Communicative language teaching: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 20:03, 11 September 2007

Revision as of 17:32, 24 September 2007

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==Critiques of CLT==

One of the most famous attacks on Communicative Language teaching was offered by Michael Swan in 1985 in the English Language Teaching Journal (1985 39(1):2-12, and 1985 39(2):76-87). Henry Widdowson responded in defencedefense of CLT, also in the ELT Journal (1985 39(3):158-161). More recently other writers (e.g. Bax 2003) have critiqued CLT for paying insufficient attention to the context in which teaching and learning take place, though CLT has also been defended against this charge (e.g. Harmer 2003).

The Communicative Approach often seems to be interpreted as: if the teacher understands the student we have good communication. What can happen though is that a teacher who is from the same region, understands the students when they make errors resulting from first language influence. Problem with this is that regular speakers of the target language can have great difficulty understanding them. This observation asks to rethink and adapt the communicative approach. The adapted communicative approach should be a simulation where the teacher pretends to understand only that what any regular speaker of the target language would, and should react accordingly. Examples of errors observed with Brazilian learners of English and resulting communication problems: http://ton-van-hattum.v10.com.br/comreth.html