COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING : Strength and weaknesses By Smith PIERRE, Student in Master of TEFL From Ha誰ti
If teaching were just saying and if learning were just listening, even the parrots would be excellent teachers and anybody with ears would be a perfect learner. Fortunately, teaching and learning a language and specifically a foreign language, is a long and complex process as well as an art that requires techniques, strategies and appropriate methods. English, nowadays, is one of the most important means for acquiring access to the world's intellectual and technical resources. So, its teaching is regulated by various methods of which Cal Digest, named about eight: the Grammar-Translation Method, the Direct Method, the Audio-Lingual Method, the Silent Way, Suggestopedia, Community Language Learning, the Total Physical Response Method, and the Communicative Approach or Communicative language learning considered like one the most recent methods of teaching English as a foreign language. Explain this method, explore its applications and examine its strengths and weaknesses will be the main concerns of this essay.
The world we are living in today is global in the sense that technology puts us face to face and very close one to another as if the planet were a house and each continent a different room. As time goes by, it tends to worsen until the planet becomes one room in the above mentioned house. That situation prioritizes communication and makes of it a common subject among technologists, philosophers and thinkers in general. This trend facilitates communicative language teaching and makes of it, in spite of its recent history, an up to date approach to teach English and to encourage communication as the first function of a language. How can we understand this particular method? There is not just one approach or one definition of communicative language teaching. According to Jack C. Richards, 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. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, defines CLT or the communicative approach, an approach to language teaching that emphasizes interaction as both the means and the ultimate goal of study. The course manual “Teaching Methodology made it easy” states that this method can be defined a topical / functional approach which considers meaningful communication to be the primary focus of language instruction. For Richard and Rogers, it refers to a diverse set of principles that reflect a particular view of language and language learning and that can be used to support a variety of classroom procedures. According to Ivan Aguilar in Esl glossary, It’s a set of principles about teaching including recommendations about and syllabus where the focus is on meaningful communication not structure, use not usage. In this particular approach, students are given tasks to accomplish using language, instead of studying the language. Those definitions, though incomplete, highlight interaction, communication and participation as the center of CLT. They mean that the focus in CLT or the target is less accuracy than fluency, less grammar than speaking, less written English than spoken English. It’s almost impossible to conceive a teaching method without an objective. Teachers using that method should have a map in mind telling them where they are headed with their students. Researchers and CLT authors conceived a set of attainable goals for this method. Unlike traditional methods used almost everywhere until recently (Direct method focused on the teacher– Grammar translation method focused on translation –Audio-lingual method focused on repetition …), CLT aims at communication in a particular context. That is to say, in CLT, what matters is being able to communicate in a specific situation. Does it mean that the other skills are prohibited? Not really but the stress is on communication. Margie S. Berns, an expert in the field of communicative language teaching, writes in explaining Firth's view that "language is interaction; it is interpersonal activity and has a clear relationship with society. In this light, language study has to look at the use (function) of language in context, both its linguistic context (what is uttered before and after a given piece of discourse) and its social, or situational, context (who is speaking, what their social roles are, why they have come together to speak)" (Berns, 1984, p. 5). Despite of the different ways teachers can conceive CLT and the various approaches taken into account, it is based on real life situation that necessitates communication as its essential goal. David Nunan notes 5 key elements to this method :. 1. An emphasis on learning to communicate through interaction in the target language. 2. The introduction of authentic texts into the learning situation.
3. The provision of opportunities for learners to focus, not only on the language but also on
the learning process itself. 4. An enhancement of the learner's own personal experiences as important contributing
elements to classroom learning. 5. An attempt to link classroom language learning with language activation outside the classroom. Can there be a real explanation of CLT without an overview of some strategies used by various traditional approaches to teach English in a more efficient way? Before this new practical method, teachers could rely on interaction between learners of English and those who speak the language but, could this ever succeed? We doubt it. Like going to a garage doesn’t make of you a car or a mechanic, it is nearly impossible to learn a language just because others are speaking it. However it can do some good as improve the quality of our pronunciation or better our listening skill but it couldn’t make us speak. They could also rely on other processes like Collaborative creation of meaning, Creating meaningful and purposeful interaction through language, negotiation of meaning as the learner and his or her interlocutor arrive at understanding, learning through attending to the feedback learners get when they use the language, paying attention to the language one hears (the input) and trying to incorporate new forms into one’s developing communicative competence, trying out and experimenting with different ways of saying things, using the mother’s tongue of the learner to teach him or teach him in his own language. But unfortunately, none of those was so effective than CLT is. Its effectiveness is based upon the main reason why a language is learned: conveying messages in specific situations; understand and make oneself understood; exchange ideas on a specific subject. Those reasons don’t mean that grammar, listening, repetition, memorization of dialogs, questions-and-answer practice, substitution exercises or other techniques or strategies are prohibited in CLT but that they don’t come first. At that point, a very important question is: if so many people appreciate CLT and adopt it like a modern way of teaching learners how to use the language, there should be some very good reasons. What is the good side of Communicative language teaching considered by Bax as the whole and complete solution to language learning?
As we consider this method, we can see a bright future for the teaching and learning of the English language at its fullness because CLT offers a lot of advantages that we can summarize in these lines: Above all what is the reason why of the communicative approach? Some authors see it in a double sense: Promoting the learning of English as well as passing an exam. The priority to one or the other will guide the method to a different path. Fortunately, with a reference to an old definition of this method, some authors like Richards and Rodgers, Guangwei Hu think that CLT is basically about promoting learning. So, this approach steps on the promotion of language that is essentially the most direct way for people to exchange and express ideas. A particular emphasis is put on oral and listening skills in the classroom. The learner will not just hear the teacher, but he has personal contact himself with the language, he listens to the sounds himself, he practices the sentence patterns and he has the chance to make mistakes and he learns from doing so. Next, CLT is task oriented and student centered, that means it makes the student active and puts a particular emphasis on the learner rather than on the teacher. So it is more rewarding and more motivating than the old approaches. The learner can’t be bored and is often enthusiastic to learn because he is the center. Generally, he will learn to use language as a means of expression, as a means of expressing values and judgments and as a means of expressing the functions that best meet his own communication needs. The teacher, in the process, works more like a facilitator, an analyst, a counselor, and a group manager. Then, CLT focuses on communication not only on grammar or listening. What is the good of a language if it’s not to communicate? Why should people learn a language if it’s not for the same reason? Halliday (1975) notes that we use language for the reasons below:
to get things,
to control behavior,
to create interaction with others,
to express personal feelings,
to learn,
to create a world of imagination,
to communicate information.
CLT touches the root of an essential and even vital human need and must be considered important and helpful. Because this method focuses on communication, the learner will be able to improvise in look-alike conversations and he will improve his sharing and his collaborative skills through problem solving, information sharing , role play and other modern techniques. After that, CLT give patterns to its participants. Imagine they send you to a very complex address in a country you don‘t know very well. It would be very difficult to reach the target if you don’t have a map. CLT in its method offers students basic elements of communication so that in various contexts they know what specific information to ask for or to give. Finally, another positive side of the communicative approach is that fluency comes first but accuracy will necessarily follow. Naturally, people learn to speak first then they are taught how to structure what they say or mean. The ESL teacher, as students communicate, will equip them with grammar, structures and functions and everything else they need to speak right. At that level we think that the learning process will take place with less stress or apprehension when learners know that they will not be at first corrected on every word or sentence they utter. CLT, in spite of its positive drawbacks, still has some challenges in terms of methods, philosophy or adjustment to some social contexts or realities. Some of them can be listed as followed: At first, the explanations given above may not fit a crowded class. This is my challenge as a Haitian ESL teacher. Monitor a class of more than a hundred people as well as guide them to the path of learning, using CLT methods and strategies, may be very challenging. At that point, some traditional methods could be more helpful. The next challenge concerns the level of students in the target language. English is taught in many realities as a foreign language and the way they measure the level of a speaker is not at first by having him speak. We should consider the challenge of official exams either national (Baccalaureate) or international (TOEFL etc‌).They are grammar and structure based and students with low levels of proficiency or with only communicative fluency may not be successful (in a sense that they can make too many mistakes based on a lack of adequate grammar and structure)..
Another complication may be faced with introverted students. Usually they don’t interact in class and they should be taught in their learning style that is to say the teacher should use intrapersonal strategies to meet their needs and CLT focuses on extraverted strategies. Some can be very reluctant to change or to accept new strategies especially when they are opposed to their natural learning style. They can be afraid of dialogs or exchanges. Then, although it can be successfully argued that the communicative language teaching (CLT) approach does enable learners to interact, it is possible that the activities undertaken in the classroom may be perceived by learners as being too abstract. Despite teachers’ best efforts, classroom activities are not actually real-life, and it can be difficult to reproduce truly authentic language use and to facilitate genuine interaction. After that, teaching a language involves an immersion in the culture of that language. Some lessons will be so abstract that students will be bored at.. For example lessons about weather, directions, currency or any other subject might be difficult to teach in a different reality, using CLT. How will they be placed in a real life context especially in a society where English is rarely heard or used outside of the classroom? Finally, to work the CLT process out, the teacher should be very skilled at monitoring, grammar, motivation,
and should be well equipped with good authentic materials to meet the
students’ needs. So teachers training, material development knowledge and experience are required. Also, in my opinion, a group of real beginners would feel very uncomfortable in this class. CLT requires at least intermediate learners - it is not suitable for every teacher and every class.
CLT has its various limits as we’ve just seen but it can be still used at some levels and in a particular context. Though we can’t prescribe it as a general approach it can be useful in the ESL field. We suggest that before its use, teachers take into account the level of proficiency of the students, their ratio in a class as well as their ability to master the basics elements of English. Also the targets should be clear. We mean that teachers should be very knowledgeable about their objectives and they should carefully choose and practice the materials subjected to be used. CLT can succeed, as long as teachers don’t completely reject the need for the structure provided
by grammar. They should, as well, strive for moderation and not neglect the merits of other methods of which some can fit better in some difficult contexts. CLT, as a tool, in the hands of a balanced teacher, can bring new life and joy to the ESL classroom.
References Berns, M. S. (1984). Functional approaches to language and language teaching: Another look. In S. Savignon & M. S. Berns (Eds.) H. Douglas Brown (1987).Principles of language learning and teaching. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, Prentice Hall Initiatives in communicative language teaching. A book of readings (pp. 3-21). Reading, PA: Addison-Wesley. Jack C Richard (2006). Communicative teaching language today, Cambridge University press, USA Jason Peter Jayser,(2006). Teaching Methodology made it easy, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, cp Printery Mohammad Tofazzal Hossen (August 2008). Communicative language Teaching, teachers’ perception in Bengladesh, BRAC University dissertation Nunan, David (2002).Communicative Language Teaching classroom. Oxford: Oxford University Press WEB pages http://iteslj.org/ http://www.cal.org/resources/digest/eightapproaches.html http://www.wikipedia.com The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. XIII, No. 2, February 2007
www.slideshare.net/ivanslides www.teflpedia.com