LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 13:4 April 2013
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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Language Acquisition Forum through Communicative Language Teaching

R. Malathi, M.A., M.Phil.

Abstract

Communication is essentially personal, the expression of personal needs, feelings, experiences and knowledge, in situations that are never quite the same. Language is the most important tool of communication. The ever growing need for good communication skills in English has created a huge demand for English teaching around the world. The world- wide demand for English has created demand for quality language teaching and language teaching materials. Learners set themselves demanding goals. The demand for an appropriate teaching methodology is therefore as strong as ever. Perhaps the majority of language teachers today identify “Communicative” as the methodology of choice. Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) can be understood as a set of principles about the goals of language teaching, how learners learn a language, the kinds of classroom activities that best facilitate learning, and the roles of teachers and learners in the class room. Our understanding of the processes of second language learning has changed considerably in the last 30 years and CLT is partly a response to these changes in understanding. In this paper we will examine the methodology known as CLT, its trends and classroom activities to language teaching today.

Communicative Language Teaching

Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) has enormous intuitive appeal. A great deal of CLT is based on essentially a view of second language (L2) acquisition. CLT sets as its goals the teaching of communicative competence. Perhaps we can clarify this term by first comparing it with the concept of grammatical competence. Grammatical competence refers to the knowledge of a language that accounts for our ability to produce sentences in a language. It refers to knowledge of the building blocks of sentences (e.g. parts of speech, tenses, phrases, clauses, sentence patterns) and how sentences are formed. Grammatical competence is the focus of many grammar practice books, which typically present a rule of grammar on one page, and provide exercises to practice using the rule on the other page. The unit of analysis and practice is typically the sentence. While grammatical competence is an important dimension of language learning; it is clearly not all that is involved in learning a language since one can master the rules of sentence formation in a language and still not be very successful at being able to use the language for meaningful communication. It is the latter capacity which is understood by the term communicative competence.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

R. Malathi, Ph.D. Research Scholar (Part-Time)
Post Graduate and Research Department of English
Govt. Arts College
Coimbatore-638 018
Tamilnadu
India

Assistant Professor
Department of English
Erode Sengunthar Engineering College
Thudupathi-638 057
Erode District
Tamilnadu
India
malathir221@gmail.com
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