THE HISTORY OF CLT
Language teaching has seen many changes in ideas about syllabus design and
methodology in the last 50 years, and CLT prompted a rethinking of approaches to syllabus
design and methodology. We may conveniently group trends in language teaching in the last
50 years into three phases:
PHASE 1: TRADITIONAL APPROACHES (UP TO THE LATE 1960S)
Traditional approaches to language teaching gave priority to grammatical competence
as the basis of language proficiency. Methodologies based on these assumptions include
Audiolingualism (in North America) (also known as the Aural-Oral Method), and the
Structural-Situational Approach in the United Kingdom (also known as Situational
Language Teaching).
In a typical audiolingual lesson, the following procedures would be observed:
1. Students first hear a model containing key structures that are the focus of the lesson.
2. The dialog is adapted to the students’ interest or situation.
3. Certain key structures from the dialog are selected and used as the basis for pattern drills
of different kinds. These are first practiced in chorus and then individually.
4. The students may refer to their textbook, and follow-up reading, writing, or vocabulary
activities based on the dialog may be introduced.
5. Follow-up activities may take place in the language laboratory.
(Richards and Rodgers 2001, 64–65)
In a typical lesson according to the situational approach, a three-phase sequence,
known as the P-P-P cycle, was often employed: Presentation, Practice, and Production.
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grammar practice have been replaced by fluency activities based on interactive small-group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.
PHASE 2: CLASSIC COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING (1970S TO 1990S)
What was needed in order to use language communicatively was communicative
competence. In planning language courses within a communicative approach, grammar was
no longer the starting point.
It was argued that a syllabus should identify the following aspects of language use in
order to be able to develop the learner’s communicative competence: the purposes, the
setting, the role, the communicative events, the language functions, the notions,
discourse and rhetorical skills, the variety or varieties of TL, the grammatical content,
and the lexical content. (Van Ek and Alexander 1980)
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PHASE 3: CURRENT COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING (LATE 1990S TO THE
PRESENT)
Communicative language teaching today refers to a set of generally agreed upon
principles that can be applied in different ways, depending on the teaching context, the age of
the learners, their level, their learning goals, and so on.
A. The Goals of Language Teaching
Communicative language teaching sets as its goal the teaching of communicative
competence. Communicative competence includes the following aspects of language
knowledge:
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
Knowing how to produce and understand different types of texts
Knowing how to maintain communication despite having limitations in one’s language
knowledge
B. How Learners Learn a Language
In recent years, language learning has been viewed from a very different perspective.
It is seen as resulting from processes such as:
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
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
C. The Kinds of Classroom Activities That Best Facilitate Learning
Accuracy Versus Fluency Activities
Mechanical, Meaningful, and Communicative Practice
The Roles of Teachers and Learners in the Classroom
Information-Gap Activities
Jigsaw activities
Other Activity Types in CLT (Task-completion, Information-gathering, Opinion-sharing,
Information-transfer, Reasoning-gap, Role plays)
Emphasis on Pair and Group Work
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D. Ten Core Assumptions of Current Communicative Language Teaching:
1. 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 interpersonal 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.
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.
10. The classroom is a community where learners learn through collaboration and sharing.
Source: Richards, J.C. 2006. CLT Today. Cambridge University Press: USA.
A. Pre-twentieth-Century Trends: A Brief Survey
Language teaching methodology vacillated between two types of approaches: getting
the learners to use a language (i.e. to speak and understand it) versus getting learners to
analyze a language (grammatical rules).
Since the European vernaculars had grown in prestige and utility, it is not surprising
that people in one country or region began to find necessary and useful to learn the language
of another country or region. Thus, the focus in language study shifted back to utility rather
than analysis during the seventeenth century.
By the end of nineteenth century, the Direct Method was introduced, which stressed
the ability to use rather than to analyze a language as the goal of language instruction. Later,
the Modern Language Association of America endorsed the Reading Approach to language
teaching, with emphasis on some of the great works of literature and philosophy that had
been produced in the language. There are also Audiolingual Approach and Oral-Situational
Approach
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B. Nine Twentieth-Century Approaches to Language Teaching
There are nine approaches in this era:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Grammar-Translation
Direct
Reading
Audiolingualism
Oral-Situational
Cognitive
Affective-Humanistic
Comprehension-based
Communicative
Certain features of several of the first five approaches arose in reaction to perceived
inadequacies or impracticalities in an earlier approach or approaches. The four more recently
developed approaches also do this to some extent; however, each one id grounded on a
slightly different theory of how people learn SL or FL or how people use languages.
C. A Note on Approach, Method, and Syllabus Type
An approach is general (e.g. cognitive), a method is a specific set of procedures more
or less compatible with an approach (e.g. the Silent Way), and a technique is a very specific
type of learning activity used in one or more methods (e.g. using coloured rods of variety
lengths).
There are five things the teacher should do to make good decisions concerning the
choice of an approach, a method, and finally techniques and materials:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Assess students’ needs.
Examine instructional constraints.
Determine the attitudes and learning styles of individual students.
Identify the discourse genres, speech activities, and text types students need to learn.
Specify how the students’ language learning will be assessed.
Within the last quarter century, communicative language teaching (CLT) has been put
forth around the world as ‘new’ or ‘innovative’ way to teach English. Teaching materials,
course descriptions, and curriculum guidelines proclaim a goal of communicative
competence.
Today, listeners and readers no longer are regarded as passive. The skills needed to
engage in speaking and writing activities were described subsequently as productive, whereas
listening and reading skills were said to be receptive. The communicative competence needed
for participant includes not only grammatical competence, but also pragmatic competence.
The inadequacy of a four-skill model language is now recognized. There is general
acceptance of the complexity and interrelatedness of skills in both written and oral
communication and of the need for learners to have the experience of communication, to
participate in the negotiation of meaning.
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The origin of contemporary CLT can be traced to concurrent developments in both
Europe and North America. In Europe, the functions were based on assessment of learner
needs and specified the end result, the goal of an instructional program. The term
communicative attached itself to programs that used a functional-notional syllabus based on
needs-assessent, and the language for specific purposes (LSP) movement was launched.
Other European developments focused on the process of communicative classroom language
learning.
While in the US, Hymes proposed the term communicative competence to represent
the use of language in social context, or the observance of sociolinguistic norms of
appropriacy. His focus is language as social behaviour.
At the same time, in a research project at the University of Illinois, Savignon (1972)
used the term ‘communicative competence’ to characterize the ability of classroom language
learners to interact with other speakers, to make meaning, as distinct from their ability to
recite dialogues or perform on discrete point tests of grammatical knowledge.
A collection of role plays, games, and other communicative classroom activities were
subsequently developed for inclusion in adaptating the French CREDIF materials. CLT thus
can be seen to derive from a multidisciplinary perspective that includes, at a minimum,
linguistics, psychology, philosophy, sociology, and educational research. Central of CLT is
the understanding of language learning as both an educational and a political issue. Language
teaching is inextricably tied to language policy. The selection of methods and materials
appropriate to both the goals and context of teaching begins with an analysis of socially
defined learner needs and styles of learning.
Source: Celce-Murcia, M. Teaching English as a second or foreign language. Boston:
Heinle & Heinle Publishers.
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