Communicative Language Teaching

4 Key excerpts on "Communicative Language Teaching"

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  eBook - ePub

  Methods and Methodologies for Language Teaching

  The Centrality of Context

  • Andy Curtis(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  4

  Communicative Language Teaching in Context

     

  Before reading this chapter, consider the following questions:

  • How would you define ‘communication’?
  • What do you understand by the term ‘communicative competence’?
  • Do you think ‘effective communication’ and/or ‘communicative competence’ is the same in your first language as it is in your other languages?
  • If so, why? Or, if not, why not?

  Introduction and Overview

  In this chapter, definitions (including my own) and descriptions of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) are first presented, compared and contrasted, so that the readers can fully understand what is meant by CLT. This is a necessary starting point, because CLT can mean different things to different people, depending in no small part on how we conceptualize and articulate essential terms such as ‘communication’, ‘effective communication’ and ‘communicative competence’. In the second part of the chapter, the readers are taken inside the CLT classroom to give them a sense of what CLT looks like, linking the theory and the practice of CLT, using data from real classrooms, such as extracts from classroom transcripts.

  The third part of the chapter considers the pros and cons of CLT, as all methodologies have their benefits and limitations, to help the readers decide whether CLT is or would be a good fit with their particular language teaching and learning context. In this chapter, I also discuss what I refer to as ‘the dark side of CLT’, as one of the features of this book that distinguishes it from other books on methodology is the fact that the methodologies presented here are critically considered. By that, I mean they are considered in relation to the historical, geopolitical, cultural, economic, post-colonial and other aspects that have shaped the methodology. These considerations are designed to be different from the presentation of each methodology in some ‘neutral’ way, as though such aspects were not essential influences, when they clearly are key. The last part of the chapter includes a brief discussion of how the learning outcomes with CLT can be assessed.

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  eBook - ePub

  Teaching Modern Languages

  • Ann Swarbrick, Ann Swarbrick(Authors)
  • 2002(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Communicative Language Teaching (1981), preserved a relatively traditional methodological framework of presentation-practice-exploitation.

  However, while no single theory of learning was a major influence on Communicative Language Teaching in its early stages, a range of new ideas about learning were working within the movement from the beginning, and language learning theory became a progressively more important influence in the 1980s.

  First, it was argued logically that having specified with greater clarity a range of real life situations in which the learner following a functional syllabus could be expected to exercise those functions, the classroom should provide opportunities for lifelike rehearsal. It was no surprise that communicative methodologies have emphasised speaking and listening skills in the classroom; indeed the audio-visual and other structural methods which preceded the communicative approach had already introduced this emphasis. But the communicative approach has brought a new emphasis on the use of role plays and simulations in the classroom, hopefully to reproduce something of the experience of target language use in the desired contexts.

  Secondly, from the 1970s onwards, ideas of ‘naturalness’ in the FL classroom, and the view that the foreign language learning process should model itself as far as possible on the (apparently) universally successful processes of first language acquisition, became increasingly influential. Young children learning their first language, it was argued, are interested in meanings, and in getting things done; they pay little or no conscious attention to the forms of language, and do little in the way of formal drill and practice. At first their spoken utterances are very brief, and deviant from adult norms; but motivated as they are to understand, to be understood, and to get their own way, they rapidly master the system of language rules which will allow them to produce their own original messages. Perhaps, it began to be thought, second language learners could show similar motivation and success if they too were encouraged to concern themselves with meaning rather than with matters of form.

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  SLA Research and Materials Development for Language Learning

  • Brian Tomlinson, Brian Tomlinson(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Communicative Language Teaching and other immersion methods utilize meaning-driven methodologies as a route to language acquisition, and are often touted as the “natural approach” (Krashen & Terrell, 1983) or the kind of implicit learning employed in first language (L1) acquisition. However, an exclusive focus on meaning has proven to be deficient in delivering advanced L2 competencies and leads to inefficient treatments of learner errors, particularly those made by adult learners (Long, 2015). Established research in the field of SLA proposes that language is actually acquired according to a learner internal syllabus, with each individual learner passing through common stages of acquisition (Pienemann & Johnston, 1986 ; Long & Norris, 2000 ; Robinson, 2001). As a result of this research, TBLT emerged from Communicative Language Teaching with the aim to “focus on form” (not forms) by entailing “attention to formal elements of a language, whereas focus on forms is limited to such a focus, and focus on meaning excludes it” (Long & Norris, 2000, p. 598). For the learner, a task provides a narrative with a clear time sequence from beginning to middle to end, easing the language processing burden and enabling greater attention to accuracy and fluency in performance (Foster & Skehan, 2009). In addition, tasks might provide learners with opportunities to discover grammatical features or rules through task completion. In other words, learners may actively direct their attention during a task to discovering how or why certain features might be used in a story or conversation, thereby supplying opportunities for learners to develop their knowledge of the target language gradually and through self-discovery (Tomlinson, 2012)

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  Content and Language Integrated Learning

  Language Policy and Pedagogical Practice

  • Yolanda Ruiz de Zarobe(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  This case study is part of a larger project which aims to determine the usefulness and validity of a model of a pre-service content and language integrated learning (CLIL) teacher education programme inserted in a Master’s degree, whose main pedagogical option is to achieve teacher empowerment through cycles of collaborative teaching and shared reflection. More specifically, the two-fold goal of the study is to describe the nature of the student–teacher’s main accomplishments on her teaching practice, if any, as well as on the quality of her reflection on that teaching practice; and to identify and characterise key stages in her developmental process throughout. The analysis adopts an ethnographic perspective and explores fragments of videotaped CLIL science lessons in English/L3 and other multimodal data (student–teacher’s journal, academic reports and instructor’s field notes) collected in a master’s degree for secondary teachers in Barcelona, where Catalan and Spanish are co-official. Through Multimodal Conversation Analysis and Ethnographic Content Analysis, the study reconstructs the developmental process undertaken by the informant throughout one academic year. The analysis traces the student–teacher’s progress both in the practical handling of the specific challenges of the CLIL lessons and in her progressive understanding of key issues in the domain of Second Language Acquisition (SLA); it also shows how teaching practice and reflection shape and fuel each other. In addition, it illustrates how CLIL teachers may benefit from tools developed in the field of Applied Linguistics in order to improve their professional skills.

  Introduction

  The last 15 years have witnessed an outburst of content and language integrated learning (CLIL) programmes all over Spain (Lasagabaster and Ruiz de Zarobe 2010). The interest in the teaching of content-subjects through a foreign language (FL) – usually English – is also present in Catalonia, a region where already two languages – Catalan and Spanish – are legally regulated as a means of instruction in compulsory and post-compulsory education. Thus, when English enters Catalan schools as a working language, it becomes the third language of instruction (Escobar Urmeneta and Nussbaum 2010; Pérez-Vidal and Juan-Garau 2011). This outbreak coincided in time with the launching by the Spanish Ministry of Education of a 60-ECTS Master’s degree, whose official guidelines, surprisingly, do not include any reference to CLIL.

  It is in this context that the Bellaterra Teacher Education (TED) Master’s Degree decided to adapt its offer so as to fulfil all the requirements set by the Ministry on the one hand, while simultaneously presenting all student–teachers with some basic information on CLIL, and offering them the option to relate to CLIL settings three of the mandatory course units or modules, namely (a) classroom-based research module, (b) internship and (c) Master’s Dissertation (MD). The detailed procedure followed in the so-called Bellaterra Model

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