 Communicative
Language Teaching:
Definition
 Background:
 Activities
 Learner
 Role
Historical and Theoretical
in CLT
and Teacher Roles
of Instructional Materials

A set of principles about:
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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
 The
Teaching of Communicative
Competence.
Grammatical
Competence
Communicative
competence
• The ability to produce sentences in • knowing how to use language for a
a language
range of different purposes and
functions
• The knowledge of the building
• knowing how to vary our use of
blocks of sentences (e.g. parts of
language according to the setting and
speech, tenses, phrases, clauses,
the participants
sentence patterns) and how they are
formed
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 one’s language
knowledge (e.g. through using
different kinds of communication
strategies)
 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.
 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
 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 ways of
saying things
 the
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use of the following:
pair work activities
role plays
group work activities
project work.
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
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
Histori
 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)
 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.
 Techniques:
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memorization of dialogs,
question and answer practice,
substitution drills
various forms of guided speaking and writing practice.
 Approach:
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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.
 Great
attention to accurate pronunciation and
accurate mastery of grammar
 Methodologies:
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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
 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.
 attention
shifted to the knowledge and skills
needed to use grammar and other aspects of
language appropriately for different
communicative purposes:
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making requests,
giving advice,
making suggestions,
describing wishes and needs and so on.
 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.
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.
 Grammar
was no longer the starting point. New
approaches to language teaching were needed.
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.
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 learner’s competence is considered in relative,
not in absolute, terms.
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.
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 language—that is, that they use
language for a variety of purposes in all phases of
learning.
Theoretical
The Communicative Approach in
language teaching starts from a
theory of language as
communication
 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.
 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.
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 Hymes’s view of
communicative competence for many writers on CLT.
 Seven basic functions: instrumental, regulatory,
interactional, personal, heuristic, imaginative,
representational.
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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.
 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.
Fluency Activities
Accuracy Activities
reflect natural use of language
focus on achieving
reflect classroom use of
language
communication
require meaningful use of
language
Do not require meaningful
Communication
require the use of
communication strategies
focus on correct formation of
examples of language
Produce language that may not
be predictable
Choice of language is controlled
Seek to link language use to
context
practice language out of context
 There
should be balance between fluency and
accuracy activities
 Accuracy
activities should support fluency 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.
 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.
 This
refers to the fact that in real communication
people normally communicate in order to get
information they do not possess.
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
other’s cue cards.
 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.
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.
 puzzles,
games, map-reading and other kinds
of classroom tasks in which the focus was on
using one’s language resources to complete a
task.
 student
conducted surveys, interviews and
searches in which students were required to
use their linguistic resources to collect
information.
 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.
 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.
 these
involve deriving some new information
from given information through the process
of inference, practical reasoning etc.
example: working out a teacher’s timetable
on the basis of given class timetables.
 activities
in which students are assigned
roles and improvise a scene or exchange
based on given information or clues.
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 teacherfronted activities
 their
motivational level is likely to increase
 they
will have the chance to develop fluency
Promote communicative Language use
 Practitioners
of CLT view materials as a way
of influencing the quality of classroom
interaction and language use.
 Text-based
materials
 Tasked-based
 Realia
materials
 Textbooks
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A
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designed to direct and support CLT
Texts from Syllabuses
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
 Exercise
handbooks
 Cue cards
 Activity cards
 Pair-communication practice materials
 Some provide drills and practice materials in
interactional formats
 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
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LANGUAGE BASED REALIA: signs, magazines,
advertisements, newspapers
GRAPHIC & VISUAL SOURCES: maps, pictures, symbols,
charts, graphs
 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.
1. Second
language learning is
facilitated when learners are
engaged in interaction and
meaningful communication
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
3. Meaningful communication
results from 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
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 conducive to language
learning and provides 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
 Process-based
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Content-Based Instruction (CBI)
Task-Based Instruction (TBI).
 Product-based
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methodologies
methodologies
Text-Based Instruction
Competency-Based Instruction
 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.