1. Communicative Language
Teaching
Cris D. Barabas
English 212N Summer Term 2013
University of San Carlos

2. Presentation Outline
I. What is communicative language teaching?
II. The nature of learners’ learning
III. The background to CLT
IV. Implications for methodology
V. Classroom activities in CLT
VI. CLT and cooperative learning
VII.The push for authenticity
VIII.Current trends in CLT

3. Tracing back…
• Concurrent developments in Europe & North
America
• First proposed in the 1970s?
• British linguist (1960s?): Communicative
Approach aims to make communicative
competence (Hymes, 1972)
• Council of Europe: notional-functional
concepts of language use syllabus

4. A methodology of choice?
WHY?
•Does it mean teaching conversation?
•An absence of grammar in a course?
•An emphasis on open-ended discussion
activities?

5. The goals of language teaching
•Communicative competence vs. grammatical
competence

6. Communicative competence is what a speaker
needs to know in order to be communicatively
competent in a speech community.

7. Four dimensions of communicative
competence (Canale and Swain, 1998)
• Grammatical competence
• Sociolinguistic competence
• Discourse competence
• Strategic competence

8. How is communicative competence
viewed?
• 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
(formal vs. informal speech, when to use
language appropriately for written as opposed
to spoken communication)

9. How is communicative competence
viewed?
• Knowing how to produce and understand
different types of texts (narratives, reports,
interviews, conversations)
• Knowing how to maintain communication
despite having limitations in one’s language
(through using different kinds of
communication strategies)

10. How learners learn a language?
CLT as partly a response to the changes of
understanding the processes of second language
learning in the past 30 years

11. Before…
• Mastery of grammatical competence
• Language learning as a process of mechanical
habit formation
• Good habits are formed by having students
produce correct sentences and not through
making mistakes

12. Before…
• Errors were to be avoided through controlled
opportunities for production (either written or
spoken)
• Memorizing dialogs and performing drills, the
chances of making mistakes were minimized
• Teacher-controlled learning

13. CLT Innovation/Change in perspective
• 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

14. CLT Innovation/Change in perspective
• 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

15. The background to CLT
With respect to the groupings of the language
teaching trends in the last 50 years:
Phase 1: traditional approaches (late 1960s)
Phase 2: classic CLT (1970s-1990s)
Phase 3: current CLT (late 1990s-present)

16. Phase 2: classic CLT (1970s-1990s)
• the shifting of attention to the knowledge and
skills needed to use grammar
• the communicative competence
• developed within the sub-discipline of
sociolinguistics

17. What would a syllabus that reflected the notion
of communicative competence look like and
what implications would it have for language
teaching methodology?

18. CLT (1970s and 1980s)
• Purposes
• Setting
• Socially defined role
• Communicative events
• Language functions

19. CLT (1970s and 1980s)
• Notions
• Discourse/rhetorical skills
• Variety
• Grammatical content
• Lexical content

20. • Communicative Syllabus (skill-based &
functional)
• English for Specific Purposes

21. Implications for Methodology
• Make real communication the focus of
language learning
• Provide opportunities for learners to
experiment and try out what they know
• Be tolerant of learners’ errors as they indicate
that the learner is building up of his or her
communicative competence

22. Implications for Methodology
• Provide opportunities for learners to develop
both accuracy and fluency
• Link the different skills such as speaking,
reading, and listening together, since they
usually occur so in the real world
• Let students induce or discover grammar rules

23. Classroom activities in CLT
Activities Focusing on Accuracy Activities Focusing on Fluency
Reflect classroom use of language Reflect natural use of language
Focus on the formation of correct
examples of language
Focus on achieving communication
Practice language out of context Require meaningful use of language
Practice small samples of language Require the use of communication
strategies
Do not require meaningful communication Produce language that may not be
predictable
Control choice of language Seek to link language use to context

24. Classroom activities in CLT
II. Mechanical, Meaningful, and Communicative
Practice
III. Information-Gap Activities
IV. Jigsaw Activities
V. Task-completion: puzzles, games, map-reading
VI. Information-gathering
VII. Opinion-sharing
VIII. Information-transfer
IX. Reasoning-gap
X. Role-plays

25. The emphasis on cooperative learning
• Learn from hearing the language used by
other members
• Produce a greater amount of language than
they would use in teacher-fronted activities
• Likely to increase in motivational level
• Bigger chance to develop fluency

26. The push for authenticity
• Language classroom=preparation for survival in
the real world
“Classroom activities should parallel the ‘real world’
as closely as possible. Since language is a tool of
communication, methods and materials should
concentrate on the message and not the medium.
The purpose of reading should be the same in
class as they are in real life.”
-Clarke and Silberstein (1977)

27. Changes in approaches to language
teaching (Jacobs and Farrel, n.d.)
1. Learner autonomy
2. The social nature of learning
3. Curricular integration
4. Focus on meaning
5. Diversity
6. Thinking skills
7. Alternative assessment
8. Teachers as co-learners