Sotelo, Noemi
Summary Chapter 1: What is Communicative Language Teaching?
Communicative Language Teaching is based on the communicative competence, which means
students need to learn how to communicate in the target language, the key point being acquiring
fluency.
This approach considers the following aspects:
- Using language for different purposes and functions.
- Learning how to adapt the register according to the context, setting and participants.
- Understanding and producing the different types of texts that exist.
- Being able to have a conversation.
The CLT approach was a result of a new perspective on how a language is learned, shifting the
focus from grammatical competence to communicative competence, which implies the following
processes:
- Interaction.
- Collaborative creation of meaning.
- Negotiation of meaning.
- Attending feedback and suggestions.
- Learning new forms of communicating and using them.
For this approach to be successful is recommended to use activities like pair work, role plays,
group work and project work.
This also implies that the role of the teacher and the students changes, so the teacher becomes a
facilitator and a monitor, while the students need to cooperate with each other and assume a
bigger responsibility on their learning process.
Summary Chapter 2: The Background of CLT.
1. Traditional Approaches (up to the late 1960’s)
Its focus was on grammatical competence, learned through direct instruction, repetitive practice
and drilling. Language learning was seen as the process of being able to quickly build accurate
sentences by following grammatical patters, but also having an accurate pronunciation. Some
methodologies based on this approach were:
- Audiolingualism: based on listening to dialogs, memorizing them and then slightly adapting
the for pattern drills.
- Situational Approach: considered 3 moments (presentation, practice and production, which are
still used nowadays)
2. Classic Communicative Language Teaching
The focus was on communicative purposes like making requests, giving advice, making
suggestions, describing wishes, and considering aspects like the situation, participants, roles and
intentions on their written or oral productions.
Sotelo, Noemi
All of the syllabus based on CLT included the following aspects:
- Description of the purposes and settings.
- Role of the learners.
- Language functions.
- Knowledge and skills involved.
- Variety of the target language.
- Grammatical and lexical context.
Types of Syllabus created based on CLT.
- Skills based Syllabus: based on one skill, considering key words, topic, attitude, time
reference, rates of speed and key information.
- Functional Syllabus: based on teaching specific language functions, and teaching the needed
vocabulary and grammar.
- Notional Syllabus: based on contents and notions.
- Task Syllabus: based on tasks and activities.
- Threshold Level: included topics, functions, situations, grammar and vocabulary.
There were also new adaptations based on the specific needs of a profession, so there were
courses created to teach the specific functions, notions, grammar and vocabulary of a specific
field, so the courses were open to several professionals, such as nurses, engineers, doctors, pilots,
etc .
To conclude, it is important to mention the principles of CLT:
- Focus on real communication.
- Provide opportunities to use the language.
- Be tolerant of errors.
- Link skills.
- Teach accuracy or fluency.
- Teach grammar inductively.