|
|
 |
What is Communicative Language
Teaching (CLT)?
- Emerging in the 1980’s, Communicative Language
Teaching (CLT) identifies the most recent in a succession of modern
language acquisition methods. It has replaced the
Grammar-Translation Method and Audio-Lingual Method. Most courses
in classical languages currently follow the Grammar-Translation Method.
- “Meaningful communication” is key to Communicative
Language Teaching: involving students in communication which is
not simply comprehensible, but which actually conveys information in
which the students are personally involved.
- Maximizing “comprehensible input” is a high priority
for CLT, resulting in a priority on immersion and orality, as well as
literacy.
- Output figures importantly for CLT, calling for the
teacher to fashion opportunities for students to generate responses,
whether in oral conversation or written composition.
- CLT is organized around a “functional syllabus”
rather than the traditional “structural syllabus.” Consequently,
students progress from one communicative ability (“function”) to
another (with necessary grammar), rather than simply progressing from
one aspect of grammar to another in a more analytical fashion.
- “Learn in context” is a mantra of CLT. Thus
grammar is taught in the context of communicative functions and
vocabulary is taught in the context of a story.
- “Focus on form” calls for channeling student
attention on one single form at a time (rather than presenting a whole
paradigm at once).
- “Foreground communication, background
metalinguistics” means that detailed linguistic explanations are
suppressed, divulged only on a need-to-know basis.
Please
see Orientation to Communicative Language
Teaching for
more
information.
What are the
benefits of Communicative Language Teaching?Based
on recent field testing, the following benefits have emerged:
- Increased automaticity (comprehension bypassing the
need to decode words and phrases piece by piece)
- Increased higher level processing in reading
(ability to observe themes and nuances of a text more rapidly and more
broadly)
- Increased student motivation for language learning
- Increased language retention
Please
see Reactions and Feedback for more
information.
|
|
|
