The ever-mounting necessity for good communication skills in English has fashioned an enormous request for English teaching from all over the world. There are millions of individuals nowadays that are interested in improving their command of English in order to even make sure that even children attain a good command of English. And chances to learn English are delivered in numerous diverse ways for instance through study abroad, travel, formal instruction, in addition to through the Internet and also the media. With that said this essay will explore what is communicative language teaching, and what factors led to its emergence in English Language Teaching (ELT)?
What is Communicative Language Teaching?
It is always important to understand where something has come from and its background in order to understand how it functions and where it is actually going. Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) started from the variations in the British Situational Language Teaching method which goes all the way back to the late 1960s (Littlewood, 2007)Coming from the socio-cognitive viewpoint of the socio-linguistic philosophy, with an importance on communications and meaning and an objective to grow apprentices. Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) method progresses as a protruding language teaching technique and progressively substituted the preceding grammar-translation technique and audio-lingual technique (Wong, 2011).
Structural Approach
When it comes to finding out what factors led to its emergence in English Language Teaching (ELT), it is important to understand that the structural approach to language teaching plays a big role in being one the factor that led to its emergence in English Language Teaching (ELT). Defining what the "structural" approach to language teaching is not very hard. Basically, in a teachers classroom it has a bunch of students that are able to remember grammar rules and vocabulary through repetition and also things such as rote learning, and are modified for even the minutest error at the same time as writing or speaking English, then that person is a champion of what is considered to be the structural teaching approach. There is not any doubt that the teacher’s students understand a lot of English, nonetheless how real and how pleasant is this procedure? A method to language teaching has been established which challenges to affect the flaws of the "structural approach" (which by the way is the type of teaching procedure that inclines to triumph in public schools that are Asian). The new method is founded on inspecting language as a mixture of the following: Situational Settings, Linguistic Structures and Communicative Acts.
This is has been recognized as being the "communicative approach" when it comes down to the language teaching. Communication is not just a substance of what is supposed (structure/lexis), nonetheless by whom, where it is said, and why and when it is said. In brief, this is essentially the "communicative function" or "resolve" of language (Wong, 2011)At the conflicting limit from the structural method, and with at any rate as a lot of flaws, is the only "conversational" method, where it is expected that contact to lots of discussion from a native English speaker will be able to provide a much greater level of ability in the pupils. While the structural way of doing things actually endorses precision and tends to force communicative self-assurance, the conversational technique inclines to make communicative certainty in mixture with many rooted errors. Being intense to communicate and yet not being capable to do so correctly is virtually as dangerous as recognizing what to say nevertheless not having the practice or confidence to use it.
The Three Ps
The researcher has learned that one of the factors that led Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) to its emergence in English Language Teaching (ELT) was using the “Three Ps" which is beneficial even in the researcher’s past experience when dealing with students. The researcher found out through firsthand experience that the three Ps approach to Language Teaching is the most typical contemporary procedure engaged by professional schools all over the world. This is considered to be a very strong feature of the well-known TEFL qualifications and other CELTA certification which are actually provided part curly in England (Butler, 2011). Although this method is usually geared in the direction of adult beginners, most of these values involved are likewise vital when it comes to teachings for children. It is very important to understand what "Production" "Practice" and "Presentation", are supposed to be like, and how they function in mixture to generate real communicative language learning.
Presentation is the introduction or beginning to learning language, and production is the considered to be the result of the learning procedure, where a beginner has turned out to be a "a person that utilizes” the language contrasted with a "student" of the language (Littlewood, 2007). However, practice is looked at as being the procedure that eases development from the first phase through to the very last stage. Presentation has a lot to do with the constructing of a situation that would require normal and reasonable use of the new language. When the "situation" is documented and assumed by the students, they will then start impulsively constructing a conceptual accepting of the significance after the new language, and why it will be relevant and useful to them.
Now, the practice stage is also very important. Many teachers probably recognize the practice stage as something that is regardless of their training or teaching purposes. On the other hand, the practice stage is often "over-done" or used unsuccessfully, either for the reason that Presentation was lowly (or not together) or it is not used and seen as a natural step in the direction of Production. The practice stage is looked at as the most important middle stage to communicative language teaching.
It is significant that practice activities are suitable to the language that is being learned by the student and not to mention the level and capability of the pupils. Basically the practice stage is the testing technique for exactness, and the rate of recurrence technique for understanding with the language. It is likewise a remedial phase. A decent method to review active Practice is to look at it as repetition that will be able to guide to accuracy and competence in expressions of Syntax and Phonology (Manoliu, 2010).
It is important that all of the practice activities are very east to read and that the student is able to understand them with no issues. They would also need to be directed in the direction of endorsing a substantial amount of self-assurance in the students. On the whole, a sensibly laid out practice activity that appears to be "attractive" to the eye will produce the students' inspiration. The students need to be challenged, on the other hand they need to also feel that the action is "realistic". All of this is an important factor when it comes to its emergence in English Language Teaching (ELT).
The researcher with firsthand experience understands that the Production Stage is something that is very crucial for the student. In the researchers own involvement, they have found that if they have no executed properly in the other stages, then this one by no means will be a walk in the park. The Production Stage is the most imperative part of communicative language teaching. Having the successful Production is a clear showing that the language learners have been able to make the changeover from "students" of the important language to "those that are users" of the language. Usually Production includes things such as putting together a situation that would actually require the language that was being presented in the Presentation Stage. If everything goes according to plan, that situation will be able to result in the students "creating" more language that is personalized. Production is looked at as being extremely reliant on the Practice Stage, for the reason that if students do not have self-assurance in the phonological then they will obviously be uncertain to self-sufficiently "utilize" the language.
Effective Activities
The last important factor for communicative language teaching to its emergence in English Language Teaching (ELT) are the other activities which are being used to make sure the students are learning effectively. Part of effective communicative language teaching comes from knowing that the students are understanding everything that they are being taught. Numerous other activity types have been used in Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), and the includes the following: puzzles, games, task-achievement activities for example map-reading, and various other types of classroom works in which the emphasis is on utilizing one’s language resources to finish up a job (Littlewood, 2007). These activities are not just important but vital for the teacher to understand how to use them and what to use.
Conclusion
In the end, it is obvious that there are a lot of factors that play a part when it comes to communicative language teaching and its emergence in English Language Teaching (ELT). Embracing the structural approach is key because it teachers the students repetition and the more they do something the better it gets. Having the Three Ps is also very key because without these, there is no way a teacher will be able to bring students up to a level that will be looked at as being efficient and effective. Activities that the teacher comes up with are vital as well because in my experience it is important to make things easy as possible. Communicative language teaching is all about what works for the teacher and the student.
References
Butler, Y. G. (2011). The implementation of communicative and task-based language teaching in the asia-pacific region. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 23(7), 36-57.
Littlewood, W. (2007). Communicative and task-based language teaching in east asian classrooms. Language Teaching, 13(6), 234-256.
Manoliu, M. N. (2010). A communicative approach to language teaching - origins and development. International Journal of Communication Research, 348-399.
Wong, C. (2011). A case study of college level second language teachers' perceptions and implementations of communicative language teaching. The Professional Educator,, 1-17.
