Communicative language teaching

What is CLT?

  • Grammar competence is often not a top priority
  • The teacher being a facilitator or instructor
  • The goal is the ability to communicate in the target language
  • non-methodical system

Why is CLT considered an approach rather than a method?

  • CLT is considered as an approach and not a method since it is compatible with many teaching methods.

Advantages and disadvantages of CLT

ADVANTAGES

  • Communicative approach is much more pupil-orientated, because it is based on pupils’ needs and interests.
  • Communicative approach seeks to personalise and localise language and adapt it to interests of pupils. Meaningful language is always more easily retained by learners.
  • Seeks to use authentic resources. And that is more interesting and motivating for children.
  • Children acquire grammar rules as a necessity to speak so is more proficient and efficient.

DISADVANTAGES

  • Another disadvantage is that the CLT approach focuses on fluency but not accuracy..
  • The Communicative Approach often seems to be interpreted as: “if the teacher understands the student we have good communication” but native speakers of the target language can have great difficulty understanding students.
  • It pays insufficient attention to the context in which teaching and learning take place

Teaching unplugged

What is teaching unplugged?

ADVANTAGES

DISADVANTAGES

Why avdantage?

  • Comfort for learners who struggle with listening
  • Dogme in English Language Teaching
  • Unplugged is a fairly new movement in the EFL field which supports teaching without materials.
  • The teacher has a possibility to grade language used when speaking
  • The content can be adjusted to suit learners’ needs and interests
  • One of the tasks can be used to raise learners’ awareness to false starts, not frequently found in recorded materials
  • Develops learners’ autonomy
  • Encourages teachers to develop skills to deal with learners emergent needs
  • Focus is one hundred per cent on the students’ actual language needs.
  • Never waste time on annoying technical difficulties that can take up a surprising amount of class time
  • Great for teachers who don't have access to loads of resources
  • Whole lessons can be planned anywhere, anytime; or planning can be done away with altogether
  • This in turn brings down barriers that exist between the teacher and students
  • Might favor native-speaker teachers
  • Extremely difficult to countenance in large classes
  • Syllabuses are necessary organizing constructs, and materials such as coursebooks
  • Teaching involves more than talking.
  • It is unclear to what the term “conversation” is referring

Why?

  • Coursebooks are highly valuable by teachers and students alike for a variety of reasons
  • When I teach, I certainly do more than talk, and that is why teachers around the world still have students attending their classes” – Angeles Clemente
  • Philip Chappel suggested that some group talk leads to productive language, but not all.

How?

Omit things that don’t fit:

Replace things with our own choices:

Adapt and add things:

  • We can use a coursebook in the way that its writers have
  • We can leave things in the book out which are not appropriate for our students
  • We may decide to omit some material which not interest or inform their students.
  • We can replace in the coursebook with better material for us and our students
  • Adapting what we find which can make the contents come alive and useful for our students