Definition

Communicative language teaching can be understood as a set of principles about the goals of
language teaching, how learners learn a language, the kinds of classroom activities that best
facilitate learning, and the roles of teachers and learners in the classroom.
Background
The Communicative Approach emerged in the early 1970s as a result of the work of the
Council of Europe experts. In short, being able to communicate required more than
linguistic competence; it required communicative competence (Hymes 1971) knowing when
and how to say what to whom.
British applied linguists emphasized another fundamental dimension of language that was
inadequately addressed in current approaches to language teaching at that time - the
functional and communicative potential of language. A group of experts saw the need to
focus in communicative proficiency rather than mastery of structures
Goals:
Communicative competence includes the following aspects of language knowledge:
 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
(e.g., knowing when to use formal and informal speech or when to use language
appropriately for written as opposed to spoken communication)
 Knowing how to produce and understand different types of texts (e.g., narratives,
reports, interviews, conversations)
 Knowing how to maintain communication despite having limitations in one’s
language knowledge (e.g., through using different kinds of communication strategies)
 Gaining Oral communicative proficiency,
 use the language appropriate for a given social context,
 The main goals of CLT is to increase the communication ability of the learners in
order to enable them to cope with their communicative needs in the target situation.
 Language techniques are designed to engage learners in the pragmatic, authentic
functional use of language for meaningful purposes.
Principles
1. Whenever possible authentic language should be introduced
2. The target language is a vehicle for classroom communication
3. Students should be given an opportunity to express their ideas and opinions.
4. Communicative interaction encourages cooperative relationships.
5. The social context of the communicative event is essential in giving meaning to the
utterances.
6. The teacher acts as an advisor during communicative activities.
7. Teacher helps learners in any way that motivates them to work with the language.
 8. Fluency and accuracy are seen as complementary principles underlying
communicative techniques

Types of learning/teaching activities

The range of exercise types and activities compatible with a communicative approach is
unlimited, provided that such exercises enable learners to attain the communicative objectives
of the curriculum, engage learners in communication, and require the use of such
communicative processes as information sharing, negotiation of meaning, and
interaction. Many activity types have been used in CLT, including the following:
 Jigsaw activities: Typically, the class is divided into groups and each group has
part of the information needed to complete an activity. The class must fit the
pieces together to complete the whole. In so doing, they must use their language
resources to communicate meaningfully and so take part in meaningful
communication practice.
 Information-Gap Activities: This refers to the fact that in real communication,
people normally communicate in order to get information they do not possess.
This is known as an information gap. In so doing, they will draw available
vocabulary, grammar, and communication strategies to complete a task
 Task-completion activities: puzzles, games, map-reading, and other kinds of
classroom tasks in which the focus is on using one’s language resources to
complete a task.
 Information-gathering activities: student-conducted surveys, interviews, and
searches in which students are required to use their linguistic resources to collect
information.
 Opinion-sharing activities: activities in which students compare values, opinions,
or beliefs, such as a ranking task in which students list six qualities in order of
importance that they might consider in choosing a date or spouse.
 Information-transfer activities: These require learners to take information that is
presented in one form, and represent it in a different form. For example, they may
read instructions on how to get from A to B, and then draw a map showing the
sequence, or they may read information about a subject and then represent it as a
graph.
 Reasoning-gap activities: These involve deriving some new information from
given information through the process of inference, practical reasoning, etc. For
example, working out a teacher’s timetable on the basis of given class timetables.
 Role plays: activities in which students are assigned roles and improvise a scene
or exchange based on given information or clues.
Materials:
Language materials authentic to native speakers of the target language.
a. Text-based materials:
Some of these are written around a largely structurally syllabus, with slight reformatting to justify
their claims to be based on a communicative approach.
b) Task-based materials:
 Task-based communication activities: exercises handbooks, cue cards, activity cards, pair-
communication practice materials, and student-interaction practice booklets.
 Pair communication materials: 2 sets of materials that has different kinds of information.
c) Realia materials
For beginner students it is possible to use realia without a lot of language. For example: signs,
magazines, advertisements, newspapers, and graphic.

Classroom Setting:
Teacher’s role
 Facilitator. The teacher facilitates communication in the classroom.
 During the activities he acts as an adviser, answering students’ questions and monitoring
their performance.
 Independent Participant. Participate independently within the learning-teaching group
 Need analyst. One-to- one sessions with students (Ss) about the Ss’ perception of their
learning styles, learning assets or goals
 Counselor. Exemplify an effective communicator seeking to maximize the meshing of
speaker intention hearer interpretation.
 Group process manager. Pointing out alternatives and extensions. Assisting groups in self-
correction discussion.
 Teacher is a source of information,
 A teacher evaluates not only the students’ accuracy, but also their fluency.

Student’s role
 Negotiator.
 Since the teacher’s role is less dominant than in a teacher-centered method, students are
seen as more responsible managers of their own learning.
 Learner is a client,
 Learners progress from dependence to independence.

Components of Communicative Competence Canale and Swain’s (1980)

• Grammatical competence . Knowledge of and ability to use the forms of language.
• Discourse competence. Knowledge of and ability to comprehend and produce stretches of
language across sentences in both oral and written modes.
• Sociolinguistic competence. Applying sociocultural contexts to communication, including
participants’ roles, information they share, and the function of a communicative act.
• Strategic competence. Use of verbal and nonverbal tactics to accomplish a communicative
goal, including compensation for breakdowns.
Approach
1. Theory of Learning
 The goal of language teaching is to develop what Hymes (1972) referred to as
"communicative competence. “
According to the the communicative approach, in order for learning to take place, emphasis
must be put on the importance of these variables:
 Communication: activities that involve real communication promote learning.
 Tasks: activities in which language is used to carry out meaningful tasks supports the
learning process.
 Meaning: language that is meaningful and authentic to the learner boosts learning

2. Theory of Language
Theory of language language is for communication and linguistic competence and the
knowledge of forms and their meanings are part of the communicative competence. Another
aspect of this knowledge is to learn the use of the language.
ADVANTAGES
• Communicative approach is much more pupil-orientated, because it is based on
pupils’ needs and interests.
• Communicative approach seeks to personalise and localise language and adapt it to
interests of pupils. Meaningful language is always more easily retained by learners.
• Seeks to use authentic resources. And that is more interesting and motivating for
children.
• Children acquire grammar rules as a necessity to speak so is more proficient and
efficient.
Disadvantages
• It pays insufficient attention to the context in which teaching and learning take place
• The Communicative Approach often seems to be interpreted as: “if the teacher
understands the student we have good communication” but native speakers of the
target language can have great difficulty understanding students.
• Another disadvantage is that the CLT approach focuses on fluency but not accuracy.
The approach does not focus on error reduction but instead creates a situation where
learners are left using their own devices to solve their communication problems. Thus
they may produce incoherent, grammatically incorrect sentences.

CONCLUSION
- CLT is best considered an approach rather than a method.
- It views language as a vehicle for communication.
- Aim: the teaching of communicative competence includes grammatical,
sociolinguistic, discourse & strategic competence.
 - Teacher’s role is facilitator & co-communicator while students become
communicators.
- The communicative teaching procedure has no fixed format.

Characteristics of Communicative Language Teaching (mirip conclusion)

1. Overall goals. CLT suggests a focus on all of the components (grammatical, discourse,
sociolinguistic, and strategic) of communicative competence. Goals therefore must intertwine
the organizational (grammatical, discourse) aspects of language with the pragmatic
(sociolinguistic, strategic) aspects.
2. Relationship of form and function. Language techniques are designed to engage learners in
the pragmatic, authentic, functional use of language for meaningful purposes. Organizational
language forms are not the central focus, but remain as important components of language
that enable the learner to accomplish those purposes.
3. Fluency and accuracy. A focus on students’ “flow” of comprehension and production and a
focus on the formal accuracy of production are seen as complementary principles. At times
fluency may have to take on more importance than accuracy in order to keep learners
meaningfully engaged in language use. At other times the student will be encouraged to
attend to correctness. Part of the teacher’s responsibility is to offer appropriate corrective
feedback on learners’ errors.
4. Focus on real-world contexts. Students in a communicative class ultimately have to use the
language, productively and receptively, in unrehearsed contexts outside the classroom.
Classroom tasks must therefore equip students with the skills necessary for communication in
those contexts.
5. Autonomy and strategic involvement. Students are given opportunities to focus on their
own learning process through raising their awareness of their own styles (strengths,
weaknesses, preferences) of learning and through the development of appropriate strategies
for production and comprehension. Such awareness and action will help to develop
autonomous learners capable of continuing to learn the language beyond the classroom and
the course.
6. Teacher roles. The role of the teacher is that of facilitator and guide, not an all-knowing
font of knowledge. The teacher is an empathetic “coach” who values the best interests of
students’ linguistic development. Students are encouraged to construct meaning through
genuine linguistic interaction with other students and with the teacher.
7. Student roles. Students are active participants in their own learning process. Learner-
centered, cooperative, collaborative learning is emphasized, but not at the expense of
appropriate teacher-centered activity.

References
(Richards, 2006)(Freeman & Anderson, 2011)
Freeman, D. L., & Anderson, M. (2011). Techniques & Principles in Language Teaching
(Third). Oxford University Press.
Richards, J. C. (2006). Communicative Language Teaching Today. In Cambridge University
Press (Vol. 1, Issue 1). CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
https://www.professorjackrichards.com/wp-content/uploads/Richards-Communicative-
Language.pdf

• Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching - Diane Larsen Freeman(2nd edition)

• Approaches and Methods in Foreign Language Classroom: From Theories to skills –
Azamat Akbarov