Communicative Language Teaching

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.

The communicative approach could be said to be the product of educators and linguists who had grown dissatisfied with the audio-lingual and grammar-translation methods of foreign language instruction. They felt that students were not learning enough realistic, whole language. They did not know how to communicate using appropriate social language, gestures,

Usually when listening and speaking are separated, specific skills are identified in each area and a sequence of these skills is established. No particular attention is given to the situation, or context, in which a specific skill is to be used, as the focus is on teaching listening and speaking and not on communication. We can develop listening skills by conducting the entire lesson in that language only. We may make use of audio-visual aids such as tape-recorder, video and we may make the students to listen to radio lessons to develop the skill. Moreover we may develop the listening skill by ear-training exercises, by articulation exercises, by mimicry exercises or by exercises in fluency. We may develop the speaking skill by giving picture lessons, by saying and doing exercises, by arranging oral composition, by developing the ideas on the topic within their range, by reproducing telling or completing a story, by dramatization, by arranging talks and discussions, by asking questions. But special attention is not given to the situation or context, in which a specific skill, listening or speaking, is to be used. When specific attention is given on a situation or a context and develop these skills we follow communicative

The focus has been the elaboration and implementation of programs and methodologies that promote the development of functional language ability through learners’ participation in communicative events. Central to CLT is the understanding of language learning an educational issue. Language teaching is also linked with language policy. Viewed from a multicultural intra-national as well as international perspective, diverse sociopolitical contexts mandate not only a diverse set of language-learning goals but a diverse set of teaching strategies. By definition, CLT puts the focus on the learner. Learners’ communicative needs provide a framework for elaborating program goals with regard to functional competence. Functional goals imply global, qualitative evaluation of learner achievement as opposed to quantitative assessment of discrete linguistic features. Margie Berns stresses that the definition of appropriate communicative competence for learners requires an understanding of the socio-cultural contexts of language use. She provides a useful summary of eight principles of