Communicative Language Teaching (also referred to as the Communicative Approach) emphasizes interaction as both the means and the ultimate goal of learning a language.
As the language theories underlying the Audiolingual method and the Sitiuational Language Teaching method were questioned by prominent linguists like Chomsky (1957) during the 1960s, a new trend of language teaching paved its way into classrooms.
Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), which is an approach to the teaching of second and foreign languages, emphasizes interaction as both the means and the ultimate goal of learning a language. It is also referred to as the “Communicative Approach”.
Historically, The Communicative Language Teaching approach has been seen as a response to the Audio-Lingual Method (ALM), and as an extension or development of the Notional-Functional Syllabus. Task-based language learning, a more recent refinement of CLT, has gained considerably in popularity.
The theories underlying the audiolingual method and situational language teaching were widely criticized during the 1960s.
Noam Chomsky, for instance, rejected the structuralist view of language and demonstrated that there is a distinction between performance and competence. The goal of the linguist is to study the linguistic competence native speakers are endowed with.
He also showed, rightly, that structuralism and behaviorism were unable to account for one fundamental aspect of language, namely the creativity and uniqueness of individual sentences. A child is able to produce an infinite number of sentences that s/he has never encountered.
This makes the factors of imitation, repetition, and habit formation weak arguments to account for any language learning theory.
Besides applied linguists emphasized the teaching of language based on communicative proficiency rather than mastery of structures. instead of describing the core of language through traditional concepts of grammar and vocabulary, they (Van Ek & Alexander, 1975; Wilkins, 1976) attempted to show the systems of meaning underlying the communicative use of language. They described two kinds of meanings.
In other words, a “notion” is a particular context in which people communicate. A “function” is a specific purpose for a speaker in a given context. For example, the “notion,” of shopping requires numerous language “functions,” such as asking about prices or features of a product and bargaining.
For Chomsky, the focus of linguistics was to describe the linguistic competence that enables speakers to produce grammatically correct sentences. Dell Hymes held, however, that such a view of the linguistic theory was sterile and that it failed to picture all the aspects of language. He advocated the need for a theory that incorporates communication competence. It must be a definition of what a speaker needs to know in order to be communicatively competent in a speech community.
Stephen Krashen later advocated in his language learning theory that there should be a distinction between learning and acquiring. He sees acquisition as the basic process involved in developing language proficiency and distinguishes this process from learning.
Acquisition is an unconscious process that involves the naturalistic development of language proficiency while learning is the conscious internalization of the rules of language. It results in explicit knowledge about the forms of language and the ability to verbalize this knowledge. Learning according to Krashen can not lead to acquisition.
In spite of its critics, Communicative Language Teaching has gained widespread acceptance in the world of language study. CLT can succeed, as long as teachers don’t completely reject the need for the structure provided by grammar. Teachers must strive for moderation and shouldn’t neglect the merits of other methods. CLT, in the hands of a balanced teacher, can bring new life and joy to the classroom. Its vitality makes it an important contributor to language learning approaches.
H. Douglas Brown (1987).Principles of language learning and teaching. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, Prentice Hall
Richards, Jack C. and Theodore S. Rodgers (1986). Approaches and methods in language teaching: A description and analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
