Communicative Language Teaching

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Communicative Language Teaching
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In this report, you will learn

• Communicative Language Teaching Definition
• Background Historical and Theoretical
• Activities in CLT
• Learner and Teacher Roles
• Role of Instructional Materials

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What is Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)?

• A set of principles about
• The goals of language teaching
• How learners learn a language
• The kinds of activities that best facilitate
  learning
• The roles of teachers and learners in the
  classroom

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The goals of Language Teaching

• The Teaching of Communicative Competence.

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Grammatical Competence versus Communicative
Competence
Grammatical Competence Communicative competence
The ability to produce sentences in a language The knowledge of the building blocks of sentences (e.g. parts of speech, tenses, phrases, clauses, sentence patterns) and how they are formed knowing how to use language for a range of different purposes and functions knowing how to vary our use of language according to the setting and the participants
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Grammatical Competence Communicative competence
The unit of analysis and practice is typically the sentence 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 ones language knowledge (e.g. through using different kinds of communication strategies)
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• While grammatical competence is an important
  dimension of language learning, it is clearly not
  all that is involved in learning a language.
• This latter capacity of grammatical competence is
  understood by the term communicative competence.

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How Learners learn a Language

• Interaction between the learner and users of the
  language
• Collaborative creation of meaning
• Creating meaningful and purposeful interaction
  through language
• Negotiation of meaning as the learner and his or
  her interlocutor arrive at understanding

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• 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
  ones developing communicative competence
• Trying out and experimenting with different ways
  of saying things

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The Kind of Classroom Activities that Best
facilitate Learning

• the use of the following
• pair work activities
• role plays
• group work activities
• project work.

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The roles of teachers and learners in the
classroom

• Learner Roles
• They have to participate in classroom activities
• become comfortable with listening to their peers
  in group work or pair work 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

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• Teacher Roles
• They have to assume the role of facilitator and
  monitor
• the teacher had to develop a different view of
  learners errors and of her/his own role in
  facilitating language learning.
• As a needs analyst
• As a counselor
• As a group process manager

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BACKGROUND

• Historical

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Language Teaching can be viewed in three parts

• I. Traditional approaches (up to the late 1960s)
• II. Classic communicative language teaching
  (1970s to 1990s)
• III. Current communicative language teaching
  (late 1990s to the present)

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Traditional approaches (up to the late 1960s)

• gave priority to grammatical competence as the
  basis of language proficiency.
• 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.

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• Techniques
• memorization of dialogs,
• question and answer practice,
• substitution drills
• various forms of guided speaking and writing
  practice.
• Approach Deductive
• 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 of sentences
  containing a grammar rule and asked to work out
  the rule for themselves.

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• Great attention to accurate pronunciation and
  accurate mastery of grammar
• Methodologies
• Audiolingualism (in north America) (also known as
  the Aural-Oral Method)
• the Structural-Situational Approach in the UK
  (also known as Situational LanguageTeaching).
• P-P-P (Presentation, Practice, Production)
  Methodology

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• 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
  (Brumfit 1984) in which students grammar needs
  are determined on the basis of performance on
  fluency tasks rather than predetermined by a
  grammatical syllabus.

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Classic Communicative Language Teaching (1970s
to 1990s)

• attention shifted to the knowledge and skills
  needed to use grammar and other aspects of
  language appropriately for different
  communicative purposes
• making requests,
• giving advice,
• making suggestions,
• describing wishes and needs and so on.

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• What was needed in order to use language
  communicatively was communicative competence.
• The notion of communicative competence was
  developed within the discipline of linguistics
  (or more accurately, the sub-discipline of
  sociolinguistics)
• Advocates of CLT argued that communicative
  competence, and not simply grammatical
  competence, should be the goal of language
  teaching.

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• CLT created a great deal of 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.

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• Grammar was no longer the starting point. New
  approaches to language teaching were needed.

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Principles of CLT(Berns, 1990)

• 1. Language teaching is based on a view of
  language as communication. That is, language is
  seen as a social tool that speakers use to make
  meaning speakers communicate about something to
  someone for some purpose, either orally or in
  writing.

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• 2. Diversity is recognized and accepted as part
  of language development and use in second
  language learners and users, as it is with first
  language users.
• 3. A learners competence is considered in
  relative, not in absolute, terms.

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• 4. More than one variety of a language is
  recognized as a viable model for learning and
  teaching.
• 5. Culture is recognized as instrumental in
  shaping speakers communicative competence, in
  both their first and subsequent languages.

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• 6. No single methodology or fixed set of
  techniques is prescribed.
• 7. Language use is recognized as serving
  ideational, interpersonal, and textual functions
  and is related to the development of learners
  competence in each.
• 8. It is essential that learners be engaged in
  doing things with languagethat is, that they use
  language for a variety of purposes in all phases
  of learning.

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Background

• Theoretical

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Theory of Language

• The Communicative Approach in language teaching
  starts from a theory of language as communication

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Noam 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.
• The focus of linguistic theory was to
  characterize the abstract abilities speakers
  possess that enable them to produce grammatically
  correct sentences in a language.

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Dell Hymes

• His theory of communicative competence was a
  definition of what a speaker needs to know in
  order to be communicatively competent in a speech
  community.
• Held the view that linguistic theory needed to be
  seen as part of a more general theory
  incorporating communication and culture.

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Michael Halliday

• Theory the functional account of language use
• Linguistic is concerned with the description of
  speech acts or texts, since only though the study
  of language in use are all the functions of
  language , and therefore all components of
  meaning brought into focus.
• He has elaborated a powerful theory of the
  functions of language, which complements Hymess
  view of communicative competence for many writers
  on CLT.
• Seven basic functions instrumental, regulatory,
  interactional, personal, heuristic, imaginative,
  representational.

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Canale and Swain

• Introduced four dimensions of communicative
  competence grammatical competence (grammatical
  and lexical capacity), sociolinguistic competence
  (understanding of social context and the
  communicative purpose for interaction), discourse
  competence (how meaning is represented in
  relationship to the entire discourse or text) and
  strategic competence (coping strategies that
  communicators employ to repair, redirect, etc.
  communication)
• Their extension of the Hymesian model of
  communicative competence was inturn elaborated in
  some complexity by Bachman, whose model, in turn,
  was extended by Celce-Murcia, Dornyei, and
  Thurrell.

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Characteristics of the Communicative View of
Language

• Language is a system of the expression of meaning
• The primary function of language is to allow
  interaction and communication
• The structure of language reflects its functional
  and communicative uses
• The primary units of language are not merely its
  grammatical and structural features, but
  categories of functional and communicative
  meaning as exemplified in discourse.

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Activities
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Fluency vs Accuracy
Fluency Activities Accuracy Activities
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 reflect classroom use of language Do not require meaningful Communication focus on correct formation of examples of language Choice of language is controlled practice language out of context
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• There should be balance between fluency and
  accuracy activities
• Accuracy activities should support fluency
  activities

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Sample Activities

• FLUENCY ACTIVITY
• A group of students of mixed language ability
  carry out a role play in which they have to adopt
  specified roles and personalities provided for
  them on cue cards. These roles involve the
  drivers, witnesses, and the police at a collision
  between two cars. The language is entirely
  improvised by the students, though they are
  heavily constrained by the specified situation
  and characters.

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• ACCURACY ACTIVITY
• Students in groups of three or four complete an
  exercise on a grammatical item, such as
  choosingbetween the past tense and the present
  perfect, an item which the teacher has previously
  presented and practiced as a whole class
  activity. Together students decide which
  grammatical form is correct and they complete the
  exercise. Groups take turns reading out their
  answers.

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 Information Gap activities

• This refers to the fact that in real
  communication people normally communicate in
  order to get information they do not possess.

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Sample Activity

• Students practice a role-play in pairs. One
  student is given the information she/he needs to
  play the part of a clerk in the railway station
  information booth and has information on train
  departures, prices etc. The other needs to obtain
  information on departure times, prices etc. They
  role play the interaction without looking at each
  others cue cards.

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Jig-saw activities

• based on the information-gap principle
• the class is divided into groups and each group
  has part of the information needed to complete an
  activity.
• the class must fit the pieces together to
  complete the whole.
• they must use their language resources to
  communicate meaningfully and so take part in
  meaningful communication practice.

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Sample activities

• The teacher takes a narrative and divides it
  into twenty sections (or as many sections as
  there are students in the class). Each student
  gets one section of the story. Students must then
  move around the class, and by listening to each
  section read aloud, decide where in the story
  their section belongs. Eventually the students
  have to put the entire story together in the
  correct sequence.

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task-completion activities

• puzzles, games, map-reading and other kinds of
  classroom tasks in which the focus was on using
  ones language resources to complete a task.

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information gathering activities

• student conducted surveys, interviews and
  searches in which students were required to use
  their linguistic resources to collect information.

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opinion-sharing activities

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

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information-transfer activities

• these require learners to take information that
  is presented in one form, and represent it in a
  different form.
• example they may read instructions on how to
  get from A to B, and then draw a map showing the
  sequence, or they may read information about a
  subject and then represent it as a graph.

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reasoning gap-activities

• these involve deriving some new information from
  given information through the process of
  inference, practical reasoning etc.
• example working out a teachers timetable on
  the basis of given class timetables.

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role-plays

• activities in which students are assigned roles
  and improvise a scene or exchange based on given
  information or clues.

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Why the emphasis on pair work and group work?

• 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
  than they would use in teacher-fronted activities

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• their motivational level is likely to increase
• they will have the chance to develop fluency

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Role of Instructional Materials
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• Promote communicative Language use

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• Practitioners of CLT view materials as a way of
  influencing the quality of classroom interaction
  and language use.

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Three kinds of Materials(Richards Rodgers,
2002168)

• Text-based materials
• Tasked-based materials
• Realia

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Text-based Materials

• Textbooks designed to direct and support CLT
• Texts from Syllabuses
• A typical lesson consists of
• Theme (e.g. relaying information)
• Task analysis for thematic development (e.g.,
  understanding the message, asking questions to
  obtain clarification, taking notes, etc.)

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• A practice situation description (e.g., a caller
  asks to see your manager. He does not have an
  appointment. Gather the necessary information
  from him and relay the massage to your manager.
• A stimulus presentation (e.g., in the preceding
  case, the beginning of an office conversation
  scripted and on tape)
• Comprehension questions (e.g., Why is the caller
  in the office?
• Paraphrase Exercises

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Task-based Materials

• Exercise handbooks
• Cue cards
• Activity cards
• Pair-communication practice materials
• Some provide drills and practice materials in
  interactional formats

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Realia A Push for Authenticity

• Based from the belief that language classroom is
  intended as a preparation for survival in the
  real world
• Use of authentic, from life materials in the
  classroom
• LANGUAGE BASED REALIA signs, magazines,
  advertisements, newspapers
• GRAPHIC VISUAL SOURCES maps, pictures,
  symbols, charts, graphs

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Current Communicative Language Teaching (1990s
to the present)

• Since the 1990s the communicative approach has
  been widely implemented.
• Communicative language teaching has continued to
  evolve as our understanding of the processes of
  second language learning has developed.

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Ten core assumptions of currentcommunicative
language teaching

• 1. Second language learning is facilitated when
  learners are engaged in interaction and
  meaningful communication

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• 2. 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

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

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

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• 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 reflection

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• 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

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

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

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• 9. 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

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

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Extensions of CLT

• Process-based methodologies
• Content-Based Instruction (CBI)
• Task-Based Instruction (TBI).
• Product-based methodologies
• Text-Based Instruction
• Competency-Based Instruction

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REferences

• Celce-Murcia, M. 2001. Teaching English as a
  Second or Foreign Language. Third edition.
  Singapore Heinle Heinle. Unit 1 Teaching
  Methodology, Topic 1 (Celce-Murcia) and Topic 2
  (Savignon, Sandra J.).
• Richards, J.C. 2005. CLT Today. Singapore RELC.