Communicative Language Teaching

History:

In 1970’s, teachers started to realized that students could produce sentences accurately in a lesson, but
could not use them appropriately when genuinely communicating outside of the classroom.

They observed that being able to communicate required more than mastering linguistic structure, due
to the fact that language was fundamentally social.

Students may know the rules of linguistic usage, but be unable to use the language.

Being able to communicate required more than linguistic competence, it required communicative
competence (Hymes 1971), knowing when and how to say what to whom.

Aim:

Applying the theoretical perspective of the Communicative Approach, clt aims broadly to make
communicative competence the goal of language teaching. It is flexible so the classroom practice will
differ widely.

Characteristics..

Every activity has a communicative intention, whereas is to discuss a topic, play games like role- play,
active participation in class, problem-solving task.

Truly communicative activities- according to Monrrow (1981)

 Information gaps: when a person in an exchange knows something that the other person does
not.
 Choice: the person has a choice of what she will say and how. If the activity is controlled, the
students do not have the opportunity to make choices.
 Feedback: a speaker can realized if her/his message has been achieved if they have a listener.

Use of display questions: Display questions are questions you ask to see if the person you are speaking
to knows the answer.

The use of authentic materials: use of activities as real as possible.

Activities carried out by students in small groups: is better to maximize the time for each student to talk
and socialize.

Teacher’s role:

The teacher facilitates communication in the classroom. One of his major responsibilities is to establish
situation likely to promote communication.

Acts like as an advisor, answering student’s questions and monitoring their performances.

Student’s role: they are communicators. They will be trying to make themselves understood. Students
are seen as more responsible for their own learning .

Skills emphasize:
Learn about cohesion coherence.

Students work with all the four skills from the beginning. Whereas in the oral part we can see a speaker
and listener connection, through writing we can see a writer and reader one.

Activities:

Scrambled sentences: A text is given to the students in which the sentences are in a scrambled order.

Students will have to return the text to his original order. This help students with cohesion and
coherence.

Role-play: They give students an opportunity to practice communicating in different social context and
in different social roles. Students will received feedback.

Materials:

The idea is that you can use whatever material you want as long as it has a communicative purpose.
Authentic materials like a newspaper, they are going to be connected with nowadays and real situations.

Teaching techniques:

 Authentic materials
 Language games: they give students valuable communicative practice.
 Problem solving task
 Uses almost any activity that engages learners in authentic communication.
 Functional communication activities in which communication is involved, and social
interaction activities, such as conversation and discussion sessions, dialogues and role- play.

Give an screenshot

Example of an activity: Group work

Group work is a collaborative activity whose purpose is to foster communication in the TL, in a larger
group setting.[13]

Example:

 Students are assigned a group of no more than six people.

 Students are assigned a specific role within the group. (E.g., member A, member B, etc.)
 The instructor gives each group the same task to complete.
 Each member of the group takes a designated amount of time to work on the part of the task to
which they are assigned.
 The members of the group discuss the information they have found, with each other and put it
all together to complete the task.
Students are asked to focus on one piece of information only, which increases their comprehension of
that information. Better comprehension leads to better communication with the rest of the group,
which improves students' communicative abilities in the TL.

Instructors should be sure to monitor that each student is contributing equally to the group effort. It
takes a good instructor to design the activity well, so that students will contribute equally, and benefit
equally from the activity.

Content- based instruction

History

Howatt (1984) notes that there were two versions of the communicative approach; the weak version
and the strong version. The weak recognize the importance of providing learners with opportunities to
practice English for communicative purposes.

The strong version: asserts that language is acquired trough communication. This version entails ‘’using
English to learn it’’.

The focus of a CBI lesson is on the topic or subject matter. During the lesson students are focused on
learning about something. This could be anything that interests them from a serious science subject to
their favorite pop star or even a topical news story or film. They learn about this subject using the
language they are trying to learn, rather than their native language, as a tool for developing knowledge
and so they develop their linguistic ability in the target language

Aim

Teachers wants students to master both language and content. Teachers do not want to delay student’s
academic study or language study so they teach both simultaneously.

Characteristics

 Teachers must help students to understand authentic texts.

 Teachers make meaning clear through the use of visuals, realia, repeating, and by giving a lot of
examples, building on student’s previous experiences.
 Use of activities that address both content and language
 Thinking skills are used in order to help students undertake academic tasks.

Teacher’s role

Teacher needs to set clear learning objectives for both language and content. Teacher need to create
activities to teach both.
Student’s role

Their role is to engage actively with both content and language, using both to learn the other.

Skill emphasize

The four skills are integrated in authentic contexts. The language includes vocabulary items and
grammar structures, but also how these contribute to the discourse organization of texts.

Activities

Vocabulary building,

communicative activities ( pair, group work)

fill in the blanks with vocabulary learned

guessing games

Materials

Authentic materials such as :videos, technical journals, pictures, etc

Techniques:

Dictogloss: students listen twice to a short talk or reading. The first time they listen for a main idea
whereas in the second one for details.

Then, they have to take notes of what they remember. In pairs they need to construct the best version
of what they have heard. Finally Pair groups need to share what they have done.

Graphic organizers: They are visual displays that help students to organize and remember new
information. They involve drawing and writing down ideas and making connections. They combine:
words and phrases, symbols, an arrows to map knowledge.

They include: diagrams, tables, columns, and webs.

The use of techniques and strategies to facilitate comprehension such as realia, redundancy, use of
graphic organizers, etc.

Task-based activities and project work, enhanced by cooperative learning principles

Strategy training (to produce more metacognitively aware strategic learners)

Visual support (ie. Images, graphic organizers, language ladders etc.)

Contextualized grammar instruction

Culminating synthesis activities (knowledge is displayed in writing and orally)

Advantages

Language learning becomes more interesting and motivating.

CBI offer a wide educational knowledge to learners in the form of the different topics instructed.

It helps students develop valuable study skills such as note taking, summarizing and extracting key
information from texts.

Developing collaborative skills, especially when using group work, which can have great social value.

Disadvantages

CBI implicit language instruction can confuse learners and may give them the impression that they are
not actually learning language.

Overuse of native language can be a problem in some parts of the lesson.

Finding information sources and texts that lower levels can understand can be difficult.

In a nutshell, although CBI is a challenging approach for both teachers and students, the outcome of its
implementation can be rewarding and motivating.

Example of an activity:

guessing games: e-g : latitudes and longitudes are explained. Students have to choose five cities and
they and write down their latitudes and longitudes. The group said the coordinates out loud and the rest
for the class needs to guess the city.

Grammar-translation method:

History

At one time was called the ‘Classical method’ since it was used for teaching the classical languages; Latin
and Greek.

In the 20th century, this method was used to help students to read and appreciate foreign language
literature.

It was hoped that through the study of the grammar of the target language students would become
more familiar with their native language.

Finally it was thought that foreign language learning would help students grow intellectually; it was
recognized that maybe students would never use the target language but the mental exercise of
learning it would be beneficial anyways.

Aim

To make students be able to read literature written in the target language. They will need to learn about
grammar rules and vocabulary of the target language.

Provides mental exercise, which helps develop their minds.

Characteristics

 Students are taught to translate from one language into another.

  What they translate are readings in the target language about the culture of the foreign
language community.
 Students study grammar deductively, grammatical rules and examples are given, then they are
asked to apply this rules to another examples.
 Memorization of native language equivalents for target language vocabulary words.

Teacher’s role

The teacher is the authority in the classroom.

Student’s role

Traditional role: passive and receptive, do what the teacher says.

Skill emphasize

Reading and writing are the primary skills. Vocabulary and grammar are emphasize.

Activities:

Fill in the blacks: a series of sentences with words missing are given. Students have to fill in the blanks
with new vocabulary.

Translate a text

Antonyms/synonyms: students have to find whereas is antonyms or synonyms of a set of words related
with a literary passage.

Learners bring in short texts/proverbs/poems and present them to the class, explaining why they like
them. These are then used for translation.

Learner groups work on translating different sections of a text, and then regroup to connect together
their parts into a full text, with suitable connecting language.

Teaching Techniques:

Translation of a literary passage: Students translate a reading passage from the target language into
their native language. Vocabulary and grammar structures are studied in subsequent classes.

It can be spoken, written or both.

Students should not translate the literary text literally, but rather in a way that shows that they
understood the meaning.

Reading comprehension questions:

Students answer question in the target language according to their understanding of the reading
passage.

Deductive application of rules: Grammar rules are presented with examples. Once students understand
a rule, they are asked to apply it to some different example

e.g : The teacher explains : the English ‘-ty’ often correspond to the Spanish endings ‘-dad and –tad’ . the
example of possibility that it is posibilidad in Spanish, is given. She ask for another example, immediately
the word ‘obscurity’ and obscucridad is given.

Memorization: a lists of target language vocabulary words and their native language equivalents are
given and are asked to be memorize.

Use words in sentences: students are asked to create sentences using the new vocabulary or
grammatical rules.

Creating a composition: they have to create a composition with a literature passage as the topic.

Advantages:

 Easier for teachers to use

 Method, comparison between two languages helps students to have a better understanding of
the meaning of abstract words
 The focus on understanding literary texts provides the situation in which reading and writing
abilities are well trained.

Disadvantages:

 Extensive memorization
 Little teacher/student interaction
 Textbooks as only resource
 No real correction of pronunciation
 O not focus on the 4 skills
 The language learned often doesn’t meet the practical needs of the learners.
 Memorizing grammar rules and bilingual word lists does not motivate students to actively
communicate in the target language.

Activity in class
 Silent way

History: originated in the early 1970’s and introduced by Caleb Gattegno, an Europe educator well
known for the use of colored sticks and his approach to the teaching of initial reading n which
sounds are taught by colors.

Aim: Students should be able to use the language for self-expression (thoughts, perceptions, and
feelings). To do this. They need to develop independence from the teacher , and develop their own
criteria for correctness.

Teacher should give them only what they really need to promote their learning.

Characteristics:

Students begin their study of the language through basic building blocks, and sounds.

These are introduced through a language-specific sound-color chart.

Relying on what students already know about sounds of their native language, teacher leads the
students to associate the sounds of the target language with particular colors.

Later these same colors are used to help students learn the spelling that correspond to the sound
and how to read and pronounce words properly.

The teacher sets up situations that focus student’s attention on the structures of the language. With
minimal spoken cues, students are guided to produce the structure.

The teacher ask pupils to describe what they have learned. This provides valuable informarion for
the teacher and encourages students to take responsabiity for their own learning.
Teacher’s role: is a technician or engineer. Relyig on wwhaat learners already know, teacher can
give what help is necessary. The teacher acts as an observer merely looks for continued
improvement.

teachers should be as silent as possible during a class but learners should be encouraged to speak
as much as possible.

The teacher should respect the autonomy of the learnes .

Student’s role:

Are expected to develop independence, autonomy, ad responsibility.

To make use of what they know and to actively engage in exploring the language.

‘to learn is our own responsibility’ Gattegno would say.

Skill emphasize:

Pronunciation is worked since the beginning.

Focus on the structures of the language.

Vocabulary is somewhat restricted at first

All four skills ae worked on form the beginning of he course, although there is a sequence in that
students learn to read and write what they have already produced orally.

Materials:

Sound-colur chart: are used to illustrated the relationships between sounds and meaning in the
target language.

The symbols are colour coded according to pronunciation

Rods:
 prepositions, numbers colors

Activities:

Teaching techniques

Sound color-chart:

 The chart contains blocks of color, each one representing a sound in the target language.
 the chart allows students to produce sound combinations in the target language
 the chart draws student’s attention and allows them to concentrate in the language.
Rods:

 can be used to provide visible actions or situations for any language structure, to introduce it, or
for students to practice.
 Can be help full with begginers to teach: color, numbers, etc. and with intermediate levels to
teach: prepositions and conditionals.

Self-correction gestures:

1. Gestures can b helful to show how long a vowel is, or to represent with his finger a different
vowel or word.
2. Peer correction: students can help each other when they are experiencing difficulties.
3. word chart: the teacher and later the students, points to words on the wall charts in a sequence
so that students can read aloud the sentences they have spoken.
4. Activity Call a student to the front of the room and hand them a rod. Point out the following
instruction, using words/sounds on the chart: “Put the rod on the table.”
5. Ask the class (through gesture) to repeat the instruction: “Put the rod on the table.”
6. The student then follows the direction and puts the rod on the table.
7. Next point out another direction using the chart: “Put the rod under the table.”
8. Follow the same process outlined in Steps 2-3.
9. Continue by asking students to direct each other to put rods in different places (“on the chair,”
“in front of the window,” etc.)