculum or instructional objectives for a particular course would reflect specific aspects of communicative competence according to the learner’s proficiency level and communicative needs.

The syllabus

Discussions of the nature of the syllabus have been central in Communicative Language Teaching. We have seen that one of the first syllabus models to be proposed was described as a notional syllabus (wilkins1976), which specified the semantic-grammatical categories (e.g., frequency, motion, location) and the categories of communicative function that learners need to express. The Council of Europe expanded and developed this into a syllabus that included descriptions of the objectives of foreign language courses for European adults, the situations in which they might typically need to use a foreign language (e.g., travel, business), the topics they might need to talk about (e.g., personal identification, education, shopping), the functions they needed language for (e.g., describing something, requesting information, expressing agreement and disagreement), the notions made us of in communication (e.g., time, frequency, duration), as well as the vocabulary and grammatical needed. The result was published as threshold level English (van Ek and Alexander 1980) and was an attempt to specify what was needed in order to be able to achieve a reasonable degree of communicative proficiency in a foreign language, including the language items needed to realize this “threshold level”. Van Ek, J.A. Alexander, L.G. Threshold Level English. – 1st edition - Oxford: Pergamon, 1980. – 253 p.

Types of learning and teaching activities

The range of exercise types and activities compatible with a communicative approach is unlimited, provided that such exercises enable learners in communication, and require the use of such communicative processes as information sharing, negotiation of meaning, and interaction. Classroom activities are often designed to focus on completing tasks that are mediated through language or involve negotiation of information and information sharing.

Learner and teacher roles

The emphasis Communicative Language Teaching is on the processes of communication, rather than mastery of language.

Teacher roles

Several roles are assumed for teachers in Communicative Language Teaching the importance of particular roles being determined by the view of CLT adopted. Breen and Candlin describe teacher roles in the following terms:

The teacher has two main roles: the first role is to facilitate the communication process between all participants in the classroom, and between these participants and the various activities and texts. The second role is to act an independent participant within the learning-teaching group. The latter role is closely related to the objectives of the first role and arises from it. These roles imply a set of secondary roles for the teacher; first, as an organizer of resources and as a resource himself, second as a guide within the classroom procedures and activities… A third role for the teacher is that of researcher and learner, with much to contribute in terms of appropriate knowledge and abilities, actual and observed experience of the nature of learning and organizational capacities. (1p99) Breen, M. P. Candlin, C. N. The essentials of a communicative curriculum in language teaching. Applied Linguistics 1(2). - Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980. – 112 p.

Other roles assumed for teaches are needs analyst, counselor, and group process manager.

Needs analyst

The CLT teacher assumes a responsibility for determining and responding to learner language needs. This may be done informally and personally through one-to-one sessions with students, in which the teacher talks through such issues as the student’s perception of his or her learning style, learning assets, and learning goals. It may be done formally through administering a needs assessment instrument, such as those exemplified in Savignon (1983). Typically, such formal assessments contain items that attempt to determine as individual’s motivation for studying the language. For example, students might respond on a 5-point scale (strongly agree to strongly disagree) to statements like the following.

I want to study English because…

1. I think it will someday be useful in getting a good job

2. It will help me better understand English –speaking people and their way of live

3. One needs a good knowledge of English to gain other people’s respect

On the basis of such needs assessments, teacher expected to plan group and individual instruction that responds to the learners’ needs.

Counselor

Another role assumed by the several CLT approaches is that of counselor, similar to the way this role is defined in Communicative Language Teaching. In this role, the teacher-counselor is expected to exemplify an effective communicator seeking to maximize the meshing of speaker intention and hearer interpretation, through the use of paraphrase, confirmation, and feedback.

Group process manager

CLT procedures often require teachers to acquire less teacher-centered classroom management skills. It is the teacher’s responsibility to organize the classroom as a setting for communication and communicative activities. Guidelines for classroom practice (e.g., Littlewood 1981; Finocchairo and Brumfit 1983) suggest that during an activity the teacher monitors, encourages and suppresses the inclination to supply gaps in lexis, grammar, and strategy but notes such gaps for later commentary and communicative practice. At the conclusion of group activities, the teacher leads in the debriefing of the activity, pointing out alternatives and extensions and assisting group in self-correction discussion. Critics have pointed out, however, that non-native teachers may feel less than comfortable about such procedures without special training.

The focus on fluency and comprehensibility in Communicative Language Teaching may cause anxiety among teachers accustomed seeing error suppression and correction as the major instructional responsibility, and who see their primary function as preparing learners to take standardized or other kinds of tests. A continuing teacher concern has been the possible deleterious effect in pair or group work of imperfect modeling and student error. Although this issue is far from resolved, it is interesting to note that recent research findings suggest that “data contradicts the notion that other learners are not good conversational partners because they can’t provide accurate input when it is solicited” (Porter 1983)

THE ROLE OF INSTRUCTURAL MATERIALS

A wide variety of materials have been used to support communicative approaches to language teaching. Unlike some contemporary methodologies, such as Community Language Teaching, practitioners of Community Language Teaching view materials as a way of influencing the quality of classroom interaction and language use. Materials thus have the primary role of promoting communicative language use. We will consider three kinds of materials currently used in CLT and label these text-based, task-based, and realia. Morrow, Keith. Johnson, Keith. Communicate 1: English for social interaction. - Cambridge; Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1979. - 156 p.

Communicative language teaching is an approach to the teaching of second and foreign languages that emphasizes interaction as both the means and ultimate goal of learning language. It is also referred to as “communicative approach”.

Historically, CLT has been as a response to the audio-lingual method (ALM), and an extension or development of the notional-functional syllabus.

The audio-lingual method (ALM) arose as s direct result of the need for foreign language proficiency in listening and speaking skills during and after World War II. It is closely tied to behaviorism, and thus made drilling, repetition, and habit-formation central elements of instruction. Proponents of ALM felt that this emphasis on repetition needed a corollary emphasis on accuracy, claiming that continual repetition of errors would lead to the fixed acquisition of incorrect structures and non-standard pronunciation.

In the classroom, lessons were often organized by grammatical structure and presented through short dialogues. Often, students listened repeatedly to recordings of conversations 9(for example, in the language lab) and focused on accurately mimicking the pronunciation and grammatical structures in these dialogs.

Critics of ALM asserted that this over – emphasis on repetition and accuracy ultimately did not help students achieve communicative competence in the target language. Noam Chomsky argued “language is not a habit structure. Ordinary linguistic behavior characteristically involves innovation, formation of new sentences and pattern in accordance with rules of great abstractness and intricacy”. They looked for a new ways to present and organize language instruction, and advocated the notional functionally syllabus, and eventually CLT as the most effective way to teach second and foreign languages. However, audio-lingual methodology is still prevalent in many text books and teaching materials. Moreover, advocates of audio-lingual methods point to their success in improving aspects of language that are habit driven, most notably pronunciation.

1. Relationship between listening and communicative approach

As well as rethinking the nature of syllabus, the new communicative approach to teaching prompted a rethinking of classroom teaching methodology. It was argued that learners learn a language through the process of communicating in it, and that communication that is meaningful to the learner provides a better opportunity for learning than through a grammar-based approach. The overarching principles of communicative language teaching methodology at this time can be summarized as follows:

• Make real communication focus of language learning

• Provide opportunities for learners to experiment and try out what they know

• Be tolerant of learners’ errors as they indicate that the learner is building up his or her communicative competence

• Provide opportunities for learners to develop both accuracy and fluency

• Link the different skills as speaking, reading, and listening together, since they usually occur soin the real world

• Let students induce or discover grammar rules

In applying these principles in the classroom, new classroom techniques and activities were needed, and as saw above, new roles for teachers and learners in the classroom. Instead of making use activities that demanded accurate repetition and memorization of sentences and grammatical pattern, activities that required learners to negotiate meaning and to interact meaningfully were required. Brumfit, Christopher (1984). Communicative Methodology in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Since the advent of CLT, teachers and materials writers have sought to find ways of developing classroom activities that reflect the principles of communicative methodology. The principles on which the first generation of CLT materials are still relevant to language teaching today, so in this chapter we will briefly review the main activity types that were on of the outcomes of CLT language use. Fluency is developed by creating classroom activities in which students must negotiate meaning, use communication strategies, correct misunderstandings, and work to avoid communication breakdowns.

Fluency practice can be contrasted with accuracy practice, which focuses on creating correct examples of language use. Differences between activities that focus on fluency and those that on accuracy can be summarized as follows:

Activities focusing on fluency

• Reflect natural use of language

• Focus on achieving communication

• Require meaningful use of language

• Require the use of communication strategies

• Produce language that may not be predictable

• Seek to link language use to context

Activities focusing on accuracy

• Reflect classroom use of language

• Focus on the formation of correct examples of language

• Practice language out of context

• Practice small samples of language

• Do not require meaningful communication

• Control choice of language

Richards, Jack C., and Theodore Rodgers (2001). Approaches and Methods

in Language Teaching. Second Edition. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Teachers were recommended to use a balance of fluency activities and accuracy and to use accuracy activities to support fluency activities. Accuracy work could either come before or after fluency work. For example, based on students’ performance on a fluency task, the teacher could assign accuracy work to deal with grammatical or pronunciation problems the teacher observed while students were carrying out the task. An issue that arises with fluency work, however, is whether develops fluency at the expense of accuracy, in doing fluency tasks; the focus is on getting meanings across using any available communicative resources. This often involves a heavy dependence on vocabulary and communication strategies, and there is little motivation to use accurate grammar or pronunciation. Fluency work thus requires extra attention on the part of the teacher in terms of preparing students for a fluency task, or follow-up activities that provide feedback on language use. Littlejohn, A., and D. Hicks (1996). Cambridge English for Schools. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

While dialogs, grammar, and pronunciation drills did not usually disappear from textbook and classroom materials at the time, hey now appeared as a part of sequence of activities that moved back and forth between accuracy activities and fluency activities.

And the dynamics of classroom also changed. Instead of a predominance of teacher/fronted teaching teachers were encouraged to make greater use of small-group work. Pair and group activities give learners greater opportunities to use the language ad to develop fluency. Prabhu, N. S. (1987). Second Language Pedagogy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Another useful distinction that some advocates CLT proposed was the distinction between three kind of practice – mechanical, meaningful, and communicative.

Mechanical

Meaningful

Communicative practice refers to activities where practice in using language within real communicative context if the focus, where real information is exchanged, and where the language used is not totally predictable. For example, students might have to draw a map of their neighborhood and answer questions about the location of different places, such as the nearest bus stop, the nearest café, etc.

Many activity types have been used in CLT, including the following:

Task-completion activities: puzzles, games, map-reading, and other kinds of classroom tasks in which the focus is on using one’s language resources to complete a task.

Information-gatherings activities: student-conducted surveys, interviews, and searchers in which students are required to use their linguistic resources to collect information.

Opinion-sharing activities: activities in which students compare values, opinions, or beliefs, such as a ranking task in which students list six qualities in order of importance that they might consider in choosing a date or spouse.

Information-transfer activities: These require learners take information that is presented in one form, and represent it in a different form. For example, they may read instructions on how to get from A to B, and then raw a map showing the sequence, or they may read information about a subject and then represent it as a graph.

Reasoning-gap activities” these involve deriving some new information from given information through the process of inference, practical reasoning, etc. for example, working out a teacher’s timetable on the basis of given class timetables.

Role plays: activities in which students are assigned roles and improvise a scene or exchange based on given information or clues. Richards, Jack C., and Theodore Rodgers (2001). Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching. Second Edition. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Most of the activities discussed above reflect an important aspect of classroom tasks in CLT, namely that they are designed to be carried out in pairs or small groups. Through completing activities in this way, it is argued, learners will obtain several benefits:

• They can learn from hearing the language used by other members of the group

• They will produce a greater amount of language then they would use in teacher-fronted activities

• Their motivational level is likely to increase

• They will have the chance to develop fluency

Teaching and classroom materials today consequently make use of a wide variety of small-group activities.

Since the language classroom is intended a preparation for survival in the real world and since real communication is a defining characteristic of CLT, an issue which soon emerged was the relationship between classroom activities and real life. Some argued that classroom activities should as far as possible mirror the real world and the use real world or “authentic” sources as the basis for classroom learning. Clarke and Silberstein thus argued:

Classroom activities should parallel the “real world” as closely as possible. Since language is a tool of communication, methods and materials should concentrate on the message and not the medium. The purposes of reading should be the same in class as they are in real life.

Arguments in favor of the use of authentic materials include:

• they provide cultural information about the target language

• they provide exposure to real language

• they relate more closely to learners’ needs

• they support a more creative approach to teaching

Beglar, David, and Alan Hunt (2002). Implementing task-based language teaching. In Jack Richards and Willy Renandya (eds). Methodology in Language Teaching: An Anthology of Current Practice. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Since the 1990s, the communicative approach has been widely implemented. Because it describes a set of very general principles grounded in the notion of communicative competence as a goal of a second and foreign language teaching, and a communicative syllabus and methodology as the way of achieving this goal, communicative language teaching has continued to evolve as our understanding of the processes of second language learning has developed. Current communicative language theory and practice thus draws on a number of different educational paradigms and traditions. And since it draws on a number of diverse sources, there is no single or agreed upon set of practices that characterize current communicative language teaching. Rather, communicative language teaching tidy refers to a set of generally agreed upon principles that can be applied in different ways, depending on the teaching context, his age of the learners, their learning goals, and so on. The following core assumptions or variants of them underlie current practices in communicative language teaching.

1. Second language learning if fascinated when learners are engaged in interaction ad meaningful communication

2. Effective classroom learning tasks and exercises provide opportunities for students hoe to negotiate meaning, expand their language resources, notice ho language is used, and take part in meaningful interpersonal exchange.

3. Meaningful communication results students processing content that is relevant, purposeful, interesting and engaging.

4. Communication is a holistic process that often calls upon the use of several language skills or modalities

5. 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 organization, as well as by those involving language analysis and reflection

6. 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.

7. Learners develop their own routes to language learning, progress at different rates, and have different needs and motivations for language learning.

8. Successful language learning involves the use of effective learning and communication strategies

9. The role of the teacher in the language classroom is that of a facilitator, who creates a classroom climate conductive to language learning and provide opportunities for students to use and practice the language and to reflect on language use and language learning

10. The classroom is a community where learners learn through collaboration and sharing

Krahnke, K. (1987). Approaches to Syllabus design for Foreign Language Teaching. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.

Current approaches to methodology draw on earlier traditions in communicative language teaching and continue to make reference to some extent to traditional approaches. Thus classroom activities typically have some of the following characteristics:

• They seek to develop students’ communicative competence through linking grammatical development to the ability to communicate. Hence, grammar is not taught in isolation but often arises out of a communicative task, thus creating a need for specific items of grammar. Students might carry out a task and then reflect on some of the linguistic characteristics of their performance.

• They create the need for communication, interaction, and negotiation of meaning through the use of activities such as problem solving, information sharing, and role play.

• They provide opportunities for both inductive as well as deductive learning grammar.

• They make use of content that connects to students’ lives and interests.

• They allow students to personalize learning by applying what they have learned to their own lives.

• Classroom materials typically make use of authentic texts to create interest and to provide valid models of language.

Approaches to language teaching today seek to capture the rich view of language and language learning assumed by a communicative view of language. Jacobs and Farrel (2003) see the shift toward CLT as marking a paradigm shift in our thinking about teachers, learning and teaching. They identify key components of this shift as follows:

1. Focusing greater attention on the role of learners rather than the external stimuli learners are receiving from their environment. Thus, the center of attention shifts from the teacher to the student. This shift is generally known as the move from teacher-centered instruction to learner-centered instruction.

2. Focusing greater attention on the learning process teacher than the products that learners produce. This shift is known as the move from product-oriented to process-oriented instruction.

3. Focusing greater attention on the social nature of learning rather than on students as separate, decontextualized individuals.

4. Focusing greater attention on diversity among learners and viewing these differences not as impediments to learning but as resources to be recognized, catered to, and appreciated. This shift is known as the study of individual differences.

5. In research and theory-building, focusing greater attention on the views of those internal to the classroom rather than solely valuing the views of those who come from outside to study engage in theorizing about it. This shift is associated with such innovations as qualitative research, which highlights the subjective and affective, the participants’ insider views, and the uniqueness of each context.

6. Along with this emphasis on context comes the idea connecting the school with the world beyond as means of promoting holistic learning.

7. Helping students to understand the purpose of learning and develop their own purpose.

8. A whole-to-part orientation instead of a part-to-whole approach. This involves such approaches as beginning with meaningful whole text and then helping students understand the various features that enable text to fuction, e.g., the choice of words and the text’s organizational structure/

9. An emphasis on the importance of meaning rather than drills nd other forms of rote learning.

10. A view of leaning as a lifelong process rate than something done to prepare students for an exam.

Willis, Jane (1996). A Framework for Task-Based Learning. Harlow: Longman.

Jacobs and Farrel suggest that the CLT paradigm shift outlined above has led to eight major changes in approaches to language teaching. These changes are:

1. Learner autonomy: Giving learners greater choice over their own learning, both in terms of the content of learning as well as processes they might employ. The use of small groups is one example of this, as well as the use of self/assessment.

2. The social nature of learning: Learning is not an individual, private activity, but a social one that depends upon interaction with others. The movement known as cooperative learning reflects this viewpoint.

3. Curricular integration: the connection between different strands of the curriculum is emphasized, so that English I not seen as a stand-alone subject but is linked to other subjects in the curriculum.

4. Focus on meaning: Meaning is viewed as the driving force of learning.

5. Diversity: learners learn in different ways and have different strengths. Teaching needs to take these differences into account rather than try to force students into a single mold. In language teaching, this has led to an emphasis on developing students’ use and awareness of learning strategies.

6. Thinking skills: Language should serve as a means of developing higher-order thinking skills, also known as critical and creative thinking. In language teaching, this means that students do not learn language for its own sake but in order to develop and apply their thinking skills in situations that go beyond the language classroom.

7. Alternative assessment: New forms of assessments are needed to replace traditional multiple-choice and the other items that test lower-order skills. Multiple forms of assessment (observation, interviews, journals, portfolios) can be used to build a comprehensive picture of what students can do in a second language.

8. Teachers as co-learners” the teacher is viewed as a facilitator who is constantly trying out different alternatives, i.e., leaning through doing, in language teaching, this led to an interest in action research and other forms of classroom investigation.

Communicative Language Teaching Today Jack C. Richard