Communicative Language Teaching

The Communicative Method is in
reality an umbrella term – a
broad approach rather than a
specific teaching methodology,
and has now become the
accepted ‘standard’ in English
language teaching.
Communicative Language
Teaching is a natural follow-on
from the reaction during the 70s
against previous methods which
over-focused on teaching
grammatical structures and
template sentences, and which
gave little or no importance to
how language is actually used
practically.

Explanation

Emphasizes the ability
to communicate the
meaning of the message,
instead of concentrating
on grammatical
perfection.
The Communicative approach
emphasizes the ability to
communicate the message in
terms of its meaning, instead of
concentrating exclusively on
grammatical perfection or
phonetics. Therefore, the
understanding of the second
language is evaluated in terms of
how much the learners have
developed their communicative
abilities and competencies.
In essence, it considers using the
language to be just as important
as actually learning the
language.
The Communicative Language
Teaching method has various
characteristics that distinguish it
from previous methods:

Understanding
occurs through active
student interaction
in the foreign
language

Teaching occurs by
using authentic
English texts

Students not only
learn the second
language but they
also learn strategies
for understanding

Importance is given
to learners’ personal
experiences and
situations, which are
considered as an
invaluable
contribution to the
content of the
lessons

Using the new
language in
unrehearsed
contexts creates
learning
opportunities outside
the classroom

Misconceptions

As the method is a broad
approach to teaching English,
rather than a rigid series of
activities, there are some
popular misconceptions of what
CLT involves.
Learning a language is
interactive, co-operative, learner-
centered and content-based, but
the approach does not mean
that learning a second language
involves just ‘ conversation‘.
Using the Method
The most common educational
model applied in the context of
the Communicative Method is
the Functional-Notional
approach, which emphasizes the
organisation of the syllabus.
This breaks down the use of
language into 5 functional
categories that can be more
easily analyzed:
1. personal
(feelings, etc.),
2. interpersonal
(social and working
relationships),
3. directive
(influencing others),
4. referential
(reporting about things, events,
people or language itself),
and
5. imaginative (creativity and artistic
expression).

These 5 broad functions are
then delivered by the teacher in
the classroom using the ‘3 Ps’
teaching model, which stand for
Presentation, Practice and
Production.