The Communicative Language Teaching Method

As Chang (2011) stated about students that “they lack the knowledge of grammar, they are likely to make grammatically incorrect sentences. Therefore, the Communicative Approach encourages some grammatical inaccuracy.” (p.5) since the knowledge is not something that should be assumed, neither should be the rules of language. When using translation to teach, either in a communicative environment or in a traditional method, students are given help to expand their own vocabulary and at the same time give meaning to those new concepts and words that come with the translation. They can understand by their own means thus making the knowledge more meaningful. Chang also mentions that “The communicative approach might have been proved to be the best way of training students in ESL learners. However, it doesn’t meet the needs of learners in distant lands, who learn English for a different purpose and who have no hope of ever visiting the target country and no desire to adopt the target culture.” (p.6). Regarding to this, if we take context as a whole and not only as the matter of what is seen in a classroom, then it is correct to say that using the communicative approach is certainly optimal to develop a better usage of the language but, at the same time, if the final goal of the language is centred on an specific task, is better to focus on the specific

1. How effective are CLT activities ( language games, role plays, problem-solving tasks, information gaps, and interviews) used in class on improving students’ communicative competence?

Archakis (2006) states that the communicative approach has recently prevailed. The purpose of language teaching is to help learners to practice relevant cases of communication. According to the communicative approach the language teaching has to be directly interrelated with contextual components. The stress of language teaching needs to be language use in social events, that is, students should be aware of the socio cultural and sociolinguistic skills for appropriate language use. Oral discourse is an entity of a range of discourse genres such as a lecture, conversation. Oral speech should be taught on a regular bases involving students in various activities and social circumstances. The teaching of oral discourse should be centered on the specific features of oral speech that promotes participation. It is very helpful for students as contemporary society concentrating on oral conversational speech and its peculiar daily used devices. This leads learners to the production of dramatization, interpersonal contribution, arguing competence as well as building identity as critical

the process between speakers and listeners. The speakers use their productive skill to change their thought into appropriate language, and then the listeners use receptive skill to interpret the message from the speakers. In English communication, the speakers need communicative competence which is the ability of using or interpreting languages in appropriate way during the conversation. In other word, the speakers need to know the purpose of their speaking and they have to use the right language to talk with the right person (Hymes, 1981). According to Common European Framework (2001), the communicative competence consists of three elements including linguistic competence, sociolinguistic competence, and pragmatic competence.

Sometimes more than one method is used to bring out the anticipated outcomes in the language classroom where communication develops the key factor of teaching-learning process. Unless students learn to utilise the classroom method to express thoughts and feelings outside into the real world situations, the learning cannot be effective no matter whatever teaching method is applied in English as a Second Language classroom. Teacher- student role becomes the centre in bringing out the maximum within the limited time in a

Questions to be dealt in this article with include what is emphasized communicative approach in communicative language teaching and analysis of definition which helps explain communicative language teaching, the next point is how do the roles of the teacher and student change in communicative language teaching and importance of particular roles within the teaching-learning group, and there have been highlighted a few clear benefits like allowing the students to contemplate about some topic and express their views, which train in real life the ability to utilize language to communicate and some unfavorable features in communicative language teaching like focusing too much on oral skills in consequence of not enough emphasis on the correction of pronunciation and grammar errors. Examples of issues that can be used with a communicative approach are described, and sources of appropriate materials are provided.

Communicative language teaching is an approach to develop communicative competence by establishing real life situations. I want to explain the communicative competence. It is a terminology introduced by Dell Hymes, which refers to the ability to use and interpret the language appropriately and effectively according to where, whom, when and why you are talking to. The writers explain the communicative language teaching differently in their articles from the others. The articles in the ELT Journal offer interesting debates on CLT. On one side, Bax (2003) proposes that CLT should be abandoned since the methodology fails to take into account the context of language teaching. On the other side, Liao (2004) suggests

Brumfit, C. and K. Johnson K. (1979).The Communicative Approach to Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

According to Cook (2003), the focus of Communicative Language Teaching Method is primarily social. Therefore, its main goal is to enable the learners to communicate successfully in the target language. In order to achieve that goal, the learners have to be communicatively competent. Communicative competence can be defined according to Saville and Troike (2003) as “What a speaker needs to know to communicate appropriately within a particular language community”. Which means that the learners in Communicative Language Teaching method will not only know the vocabulary, phonology and grammar, but also they’ll know how to use the language for several purposes, how to differentiate between the uses of the language depending on the situations and the participants and they’ll able to classify and produce different kinds of texts. In addition, able to do all of these effectively with appropriate, accurate and fluent language (Saville-Troike, 2006, p. 100).

In light of such an outlook, in the late 20th Century, D.A.Wilkins came up with Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) which was aiming towards obtaining and harping on the communicative competence of a second language learner. Whereby as per Brown (2007) “learner is facilitated in lifelong language learning” (Brown 2007, p.46)

It should mostly be used to satisfy the learner’s communicative needs (p. 22). In order to make classrooms a place that gives students more opportunities for learning a language they can use for communication and not just for learning its rules, Krashen (1982) suggests that teachers should give their students enough of comprehensible input (p. 22). This term refers to the use of language that students can understand and that can help them advance one step further.

This method has its roots in communicative language approach where teaching is done completely through communicative tasks rather than focusing on grammatical

Having in mind the topic of this article, Nihat (2008) explains the importance of acquiring communicative competences inside the classrooms as an important fact of English Language Teaching. He stated that more than grammatical rules and structures, students should know how to use their second language, in order to

Cazden goes on to discuss three general features and functions of language which "make communication so central" in schools (2-3). To begin with, language transmits curriculum; despite the wealth of technological advancements available for presenting information in the classroom, spoken language remains the primary medium for providing instruction and demonstrating what has been learned. Language is used to initiate, monitor, adjust, and evaluate cognitive processes.

The term communicative competence is combination of two words which means competence to communicate. The central word is competence which is one of the most controversial terms in the field of applied linguistics. Chomsky in 1965 was the first one who used the norm of competence. The term competence first introduces by Chomsky which means knowledge of forms of languages. According to many linguists, Chomsky distinction between competence and performance, it is based on the fundamental linguistics distinction between langue and parole which made by de Saussure. Chomsky defined the performance as the use of language in social context and refer to competence as the knowledge of the language. He suggest that we shouldn’t make any kind of combination between society and the use of language. His linguistic competence was limited only to grammatical rules knowledge.