Theory of Communicative Language Teaching

In the early days of language teaching, emphasis was placed on the understanding of linguistic forms while little time and energy was devoted to their function in real situations. Language learning was a cerebral rather than a practical activity.

With the advent of widely accessible foreign travel, however, came the increased requirement for oral and aural skills to enable pupils to actually communicate in the target country. At the same time, technological advances facilitated a new approach to language learning. This initially took the form of the language laboratory, which has now seen demise, but the emphasis on recorded authentic language and information technology remains.

The intention of the communicative approach is to equip pupils with the skills and relevant information to use the target language in a realistic way. Littlewood (1981, pp 95) clarifies, “The underlying message, then, is that foreign language teaching must be concerned with reality: with the reality of communication as it takes place outside the classroom and with the reality of learners as they exist outside and inside the classroom.“

Communicative competence is the ultimate purpose of communicative language teaching (C.L.T.) and Canale (1983) suggested that this is achieved by mastering four basic skills. These are ‘grammatical competence’, ‘strategic competence’, ‘socio-linguistic competence’, and ‘discourse competence’.

The importance of grammatical competence is particularly relevant because as the communicative approach has been put into practice, it is this area that seems to have suffered. This was never the intention. Littlewood (1981, pp 6) confirms, “It is one of the undeniable facts about language that we communicate by exploiting the creative potential of linguistic structures.” Strategic competence is the ability to ‘think on our feet’ in a foreign language, and this is critical to effective communication. Holmes (1994, pp 6) says of strategic competence, “This is all to do with linguistic problem-solving, dealing with the unpredictable. What do you do when your existing knowledge of language runs out?”

Socio-linguistic competence, which requires the application of social sensitivity to language, and discourse competence, which involves sustained communication, present a challenge to pupils at Key Stage 4. “In the early years learners are well rehearsed in recognition and response, imitation and production. In order to progress, they are now required to use a range of more complex linguistic and social skills. They may need to negotiate, describe, explain, persuade - all functions of socio-linguistic and discourse competence. It may well be the first time they have been required to do so.” (Holmes 1994, pp 8)

Littlewood (1981, pp x) summarises the theory which underpins C.L.T., “We can therefore combine the newer functional view of language with the traditional structural view, in order to achieve a more complete communicative perspective.”

References:

Canale (1983), Language and Communication, in Holmes, B. (1994) pp5.

Holmes, B. (1994), Pathfinder 23 Keeping on Target. London: CILT.

Littlewood, W. (1981), Communicative Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.