What Is Communicative Language Teaching?

Perhaps the majority of language teachers today, when asked to identify the methodology they employ in their classrooms, mention “communicative” as the methodology of choice. However, when pressed to give a detailed account of what they mean by “communicative,” explanations vary widely. Does communicative language teaching, or CLT, mean teaching conversation, an absence of grammar in a course, or an emphasis on open-ended discussion activities as the main features of a course? What do you understand by communicative language teaching?

Which of the statements below do you think characterizes communicative language teaching?
1. People learn a language best when using it to do things rather than through studying how language works and practicing rules.
2. Grammar is no longer important in language teaching.
3. People learn a language through communicating in it.
4. Errors are not important in speaking a language.
5. CLT is only concerned with teaching speaking.
6. Classroom activities should be meaningful and involve real communication.
7. Dialogs are not used in CLT.
8. Both accuracy and fluency are goals in CLT.
9. CLT is usually described as a method of teaching.

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. Let us examine each of these issues in turn.

The Goals of Language Teaching
Communicative language teaching sets as its goal the teaching of communicative competence. What does this term mean? Perhaps we can clarify this term by first comparing it with the concept of grammatical competence. Grammatical competence refers to the knowledge we have of a language that accounts for our ability to produce sentences in a language. It refers to knowledge of the building blocks of sentences (e.g., parts of speech, tenses, phrases, clauses, sentence patterns) and how sentences are formed. Grammatical competence is the focus of many grammar practice books, which typically present a rule of grammar on one page, and provide exercises to practice using the rule on the other page. The unit of analysis and practice is typically the sentence. While grammatical competence is an important dimension of language learning, it is clearly not all that is involved in learning a language since one can master the rules of sentence formation in a language and still not be very successful at being able to use the language for meaningful communication. It is the latter capacity which is understood by the term communicative competence.

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)

How Learners Learn a Language
Our understanding of the processes of second language learning has changed considerably in the last 30 years, and CLT is partly a response to these changes in understanding. Earlier views of language learning focused primarily on the mastery of grammatical competence. Language learning was viewed as a process of mechanical habit formation. Good habits are formed by having students produce correct sentences and not through making mistakes. Errors were to be avoided through controlled opportunities for production (either written or spoken). By memorizing dialogs and performing drills, the chances of making mistakes were minimized. Learning was very much seen as under the control of the teacher.
In recent years, language learning has been viewed from a very different perspective. It is seen as resulting from processes such as:
   Interaction between the learner and users of the language
   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

The Kinds of Classroom Activities That Best Facilitate Learning
With CLT began a movement away from traditional lesson formats where the focus was on mastery of different items of grammar and practice through controlled activities such as memorization of dialogs and drills, and toward the use of pair work activities, role plays, group work activities and project work.

The Roles of Teachers and Learners in the Classroom
The type of classroom activities proposed in CLT also implied new roles in the classroom for teachers and learners. Learners now had to participate in classroom activities that were based on a cooperative rather than individualistic approach to learning. Students had to become comfortable with listening to their peers in group work or pair work tasks, rather than relying on the teacher for a model. They were expected to take on a greater degree of responsibility for their own learning. And teachers now had to assume the role of facilitator and monitor. Rather than being a model for correct speech and writing and one with the primary responsibility of making students produce plenty of error-free sentences, the teacher had to develop a different view of learners’ errors and of her/his own role in facilitating language learning.