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.