What is Communicative Language Teaching?? Communicative Language: • Blends listening, speaking, reading, and writing. • Is the expression, interpretation, and negotiation of meaning. • Is comprehensible and meaning-bearing. • Is not first learning some vocabulary, then some grammar, then finding something to talk about to use the vocabulary and grammar. • Is not communication at the service of grammar learning. • Is not rote repetition, the exchange of information in a grammar lesson, or simply oral expression. Change of roles for teacher and student • Traditionally: Teacher is authority, expert, control figure who transmits knowledge. • “Authoritative knowledge transmitters.” • Lecturing is the task. • THE ATLAS COMPLEX: ATLAS supporting the heavens on their shoulders. Full responsibility. Explanations. • Traditionally: Student is the passive audience, vessels into which the information is poured. • Receptive role. • Note taking is the task. Audiolingualism • Instructor was key figure. • Habit formation through repetition, imitation, reinforcement. Parrot. • Memorizing dialogues, practicing sentence patterns. • First language seen to interfere with SLA. • Errors were evidence of bad habits. • No attention given to comprehension • No opportunity to use the language in a meaningful, communicative way, exchanging messages. Output was restricted. CLT • Provides students with opportunities to communicate using language to interpret and express real-life messages. Phases of CLT • Early CLT was restricted; it was communication with the authority figure asking questions; students not parroting but creating an answer. • Question-answer session with teacher in charge. • Teacher asks question, selects people, even finish the sentence; offers explanation, asks more questions, etc. • Next phase of CLT: students allowed to work in pairs and pose questions to one another. • Pair work but with the Atlaslike question and answer model. • Even though they are answering, grammar practice tends to be the real intent. • Teacher monitors for focus on form, rather than on communication and meaning. Next phase CLT • Although roles had changed, the activities still emphasized formal correctness, not communication. • Controlled exercises plus more open ended conversations. • More natural feel but teacher is still controlling. Second Language Acquisition (SLA) • Involves the creation of an implicit (unconscious) linguistic system. • Is complex and consists of different processes. • Is dynamic but slow. • Most L2 learners fall short of native-like competence. • Skill acquisition is different from the creation of an implicit system. Comprehensible Input IS: • the language that learners hear that is meant to convey a message. The learner is to attempt to understand what is being said. • language embedded in a communicative interchange no matter how trivial of important. • the learner attending to the meaning in order to respond to the content or to perform a task. • the learner receiving lots of input so they can build up an implicit linguistic system. • embedding clues into the input about the way language works. • a critical factor in language acquisition. • possible when motivation and a low anxiety environment exist. Successful Language Acquisition • Cannot happen WITHOUT comprehensible input. • Provides consistent and constant exposure to comprehensible input. • Learners need opportunities to use the language in communicative interaction. • Having to use the language pushes the learner to develop communicative language ability!!! The HOW of Acquisition: • Input processing: how learners make sense out of the languages they hear and how they get “linguistic data.” • System change: Accommodation: how learners incorporate a grammatical form into an implicit system of the language they are creating. Restructuring: how the incorporation of a form can cause a ripple effect and make other things change without the learner ever knowing. • Output Processing: how learners acquire the ability to make use of implicit knowledge they are acquiring to produce utterances in real time. SLA is dynamic: • As long as learners continue to get input, the implicit system they create evolves constantly. • Acquisition is dynamic (it evolves) but it is slow (takes years to build a system that is anywhere native like). • Particular kinds of errors are made at particular stages. A structure evolves over time. Stages of Development • Learners actively organize language in their heads independently of external influence. • Certain kinds of errors and not others are made at certain times, and something produces certain patterns of L1 acquisition. • Learners possess “internal strategies” for organizing language data and the strategies do not obey outside influences. Food for thought: • Skill acquisition is different from the creation of an implicit system. It is one thing to develop the implicit system. Being able to use it is different. • Skill acquisition happens independently of the creation of the linguistic system. • Languages are UNTEACHABLE: we cannot force or cause the creation of the learner’s implicit system. Not can we force the acquisition of speech making procedures that are essential to skill development. • We can only provide opportunities for acquisition to happen by providing chances to express real information, not merely information in drills.
