COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING Meaningful language is always more easily retained by

learners.
 is an approach to the teaching of second and
foreign languages, emphasizes interaction as 3. Seeks to use authentic resources. And that is more
both the means and the ultimate goal of learning interesting and motivating for children.
a language.
4. Children acquire grammar rules as a necessity to
 emphasizes the importance of all four language
speak so is more proficient and efficient.
skills and aims to achieve "communicative
competence" (rather than linguistic competence)
through considerable learner interaction and
communication of "real" meaning. DISADVANTAGES
 It is an approach that tends to promote fluency 1. It may also be a difficult method to use in very large
over accuracy, the functional over the structural, classes.
and authentic materials over fabricated
materials. Communication is seen as both the 2. Students with low levels of proficiency in the target
goal and the means. CLT is sometimes called language may find it difficult to participate in oral
"the Communicative Approach". communicative activities and, if the exams used by an
institution are grammar based, communicative fluency
may not be appropriate.
PRINCIPLES OF CLT 3. CLT approach focuses on fluency but not accuracy.
1. Make real communication the focus of language The approach does not focus on error reduction but
learning. instead creates a situation where learners are left using
2. Provide opportunities for learners to experiment their own devices to solve their communication
and try out what they know. problems. Thus they may produce incoherent,
3. Be tolerant of learners’ errors as they indicate grammatically incorrect sentences.
that the learner is building up his or her CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES IN CLT
communicative competence.
4. Provide opportunities for learners to develop 1. Fluency and accuracy activities
both accuracy and fluency.
Example of fluency activity
5. Link the different skills such as speaking,
reading, and listening together, since they A group of students of mixed language ability carry out
usually occur so in the real world. a role play in which they have to adopt specified roles
6. Let students induce or discover grammar rules. 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
FEATURES OF CLT improvised by the students, though they are heavily
constrained by the specified situation and characters.
 target language/some mother tongue
 learner/teacher-centered Example of accuracy activity
 presentation by teacher of new functional
Students are practicing dialogs. The dialogs contain
language, vocab or structure
examples of falling intonation in Wh-questions. The
 practice by learners moving from controlled to
class is organized in groups of three, two students
spontaneous
practicing the dialog, and the third playing the role of
 pair-work, group-work
monitor. The monitor checks that the others are using the
 worksheets and activity cards
correct intonation pattern and corrects them where
 functional language exercises
necessary. The students rotate their roles between those
 "real-life" interactive activities including
reading the dialog and those monitoring. The teacher
information gap, role-play
moves around listening to the groups and correcting their
 plenty of actual listening, speaking, reading and
language where necessary.
(homework?) writing
 games (It is recommended to observe a balance between
 authentic materials fluency and accuracy activities.)
 realia
2. Information-gap activity
Students are divided into A-B pairs. The teacher has
ADVANTAGES copied two sets of pictures. One set (for A students)
contains a picture of a group of people. The other set (for
1. Communicative approach is much more pupil-
B students) contains a similar picture but it contains a
orientated, because it is based on pupils’ needs and
number of slight differences from the A-picture.
interests.
Students must sit back to back and ask questions to try to
2. Communicative approach seeks to personalize and
find out how many differences there are between the two
localize language and adapt it to interests of pupils.
pictures.
3. Jigsaw activity vocabulary ( colors, numbers, adjectives, verbs) and
syntax (tense, comparatives, plurals, word order …)
- The teacher takes a narrative and divides it into twenty
sections (or as many sections as there are students in the 3. Learning is facilitated by problem solving involving
class). the material to be learned. This
-Each student gets one section of the story. Students can be summarized by Benjamin Franklin’s words:
must then move around the class, and by listening to
“Tell me and I forget
each section read aloud, decide where in the story their
section belongs. Eventually the students have to put the Teach me and I remember
entire story together in the correct sequence.
Involve me and I learn”
4. Task-completion activities: puzzles, games, map-
reading, and other kinds of classroom tasks in which the
focus is on using one’s language resources to complete a PRINCIPLES OF SILENT WAY
task.
1. Start with familiar sounds.
5. Information-gathering activities: student-conducted
surveys, interviews, and searches in which students are 2. Give help only if absolutely necessary. Allow students
required to use their linguistic resources to collect to use their own knowledge of language learning.
information.
3. Do not model the language for the students.
6. Opinion-sharing activities: activities in which
4. Allow students to tap out sounds to show what they
students compare values, opinions, or beliefs, such as a
have learned.
ranking task in which students list six qualities in order
of importance that they might consider in choosing a 5. Students work on the language, not the teacher.
date or spouse.
6. Teacher takes a back seat. The more you help- the less
7. Information-transfer activities: These require they learn. Praise is not helpful.
learners to take information that is presented in one
form, and represent it in a different form. For example, 7. Transfer what students know already to new ideas
they may read instructions on how to get from A to B, 8. Silence is used as a tool. The teacher becomes less
and then draw a map showing the sequence, or they may necessary to the learning process.
read information about a subject and then represent it as
a graph. 9. Errors are important and necessary for learning.

8. Reasoning-gap activities: These involve deriving 10. Progress is more important than perfection.
some new information from given information through
11. Student attention to the teacher is important.
the process of inference, practical reasoning, etc. For
example, working out a teacher’s timetable on the basis 12. No homework, as learning continues while we sleep.
of given class timetables.
9. Role plays: activities in which students are assigned
roles and improvise a scene or exchange based on given TEACHER ROLES
information or clues. 1. The teacher is silent and uses mainly gestures and
facial expressions to address the learners.
2. The teacher is in control of the class. His guidance,
SILENT WAY
though silent, is important
- is characterized by its focus on discovery, creativity,
3. The teacher lets students express themselves
problem solving and the use of accompanying materials.
Richards and Rodgers (1986:99) summarized the
method into three major features.
STUDENT’S ROLE
1. Learning is facilitated if the learner discovers or
creates. The Silent way belongs to the tradition of 1. The students should be active and participative.
teaching that favors hypothetical mode of teaching (as 2. They should be independent.
opposed to expository mode of teaching) in which the
teacher and the learner work cooperatively to reach the 3. They should be willing to make mistakes.
educational desired goals. (cf Bruner 1966.) The learner
is not a bench bound listener but an active contributor to
the learning process.
2. Learning is facilitated by accompanying (mediating)
physical objects. The Silent
TECHNIQUES
Way uses colorful charts and rods (cuisenaire rods)
which are of varying length. They are used to introduce 1. The use of cuisenaire rods
 DISADVANTAGES
1. The Silent Way is often criticized of being a harsh
method. The learner works in isolation and
communication is lacking badly in a Silent Way
classroom.
2. With minimum help on the part of the teacher, the
Silent Way method may put the learning itself at stake.
3. The material ( the rods and the charts) used in this
method will certainly fail to introduce
The coloured wooden rods can be used to represent
whole situations in an abstract way. The teacher for all aspects of language. Other materials will have to be
example could use the green rods to represent a certain introduced.
number of people, the red ones to represent cars and a
single white rod representing a special character, for
instance the teacher himself. The teacher then would SUGGESTOPEDIA
probably first point at the white rod and thereafter at
himself to show the students the meaning of the rods.  was designed by a Bulgarian psychiatrist
The next step would be the presentation of the meanings educator called Georgi Lozanov.
of the other rods (the green and red ones), and after the  propose a different way of learning that is not
students get their meaning, the teacher might present a usual and not common.
certain everyday situation with the rods. During this  uses furniture and a classroom arrangement
presentation, the teacher may feature certain different to others. Lozanov said that the most of
grammatical aspects of the language and let the students learning takes place in a relaxed but focused
find out about these. state.
 In this method, the music has an importance and
2. The use of fidel chart also the way that the teacher read a dialogue for
example. Hence, what suggestopedia method
focus on is the different way of teaching and to
create a different way of learning also.
AIMS
 to enable the students to learn a foreign language
at an accelerated pace for everyday
communication by tapping mental powers and
overcoming psychological barriers
 to create a learning atmosphere with the help of
some factors like music, decoration of the
classroom and so forth

The Fidel contains several different charts. They present LEARNER’S ROLE
all possible spellings of every single sound of the
 to participate in every activity that it requires
language. The teacher uses this in teaching sounds and
 forget their “infantilization”
spelling as every sound is represented with one color.
 don’t have to smoke or drink something that
This is also helpful in teaching beginning reading.
could affect their state of mind because is really
important for students to have their mind free of
any substance that could change their thinking
ADVANTAGES state.
1. Learning through problem solving looks attractive TEACHERS’ ROLE
especially because it fosters:
 to create a situation in which the student can feel
 creativity, part of
 discovery,  to present the material in a wonderful way
 increase in intelligent potency and
 long term memory.
2. The indirect role of the teacher highlights the
importance and the centrality of the learner who is
ADVANTAGES
responsible in figuring out and testing the hypotheses
about how language works. In other words teaching is  Through Suggestopedia we learn to trust the
subordinated to learning. power of the mind.
  We also learn that deliberately induced states of  Primary Activation – Students “playfully”
relaxation can be valuable at times in the reread the target language out loud, as
classroom. individuals or in group.
 We can also benefit from the use of music to get  Secondary Activation – Students engage in
students to it back and relax. various activities designed to help the students
learn the material and use it more spontaneously
(singing, dancing, dramatization, and games)
DISADVANTAGES with communicative intent NOT the form as the
focus.
 It is not a practical method as teachers face the
problem of the availability of music and
comfortable chairs.
 Lozanov refers in a number of occasions to the
importance of memorization, excluding any
reference to comprehension and creative
problem solving. In fact, language is not only
about the power of the mind to memorize. It’s
about understanding, interacting, and producing
novel utterances in different unpredictable
situations.
FEATURES OF SUGGESTOPEDIA
1. It uses the power of suggestion to help students
eliminate the feeling that they cannot succeed.
2. There should be a relaxed, comfortable environment
with dim lights and soft music to facilitate learning.
3. Students’ imagination is used. They can assume new
names, and new identities and respond to the teacher
accordingly using the target language.
4. Present and explain grammar and vocabulary words,
but not discuss at length or thoroughly.
5. Native language translation is used to get the precise
meanings of words in the target language.
6. Communication takes place in the conscious and
subconscious of the learners. The former is about the
linguistic message. The students pay attention to a
dialogue that is being read, while the latter is where the
music is played as a background. The piece suggests that
learning is easy.
7. Teaching is done by integrating music, song, and
drama.
8. The emphasis of teaching is more on content.
Students’ errors are tolerated at the beginning of the
lesson, but the teachers use the correct forms later.
9. No formal tests are given, but the evaluation is done
during the typical in-class performance.
TECHNIQUES
 First Concert – Teacher does a slow dramatic
reading of the dialogue synchronized in
intonation with classical music.
 Second Concert – Students put aside their
scripts and the teacher reads at normal speed
according to the content, not the accompanying
pre-classical or baroque music, this typically
ends the class for the day.