Communicative language teaching

Communicative language teaching (CLT), the dominant orientation of contemporary foreign language education (Macaro, 1997), is an approach to foreign or second language teaching that emphasises communicative competence as the goal of language learning. The aim of this approach is to “acquire the necessary skills to communicate in socially and culturally appropriate ways” (Aguilar, 2009, p. 247). Generally, the underlying theoretical concept of CLT is communicative competence, which refers to the ability for language learners to use socially, contextually and culturally appropriate language in communicative contexts (Savignon, 1997).

The term “communicative competence” was first used by Hymes in deliberate contrast to Chomsky’s “linguistic competence” (Stern, 1983). Communicative competence is concerned with activities, which create realistic situations for language work. It is a student-centred approach and students learn language behaviour. Its teaching techniques are flexible enough to attain this objective. Such concepts as “communicative” or “functional” language teaching or

“communicative competence” suggest that language teaching recognises a social, interpersonal, and cultural dimension and attributes to it just as much importance as to the grammatical or phonological aspect (Stern, 1983). The sociolinguistic emphasis is expressed by contrasting a “communicative” or “functional” approach with “linguistic”, “grammatical”, “structural”, or “formal” approaches to language teaching (Stern, 1983). For the sake of simplicity and directness, Brown (2000) offers the following four interconnected characteristics, as a definition of communicative language teaching:

• Classroom goals are focused on all of the components of communicative competence and not restricted to grammatical or linguistic competence.

• Language techniques are designed to engage learners in the pragmatic, authentic, functional use of language for meaningful purposes.

Organizational language forms are not the central focus but rather aspects of language that enable the learner to accomplish those purposes.

• Fluency and accuracy are seen as complementary principles underlying communicative techniques. At times fluency may have to take on more importance than accuracy in order to keep learners meaningfully engaged in language use.

• In the communicative classroom, students ultimately have to use the language, productively and receptively, in unrehearsed contexts. (p. 266) The call for adoption of communicative language teaching was not accidental. The teaching of grammar has been a major topic of debate since the introduction of CLT. The problem was the existing unsatisfactory teaching results of the traditional grammar-oriented method. As Johnson and Morrow (1981) state, new movements often begin as reactions to old ones: their origins lie in a discontent with an existing state of affairs. The Grammar Translation Method fails to

inculcate communication skills in students. The meaning of the target language is made clear by translating it into the student’s native language. But it is almost impossible to translate completely every word or phrase from one language to another language. In real-life teaching situations, this is not always the case. In translating a foreign language, an awareness of the culture of the target language needs to be carefully considered. Otherwise, the potential for cross-cultural communication problems arises from mutual lack of awareness of culturally- salient but inherently untranslatable words or phrases; cultural implications are difficult to render from one language to another. To avoid “lost in translation” issues, effective inter-cultural communication is of great importance to the wider community.

However, translation is still an important tool in foreign language learning. In fact, translation has been favoured for teaching language and literature since early last century (Beichman, 1983; Cook-Sather, 2003; Gillis, 1960; Hall, 1952; Irvin, 1942; Morgan, 1917; Virtue & Baklanoff, 1952; Woolsey, 1974). Translation theorists have noted an interwoven relationship between language and culture, maintaining that translation is a process of intercultural exchange (Kloepfer & Shaw, 1981; Kramsch, 1998; Lotman & Uspensky, 1978; Pena, 2007; Pennycook, 2007). Hermans (1999) believes translation should be recognised as a cultural practice. Gerding-Salas (2000) suggests that the main aim of translation is to serve

as a cross-cultural bilingual communication vehicle among people of different tongues and cultures. Therefore, it could be concluded that both language and culture should be highly regarded in the act of translation. The cultural

connotation of concepts under translation are thus of significance, as are lexical and structural items. As Lotman and Uspensky (1978) state, no language can exist unless it is steeped in the context of culture, and no culture can exist which does not have at its centre the structure of natural language. Being the primary means of human communication, language is bound up with culture in multiple and complex ways. As Kramsch (1998) explains, language expresses cultural reality, embodies cultural reality and symbolises cultural reality.

After the discussion above, the following section is about various language teaching approaches. Littlewood (1981) argues that a communicative approach opens up a wider perspective on language. In particular, it makes language educators consider language not only in terms of its structures (grammar and vocabulary), but also in terms of the communicative functions that it performs. From this perspective, the goal of foreign language teaching can be defined in the following terms: to extend the range of communication situations in which learners can perform with focus on meaning, without being hindered by the attention they must pay to linguistic form.

The communicative approach creates a situation for the use of real world language in a variety of sociocultural situations in which features of pronunciation,

vocabulary, grammar and culture are selected and graded according to their priority in actual communication. It stresses the use of grammatically and semantically appropriate language in particular situations (Finocchiaro, 1974). From the microscopic angle, society needs personnel who have mastered foreign languages. In the twenty-first century, human beings will advance with “giant strides” into a brand new era of intellectual economy. At that point, students in the future will need to have solid professional knowledge, and the ability to use foreign languages for communication exchanges in their daily lives.

Foreign languages are not only a means of communication, information transmission and emotional expression, but also tools for learning advanced

technology. People who wish to learn a foreign language may have any one of a number of reasons for doing so. In reality it is highly unlikely for people to become fluent in a language without extensive periods of some form of total language immersion. Total immersion is a method of studying languages in which students live in almost complete absence of mother tongues. The researcher knows from personal experience the effectiveness of this method.