COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING

Аннотация

This article studies the role of communicative language teaching approach in education and for teaching and learning the English language. It is vital to mention that the work isdevoted to highlight theeffects ofthis technique to improvelearners’ speaking skill. Keywords: Communicative language teaching (CLT), EFL classroom, interactive activities, the target language, an authenticway. Introduction. There are many ways to help the students to improve their speaking skill. One of the ways is through communicative language teaching (CLT) approach. CLT is the approach in which the students are asked to usethe language for communication in real situation. Applebaum states that using CLT will allow students the opportunity to use the target language in an authentic and meaningful way. The approach focuses on the students. The teacher organizes activities in such a way that the students can initiate and control the interaction. The teacher functions as a facilitator. According to Larsen-Freeman, the principles of CLT emphasize the importance of using a language to communicate in order to learn it. He stresses, “Being able to communicate requires more than linguistic competence; it requires communicative competence”. Language (oral and written) functions to serve authentic purposes by facilitating meaningful communication. Materials and methods. Relating to some facts above, two types of speaking activities in CLT can be used. They are information-gap and role-play. Harmer states that in line to CLT the pedagogical solution to the problems of getting students to speak the target language in large EFL classrooms is to engage learners in meaningful activities such as information-gap and role- play activities. This approach has been previously successful in ESL situations. However, in introducing these activities into the EFL classroom, the pedagogical solution presents two quite sharp challenges: to create meaningful situations for language use and to overcome affective barriers within theactivity ontheclassroom. Information-gap and role-play activities can be applied to all level of students and they can be applied based on the level of difficulty of the materials. Pair and group activities are purposed to be used because they gave learners gave opportunity to use the language and to develop fluency. CLT will allow students to have the opportunity to use the target language. In the early 70’s a new approach was developed to focus more on student production based on a different theory of language acquisition. The theory states that students want to communicate and that dialogues should be based on real life situation The material used should be authentic and meaningful. It is also believed that in order to communicate in the target language the speaker should have more than just linguistic competence but also communicative competence. This theory produced the approach that we knowtoday as CommunicativeLanguage Teaching. http://www.internationaljournal.co.in/index.php/jasass 198 Volume15 Issue05, May2025 Impact factor: 2019: 4.679 2020: 5.015 2021: 5.436, 2022: 5.242, 2023: 6.995, 2024 7.75 There are basically five characteristics that make CLT different from other approaches like Audio-Lingual Method or traditional approaches like GrammarTranslation Method. They are as follows: 1.Taught in thetarget language; 2. Introduction of authentic text and materials in the lesson. An emphasis on learning to communicatethrough interaction with otherstudents; 3. opportunities for learners to focus, not only on the target language, but also on the learning process itself; 4.Learner’s experiences are an important part ofthe classroom learning situation; 5.An attempt tolink learning in theclassroom to authenticusage outsidetheclassroom. The teacher must keep these principles in mind when planning and teaching a lesson using the CLT approach. There are many activities the teacher can use incorporating CLT. He/ She can find them on websites, in activity books or from other teachers at conferences and workshops. However, when choosing or creating an activity the teacher must keep three things in mind . The activity must (1) use authentic language, materials and language situations, (2) have a purpose thatthe teachercan stateand beachievableand (3) allowforfreedom and unpredictability. In using authentic language and materials the teacher must consider the students he/she is teaching. The teacher must consider what students will be using English for. This will dictate the choice of materials used. A class of high school students preparing to study at universities in America will not be interested in the studying the same material used to teach adults studying English at a continuing education class so they can use English when they travel on vacation or vice versa. The teacher must also incorporate activities using situations students might actually find themselves in after accomplishingtheirEnglish study. The teaching must be purpose