Communicative language teaching was first put forward in 1960s in England. Before its appearance, it was situational language teaching that dominated British English teaching.
It is developed by the following steps. First, in 1957, American linguist Noam Chomsky in his boo Syntactic Structure demonstrated that the original structural language theories were not be able to account for the creativity and uniqueness of language. Second, British applied linguists saw the necessity of focus on communicative proficiency rather than mastering the basic structure in English teaching. The idea was supported by many scholars, such as Christopher Candlin, M.A.K. Halliday etc. The third impetus was the big changes in English teaching. In 1971, a group of linguists began to proposed that the language system should be divided into portions or units, each of which corresponds to a component of a learners needs and is systemically related to all the other portions. Thereafter, British linguist Wilkins put forward functional or communicative definition of language, which could be regarded as a basis for developing communicative syllabus for language teaching. The core of his view is that a language learner needs to understand and express themselves, and that is important. His book Notional Syllabuses has great impact on the development of Communicative Language Teaching.
With the promotion of linguists in England and other European countries, in 1970s, the CLT has expanded in American and England; the linguists regarded it as an approach not a method. (PS, according to chapter 2, in 1963 American applied linguist Edward Anthony identified that an approach is a set of correlative assumptions dealing with the nature of language teaching and learning. An approach is axiomatic. It describes the nature of the subject matter to be taught... While method is an overall plan for the orderly presentation of language material, no part of which contradicts, and all of which is based on, the selected approach. An approach is axiomatic, a method is procedure. Within one approach, there can be many methods...) It has two aims, (a) make communicative competence the goal of language teaching, (b) develop procedures for the teaching of the four language skills (reading, listening, speaking
and listening) that acknowledge the interdependence of language and communication. Just as what Littlewood said the most prominent feature of communicative language teaching is that it emphasizes the importance of function and structural aspects of language at the same time.
The most basic role of learning a language is to communicate. According to Howatt, language has two versions, the strong version and the weak version, which mean learning English to use it and learning to use it respectively. But in my own opinion, in most cases language are to be used.
There are many differences between communicative language teaching and audio lingual teaching. What they have in common is that they all pay attention to speaking and communication. But as for CLT, its emphasis is the function of language, that is to say language is to be used rather than be framed in a fixed framework. As for CLT, meaning is enough in communication, which is accord with the internal syllabus of the acquisition device of language. HoweverAudio lingual is somewhat similar to external syllabus. The communicative language teaching is kind of approach that is regarded as learn by doing or the experience approach.
Firth also stresses the importance of context. The context can be studied in a broader sociocultural context of its use form the point of participants, peoples behavior and beliefs, the objects of linguistic discussion and word choice. According to their theory, experience is the best of all learning material. Everything can be learned from experiences. Applebee suggests that an ideal curriculum should conclude a well selected experience. The means of selecting waving appropriate experiences into a coherent curriculum stretching crosses the years of school English study. The trend of progressivism in education provided a further pressure for educators to change their methods. Many linguists holds that active learning is more effective than passive learning, and as this idea gained attraction in schools there was a general shift towards using techniques where students were more actively involved, such as group work. Foreign-language education was no exception to this trend, and teachers sought to find new methods that could better embody this shift in thinking.
When it comes to theory of language, Chomskys theory focuses on the ability
that speakers possess which makes them able to produce grammatically correct sentences in a language. In Hymes opinion, a man with communicative competence can acquire both knowledge and ability for language use. He also defines several basic functions of first language learning. They are: 1. The instrumental function: using language to get things; 2. The regulatory function: using language as a means of controlling others; 3. Other interactional function: to create interaction with others...... All the above are about first language learning. The second language learning is similar to it. It is defined by the basic function of language: communication. Another theorist Henry Widdowson put forward a relationship between linguistic system and communicative values in text and value. Canale and Swain divide communicative competence into four parts: grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence and strategic competence. All the four parts have close relationship and they can better balance the competence of language. When it comes to learning theory, there are three elements that can involve learning. The first one is real communication involving activities, the second one is task principle, and the last one is the meaningfulness principle. But recently, this CLT processes are used to describe language learning process. Many scholars have made great attempts in this field. For example, Savignon made a survey about second language acquisition which concerning about the role of linguistic, social, cognitive and individual variables in language acquisition. Krashen gives a brief difference between acquisition and learning. In his theory, acquisition is the unconscious development if the target language system as a result of using the language for real communication, while learning is conscious representation of grammatical knowledge that has resulted from instruction, and it can not lead to acquisition. Just as our book Foreign and Second Language Learning says that acquisition can be referred as the internal syllabus, and learning can be regarded as external syllabus. What important is Krashen put forward that language learning can be produced form using language communicatively, but not from practicing language skills.
Johnson and Littlewood put forward an alternative learning theory. It involves three aspects, cognitive, behavioral and practice. It encourages an emphasis on practice as a
way of developing communicative skills.
The following part is something about communicative design. In Piephos opinion, design objects can be divided into: 1. an integrative and content level; 2. a linguistic and instrumental level; 3. an affective level of interpersonal relationship and conduct; 4. a level of individual learning needs; 5. a general educational level of extra linguistic goals. They are general objects of communicative design, and they can be reflected in many fields?
The discussion of syllabus has been an important topic in communicative language teaching. It has been an extensive one. The examples of syllabus in English teaching prove that the products of a task can be divided into the following parts: (a) understanding the message (b) asking questions to clear any doubts (c) asking questions to gather more information (d) taking notes. Etc
Learning types and teaching activities can be limited when they are compatible with a communicative language teaching. Teaching activities in most cases are designed to complete task through language or information sharing. Littlewood once distinguished the differences between “functional communication activities” and “social interaction activities” as two major activity types in communicative language teaching.
During learning process, learners’ role can be regarded as self-learning, the object of learning and the interaction within group or classroom activities. This can help learners gain language from an independent way. As for teachers, they have two main roles: 1st, to facilitate the communication process during all participates within all classroom activities; 2nd, to act as an independent participant within the learning-teaching group; 3rd, teacher’s role is to pay more attention to students’learning and organization capacities. And also teachers’ role can be referred as counselor, group process manager. The other thing cannot be omitted is the role of instructional material. Their functions can be text-based material, task-based material and realia.
When it comes to teaching procedures, Littlewood in 1981 put forward a methodology which can reflect the sequence of activities. They can be presented as
follows:
Pre-communicative activities: structural activities and quasi- communicative activities.
Communicative activities: functional activities and social interaction activities. However, Savignon has opposite ideas. She rejects that leaners should first gain control over individual skills before they applying them in communicative tasks. She suggests providing communicative practice from the beginning of classroom teaching. Finally, we have to make a conclusion that the communicative language teaching approach is deemed a success if teachers can have a better understanding of students. But if the teacher is from the same region as the student, the teacher will understand errors resulting from an influence from their first language. Therefore, as a teacher, also a native speaker, there are some difficulties in understanding target language. During the teaching process, teachers should think of more ideas and theory of adaption of the communicative approach. What is more, the adapted communicative approach should be a simulation where teacher pretends to understand only what any regular speaker of the target language would and reacts accordingly.
因篇幅问题不能全部显示，请点此查看更多更全内容