Communicative Approach - Communicative Language Teaching

Communicative Approach

Communicative Language Teaching (Communicative Approach) :

• Communicative language teaching (CLT) is an approach to the teaching of languages. It is also known as “Communicative Approach”. It emphasizes interaction as both the means and the ultimate goal of learning a language. Language is used for communication. For this reason, CLT makes use of communication to teach languages. Whereas traditional language teaching places a lot of emphasis on grammar rules, CLT makes use of real-life situations. In CLT, students practice real-life situations, for example, buying food at the market or asking someone for directions.
• The teacher sets up a situation that students are likely to encounter in real life unlike the audiolingual method of language teaching, which relies on repetition and drills. Communicative approach is much more pupil-orientated, because it is dictated by pupils' needs and interests.

Communication Process :

• Communication is a process and as such contains the following main elements
• A message : what need to be communicated
• Sender/Encoder : the person who has something to communicate
• Channel : the means of communication
• A receiver/Decoder : the person who will receive the message
• This process works as follows : The messenger has something to communicate, a message. The messenger will encode his message with words, behaviour etc. The message will go through a channel, a means of communication such as face to face, letter, presentation. The receiver will then decode the message using his language skills.

Basic Features of CLT :

• It emphasizes on learning to communicate through interaction in the target language.
• An attempt is made to link classroom language learning with language activation outside the classroom.
• Communicative approach is much more pupil-orientated, because it is dictated by pupils' needs and interests.
• Communicative approach is not just limited to oral skills. Reading and writing skills need to be developed to promote pupils' confidence in all four skill areas.