Communicative language teahing

Communicative language teaching (CLT)
Communicative language teaching began in Britain in the 1960s as a replacement to the earlier structural method, called Situational Language Teaching. This waspartly in response to Chomsky's criticisms of structural theories of language and partly based on the theories of British functional linguistis, such as Firth and Halliday, as well as Americansociolinguists, such as Hymes , Gumperz and Labov and the writings of Austin and Searle on speech acts.

Communicative language teaching (CLT) is an approach to the teaching of second and foreign languagesthat emphasizes interaction as both the means and the ultimate goal of learning a language. It is also referred to as “communicative approach to the teaching of foreign languages” or simply the“communicative approach”.
Theory of learning |
  | Not a great deal has been written about the learning theory behind the communicative approaches, but here are some principles that may be inferred: |  | * activities that involve real communication promote learning * activities in which language is used for carrying out meaningful tasks promote learning * language that is meaningful to thelearner promotes learning |
Design |
  | Objectives |
  | Here are some of the objectives of Communicative Language Teaching: |
  | * students will learn to use language as a means ofexpression * students will use language as a means of expressing values and judgments * students will learn to express the functions that best meet their own communication needs. |
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Types oflearning techniques and activities |
  | Communicative language teaching uses almost any activity that engages learners in authentic communication. Littewood, however has distinguished two majoractivity types: |
  | * functional communication activities: ones aimed at developing certain language skillsand functions, but which involve communication, and * social interaction...