Communicative language teaching

 Introduction
      

Communicative language teaching began in Britain in the 1960s as a replacement to the earlier structural method, called Situational Language Teaching. This was partly 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 American sociolinguists, such as Hymes , Gumperz and Labov and the writings of Austin and Searle on speech acts.

Approach

      
Theory of language
      

The functional view of language is the primary one behind the communicative method, as well as
     

Theory of learning
      

Not a great deal has been written about the learning theory behind the communicative approaches, but here are some principlesthat 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 the learner promotes learning

Design
      
Objectives
      

Here are some of the objectives of Communicative Language Teaching:
      

    students will learn to use languge as a means of expression
    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.

      
The syllabus
      

Communicative language teaching often uses a functional-notional syllabus. Yalden(1987) has classified a number of communicative syllabus types.
      
Types of learning techniques and activities
      

Communicative language teaching uses almost any activity that engages learners in authentic communication. Littewood, however has distinguished two major activity types:
      

    functional communication activities: ones aimed at developing certain language skills and functions, but which involve communication, and
    social interaction activities, such as conversation and discussion sessions, dialogues and role plays

Procedure
      

It is difficult to summarize the procedure in communicative classes because of the wide variety of activities used