3rd Group

Dedy Wahyudianto Maria Veronica Nurmeida Urwani

What is Communicative Lang. Teaching?

Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) is an approach to the teaching of second and foreign languages that 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.

The characteristics of this communicative view of language follow. :

Language is a system for the expression of meaning. The primary function of language is for interaction and communication. The structure of language reflects its functional and communicative uses. The primary units of language are not merely its grammatical and structural features, but categories of functional and communicative meaning as exemplified in discourse.

Classroom Activities in Communicative Language Teaching

Fluency Tasks Accuracy Tasks

Fluency Tasks
A group of students of mixed language ability carry out a role play in which they have to adopt specified roles and personalities provided for them on cue cards. These roles involve the drivers, witnesses, and the police at a collision between two cars. The language is entirely improvised by the students, though they are heavily constrained by the specified situation and characters.

Accuracy Tasks
Students are practicing dialogs. The dialogs contain examples of falling intonation in Wh-questions. The class is organized in groups of three, two students practicing the dialog, and the third playing the role of monitor. The monitor checks that the others are using the correct intonation pattern and corrects them where necessary.

Other Activity Types in CLT

Task-completion activities Information-gathering activities Opinion-sharing activities Information-transfer activities Reasoning-gap activities Role plays

Conclusion
Communicative Language Teaching is best considered an approach rather than a method. Thus although a reasonable degree of theoretical consistency can be discerned at the levels of language and learning theory, at the levels of design and procedure there is much greater room for individual interpretation and variation than most methods permit. It could be that one version among the various proposals for syllabus models, exercise types, and classroom activities may gain wider approval in the future, giving Communicative Language Teaching a status similar to other teaching methods. On the other hand, divergent interpretations might lead to homogeneous subgroups.

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