Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)

Presented By :

Group 14• Francisco Varrela Tilman

201112500049• Dinar Anggraini 201012500990

Background

• The origins of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) are found in the changes in the British language teaching tradition in the late 1960s.

• Situational Language Teaching (SLT) was the major approach to teaching English as a FL.

• Language was taught by practicing basic structures in meaningful situation-based activities.

• British applied linguists rejected the theoretical assumptions underlying SLL because the focus on language teaching was the mastery of structures rather than on communicative proficiency.

• Scholars who advocated this view of language: British functional linguist Halliday, American sociolinguist Dell Hymes and work in philosophy J. Austin.

• There was a need in Europe to teach adults the major languages of the European Common market, and in 1971 a group of experts began to investigate the possibility of developing language courses, in which learning tasks are broken into units.

• In 1972, D. A. Wilkins proposed a functional or communicative syllabus for language teaching. His contribution was an analysis of the communicative meanings that a language learner needs to understand and express.

• Wilkins defined two categories of meanings: notional categories (concepts such as time, sequence, quantity, location, frequency) and categories of communicative function (requests, denials, offers, complaints). This was the birth of notional syllabuses, which had a significant impact on CLT.

• The Council of Europe incorporated Wilkin’s semantic/communicative analysis into a set of specifications for a first-level communicative language syllabus.

• The work of the Council of Europe, the writings of Wilkin’s, Widdowson, Candlin, Brumfit, Keith Johnson, and other British applied linguists on the theoretical basis for a communicative or functional approach to language teaching, the application of these ideas, the acceptance of these principles by British language specialists came to be referred to as the Communicative Approach or CLT.

• Communicative Approach aims to: make communicative competence the goal of language teaching, and develop procedures for the teaching of the four language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) that acknowledge the interdependence of language and communication.

• There are two version of the CLT:• The weak version stresses the importance of providing

learners with opportunities to use their English for communicative purposes (learning to use English).

• The strong version advances the claim that language is acquired through communication. That is not merely a question of activating an existing but inert knowledge of language, but of stimulating the development of the language system itself (using English to learn it).

Approach

Theory Of Language• The Communicative Approach in language teaching starts

from a theory of language as communication.• The goal of language teaching is what Hymes (1972) referred

to as “communicative competence.” Hymes coined this term in order to contrast a communicative view of language and Chomsky’s theory of competence.

• In Hymes’ view, a person who acquires communicative competence acquires both knowledge and ability for language use with respect to

Knowledge and language use

respond to

1. Whether something is formally

possible

3. Whether something is appropriate in relation to a context in which it is

used

4. Whether something is in fact done, actually

performed, and what its doing entails

2. Whether something is convenient

• This theory of what knowing a language entails offers a much more comprehensive view than Chomsky’s view of competence, which deals primarily with abstract grammatical knowledge.

• Another linguistic theory of CLT is Halliday’s functional account of language use. Halliday elaborated a powerful theory of the functions of language. He described seven basic functions that language performs for children learning their first language :

1. Instrumental function: using

language to get things

2. Regulatory function: using language to

control the behavior of others

3. Interactional function: using

language to create interaction with others

6. Imaginative function: using

language to create a world of the imagination

5. Heuristic function: using language to

learn and to discover

4. Personal function: using language to express personal

feelings and meanings

7. Representational function: using language

to communicate information

• At the level of language theory, CLT has a rich theoretical base. Some of the characteristics of this communicative view of language follow:

1. language is a system for the expression of meaning,

2. the primary goal of language is to allow interaction and communication,

3. the structure of language reflects its functional and communicative uses,

4. the primary units of language are categories of functional and communicative meanings.

Theory of Learning• Little has been written about learning theory in contrast to the

amount of that has been written about CLT literature.• Elements of an underlying learning theory can be discerned in

some CLT practices as follows: • One element is the communication principle: activities that

involve real communication promote learning.• Another element is the task principle: activities in which

language is used for carrying out meaningful tasks promote learning.

• A third element is the meaningfulness principle: language that is meaningful to the learner supports the learning process.

DesignObjectives

The following are levels of objectives in a communicative approach:• An integrative and content level (language as a means of expression)• A linguistic and instrumental level (language as a semiotic system

and an object of learning)• An affective level of interpersonal relationships and conduct

(language as a means of expressing values and judgments about oneself and others)

• A level of individual learning needs (remedial learning based on error analysis)

• A general educational level of extra-linguistic goals (language learning within school curriculum)

Syllabus• One of the first syllabus models to be proposed was described

as a notional syllabus (Wilkins, 1976), which specified the semantic-grammatical categories and the categories of communicative function that learners need to express.

• The Council of Europe expanded and developed this into a syllabus that included the following:

1. description of the objectives of FL courses,

2. situations in which they might typically use an L2 (travel, business),

3. topic they might need to talk about (education, shopping),

4. functions they needed language for (requesting information, expressing agreement & disagreement),

5. the notions made use of in communication (time, frequency, duration), as well as vocabulary and grammar needed.

• Littlewood (1981) distinguishes between functional communication activities and social interaction activities.

Types of learning and teaching activities

Functional Communication Activities

• Comparing sets of pictures and noting similarities and differences, discovering missing features in a map or picture, one learner communicating behind a screen to another one giving instructions on how to draw a picture or shape.

Social Interaction Activities

• Conversation and discussion sessions, dialogues, role plays, simulations, skits, improvisations and debates.

Learner roles• The learner is a negotiator

(between himself, the learning process, and the object of learning). The implication is that the learner should contribute as much as he gains, and learn in an interdependent way.

• Students are expected to interact primarily with each other rather than with the teacher.

• Students give and receive information.

Teacher roles

Needs analyst

• CLT teacher assumes a responsibility for determining and responding to Ss language needs.

• CLT teacher administer a needs assessment instrument to determine an individual’s motivation for studying the language.

• Based on needs assessment results, CLT teacher plan instruction and activities that respond to Ss needs.

Counselor

• The CLT teacher-counselor, as in the Community Language Learning, is expected to exemplify an effective communicator seeking to maximize the speaker intention and hearer interpretation, through the use of paraphrase, confirmation, and feedback.

Group process manager

• CLT procedures require teachers to acquire less teacher-centered classroom management skills.

• CLT teacher organizes the classroom for communication and communicative activities.

The Role Of Instructional Materials

• A wide variety of materials have been used to support communicative approaches to language teaching.

• CLT view materials as a way of influencing the quality of classroom interaction and language use.

• The primary role of materials is to promote communicative language use.

• There are three kinds of material currently used in CLT: text-based, task-based, and realia.

Text-based materials

There are numerous textbooks designed to direct and support CLT. Their table of contents suggest a kind of grading and sequencing of language practice.

Task-based materials

A variety of games, role plays, simulations, and task-based communication activities have been prepared to support CLT classes. They are in the form of exercise handbooks, cue cards, activity cards, and interaction booklets.

Realia

Many proponents of CLT have advocated the use of “authentic,” “from life” materials in class. These include: signs, magazines, advertisements, newspapers, pictures, symbols.

ProcedureThe methodological procedures reflect a sequence of activities represented as follows:

Pre-communicative Activities

Structural Activities

Quasi-Communicative Activities

Pre-communicative Activities

Communicative Activities

Conclusions• CLT is best considered an approach rather than a method.• Approach refers to a diverse set of principles that reflect a

communicative view of language and language learning used to support a variety of classroom procedures.

• CLT has passed through a number of different phases to apply its principles to different dimensions of the teaching/learning process.

• The first phase was the need to develop a syllabus that was compatible with the notion of communicative competence. This led to proposals of syllabuses in terms of notions (a context in which people communicate) and functions (a specific purpose for a speaker in a given context).

• The second phase, CLT focused on procedures for identifying learners’ needs and this resulted in proposals to make needs analysis an essential component of communicative methodology.

• In the third phase, CLT focused on the kinds of classroom activities that could be used as the basis of a communicative methodology, such as group work, task-work, and information-gap activities.

There are five core identified characteristics that support current applications of communicative methodology:

Conclusions

1. Appropriateness: language use reflects the situations of its use and must be appropriate to that situation, the roles of the participants, and

the purpose of communication.

2. Message focus: learners need to be able to create and understand messages, hence the focus on information sharing and information

transfer in CLT activities.

3. Psycholinguistic processing: CLT activities seek to engage learners in the use of

cognitive and other processes in SLA.4. Risk taking: learners are encouraged to make guesses and learn from their errors.

Thanks For Your Attention