Communicative language teaching (CLT) emerged in the 1960s-1970s as a response to structural and audiolingual methods, focusing on developing learners' communicative competence through meaningful tasks and activities; it is based on theories that language learning involves grammatical, sociolinguistic, discourse and strategic competence. CLT advocates for using language tasks and activities that involve real communication between learners to promote language learning.

1. COMMUNICATIVE
LANGUAGE TEACHING
Jack C. Richards &Theodore S. Rodgers(2001)CUP

2. CLT or the PARADIGM shift.
 1980’s:since then it has been the model
for many teaching practices:
 The Natural Approach.
 Cooperative Language Learning.
 Content-Based Teaching (CBT)
 Task-Based Learning.

3. CLT origins:
 1960’s: Audio-  “Structural theories
lingualism in the of language were
USA./Situational incapable of
Language Teaching accounting for the
in Great Britain. creativity and
 Noam Chomsky uniqueness of
(1957)Syntactic language.
Structures.

4. British Applied Linguists:
 They started to address the
functional and communicative
potential of language.
 ELT should focus on a
Communicative Approach where
the goal of language learning is to
develop COMMUNICATIVE
COMPETENCE.

5. COMMUNICATIVE
COMPETENCE IS :
 “ The ability not only to apply the grammatical rules of a language to
form grammatically correct sentences, but also to know when and
where to use these sentences and to whom”. (Jack C. Richards)
 Communicative Competence includes:
 KOL of the vocabulary and grammar of the language.
 Kol of the rules of conversation (turn taking, speech
events,address forms).
 KOL about how to use and respond to SPEECH ACTS
(REQUESTS,apologies, thanks, invitations)
 Knowing when to use language appropriately. (Coulhard,
1985,Hymes, 1977).

6. SCHOLARS BRITISH APPLIED
LINGUISTS who advocated CLT:
 Cristopher Candlin and Henry
Widdowson.
 John Firth, M.A.K Halliday.
 American sociolinguists: Dell Hymes,
John Gumperz, William Labov).
 Language philosophers John Austin
&John Searle.

7. European Common Market
 The Council of Europe.
 International Association of Applied
Linguistics.
 Goal: to develop alternative methods of
language teaching.
 British linguist D.A. Wilkins (1972): proposed
a functional or communicative defiition of
language to build up a functional.notional
syllabus. His analysis was
semantic/communicative, based on
learners’needs.

8. Common European Framework of
Reference for Languages
 Threshold level specifications for language
programmes, examinations and textbook
design in Europe .
 Rapid application of these ideas by textbook
writers, curriculum development centers.
 By mid 1970’s CLT had expanded from Great
Britain to the world.
 Howatt (1984) distinguishes between a
strong and weak form of CLT.

9. CLT APPROACH:
 Hymes’definition of communicative
competence (1972)” a person who acquires
communicative competence acquires both knowledge and
ability for language use”.
 Brumfit (1979)seven basic functions that
language performs for children in L1:
 1. The instrumental function: using
language to get things.
 2.The regulatory function: using language
to control the behaviour of others.

10. More basic functions:
 3. The interactional function: using
language to create interaction with others.
 4.The personal function: using language
to express personal feelings and meanings.
 5.The heuristic function: using language
to learn and discover.
 6. The imaginative function: using
language to create a world of imagination.
 7.The representational function: using
language to communicate information.

11. Henry Widdowson (1978)
 “Teaching Language as
Communication”.Relationships between
linguistic systems and their
communicative values in text and
discourse.
 Canale and Swain (1980): identified
four dimensions of communicative
competence.

12. COMMUNI CATIVE
COMPETENCE:
 Grammatical competence: Chomsky “linguistic
competence”or Hymes “what is formally possible”.
 Sociolinguistic competence: understanding of
the social context where communication takes
place:role relationships, shared information of
participants, purpose of the interaction.
 Discourse competence: interpretation of
individual message in relation to the entire discourse
or text.
 Strategic competence :strategies to initiate,
terminate,maintain, repair and redirect
communication.

13. Theory of Learning Principles:
 (Littlewood, 1981)Communication
Principle: activities that involve real
communication promote learning.
 Task Principle: activities in which language
is used to solve a task.
 Meaningfulness Principle: language that
is meaningful to the learner supports the
lerning process.
 Learning activities are selected to
promote meaningful and authentic
language use.

14. TASK:
 Read design, objectives, the syllabus,
activites, learner roles and teacher
roles, instructional materials. Be ready
to comment on them.
 Practice: examples of Information
Gap Activities.