Rieznik Maryna

Oles Honchar Dnipropetrovsk National University, Ukraine

THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING

Communicative Language Teaching is an approach to teaching of foreign languages that emphasizes interaction as both the means and the ultimate goal of learning a language.

The origins of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) are to be found in the changes in the British language teaching tradition dating from the late 1960s. Until then, Situational Language represented the major British approach to teaching English as a foreign language. In Situational Language Teaching, language was taught by practicing basic structures in meaningful situation-based activities.

British applied linguists emphasized another fundamental dimension of language, i.e. the functional and communicative potential of language. They saw the need to focus in language teaching on communicative proficiency rather than on mere mastery of structures.

The work of the Council of Europe; the writings of Wilkins, Widdowson, Candlin, Christopher Brumfit, Keith Johnson, and other British applied linguists on the theoretical basis for a communicative or functional approach to language teaching; the rapid application of these ideas by textbook writers; and the equally rapid acceptance of these new principles by British language teaching specialists, curriculum development centers, and even governments gave prominence nationally and internationally to what came to be referred to as the Communicative Approach, or simply Communicative Language Teaching. Although the movement began as a largely British innovation, focusing on alternative concepts of a syllabus, since the mid-1970s the scope of Communicative Language Teaching has expanded. Both American and British proponents now see it as an approach (and not a method) that aims to (a) make communicative competence the goal of language teaching and (b) develop procedures for the teaching of the four language skills that acknowledge the interdependence of language and communication.

The communicative approach in language teaching starts from a theory of language as communication. The goal of language teaching is to develop what Hymes (1972) referred to as "communicative competence." Hymes's theory of communicative competence was a definition of what a speaker needs to know in order to be communicatively competent in a speech community.

An awareness that second-language students can know the grammar and yet be unable to activate that knowledge to communicate has led theorists and teachers to consider what activities might enable students to develop communication skills. Different authors stress different aspects of CLT.

Taylor (1983) lists five characteristics:

1 – Students should participate in extended discourse in real context.

2 – They should share information that the others do not know.

3 – They should have choices about what they are going to say and how they are going to say it.

4 – They should communicate with a define purpose in mind.

5 – They should talk about real topics in real situations.

Communicative approaches to teaching challenge our understanding of the goals of instruction. According to Sanders, an emphasis on meaningful use over form means that accuracy and acquisition of the formal features of the [second language] are less a measure of successful language learning than are fluency and an ability to get something across comprehensibly to a native speaker. In order to encourage meaningful language use, many popular communicative activities involve elements of puzzle-solving, role play, or simulation. They encourage learners to do things with information such as: guessing, searching, matching, exchanging, collecting, sharing, combining, and arranging.

In such an approach, the teacher has two main roles: the first role is to facilitate the communication process between all participants in the classroom, and between these participants and the various activities and texts. The second role is to act as an independent participant within the learning-teaching group. The latter role is closely related to the objectives of the first role and arises from it. These roles imply a set of secondary roles for the teacher; first, as an organizer of resources and as a resource himself, second as a guide within the classroom procedures and activities.

Other roles assumed for teachers are needs analyst, counselor, and group process manager. The CLT teacher assumes a responsibility for determining and responding to learner language needs.

Another role assumed by several CLT approaches is that of counselor, similar to the way this role is defined in Community Language Learning. In this role, the teacher-counselor is expected to act as an effective communicator seeking to maximize the meshing of speaker intention and hearer interpretation, through the use of paraphrase, confirmation, and feedback.

CLT procedures often require teachers to acquire less teacher-centered classroom management skills. It is the teacher's responsibility to organize the classroom as a setting for communication and communicative activities.

Now that the initial wave of enthusiasm has passed, however, some of the claims of CLT are being looked at more critically. The adoption of a communicative approach raises important issues for teacher training, materials development, and testing and evaluation. Questions that have been raised include whether a communicative approach can be applied at all levels in a language program, whether it is equally suited to ESL and EFL situations, whether it requires existing grammar-based syllabuses to be abandoned or merely revised, how such an approach can be evaluated, how suitable it is for non-native teachers, and how it can be adopted in situations where students must continue to take grammar-based tests. Undoubtedly, these kinds of questions require attention.