Teaching Communicatively

Teaching communicatively really became a "thing" in the 1970s, and since then, it has become the hallmark of all EFL teachers in the world. With something so widely known, there is quite a bit of misinformation about it too. While it started as the start and end all of teaching methods, it has evolved since then to be more eclectic - a methodology that is useful for getting students to communicate in the classroom, but by no means the only beneficial methodology in existence. Here are a few things that Communicative Language Teaching (or CLT) is and isn't.

"Everything is 'communicative' these days."

Jeremy Harmer

Fewer things could be said to be truer than this quote. However, just because students are speaking doesn't necessarily make it communicative. Probably the most overlooked quality of CLT is the communicative purpose. Students can talk and talk sometimes for what seems like ages, but when it comes to any real learning benefit, there isn't much with the exception of some students looking for meaningful conversation.

Recall the last time you were teaching your lesson and assigned a short speaking or writing task for your learners. After the activity, did the learners remember anything their partner had to say? Could they summarize their conversation to the rest of the class effectively without memory relapses. As human beings, when we don't have a reason for listening or reading, all language seems to go in one end and flies right out the other without any stops in between. Fortunately, the remedy for this is quite a simple one. The next time that you are planning your lesson, ask yourself, "Why are my learners going to talk to each other? Why should they be listening to their partner? Will there be a summarizing task following this task?" These questions will surely help your students and make your lesson activities more productive.

Another misnomer is that CLT is a grammar lesson. While teaching grammar can certainly be helpful to students, the actual act of learning and practicing grammatical forms in a controlled accuracy-focussed exercise is not communicative. CLT is much more unpredictable and so it requires much more monitoring from the teacher. However, there are many ways that you can work different communicative activities into a grammar lesson. For example, after the students have practised the grammatical form, you can give them a speaking task in which they can use the grammatical forms just learned. After giving a minute or two about what they are going to say, they begin to speak to their partner. However, it is necessary to repeat that your learners will need a communicative purpose to listen too (e.g. "Who had the most interesting story?" "What was different between your story and your partner's? What was similar?" etc.).

CLT in its essence is a way to bring the real world into the classroom. There are even many adaptations of CLT like "Task-based Learning," "Dogme," and "Learner-centred Teaching" to name a few. It focusses on things like a desire to communicate, content rather than form, little (or no) teacher intervention while doing the task (although delayed error correction is certainly recommended - I will cover this in a later post), and even limited control of materials.

We focus on content rather than form in CLT because this is often how a child will learn their first language. I'm sure that some of you parents out there can relate to the situation when your young son or daughter was telling you a story, made several grammatical mistakes, but yet you still understood. When your students are doing the same, it's important to acknowledge this and leave the correcting for times when it's appropriate. If the activity is motivated by content, then it's important to listen to what they have to say rather than how they say it, whereas in more form-focussed activities, how they say it can be a factor.

For now, that's all. I will continue posting new ideas and things as time allows and when I feel inspired. Thank you for reading and best of luck on your future teaching.