Communicative Language Teaching

Communicative language teaching, as it says in its name, is all about communication: the goal and objective are communication, the method of practicing is communication, the learning materials are authentic written or non-written language products from real world, and the assessment is also by assessing how efficient the learner can be when communicating in the target language.

The reading of Richards and Rodgers’ book "Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching" (2001, second edition, New York: Cambridge University Press.) has cleared some of my long-time confusion about what exactly communicative language method is, which I had heard repeatedly during my teacher’s training and at all kinds of workshops but I could not grasp what it was exactly. It is about delivering meaningful messages to one another in social context. It is emphasizing the social function of the languages rather than its surface form.

More importantly, my reading of the chapter has equipped me with a number of useful classroom activities that prompts and initiates communication and negotiation in class. For example, an authentic event provoking conversation by any of the following scenarios: a talking about personal identification, a customer visit, a supplier visit, a shopping experience, a travel experience, describing something, asking for information, providing information, expressing emotions and feelings, and agree and disagree with an opinion. In a word, it can be anything that happens in our daily life that engages human interactions. Therefore, the class activities can be anything that evokes a conversation. For example, a shared reading and a discussion followed, a role play, an imaginary scenario and acting it out, an inquiry from either the teacher or the students, a grouped study, a silent reading or a “reading to” activity followed by comprehension questions, and reading the authentic materials that the students and the teacher collect together in class.

At any rate, the Communicative Language Teaching is the golden tool that I have ever learned so far as a language teacher. I am very thankful.