The role of a teacher and a learner in Communicative Language Teaching

The role of a teacher and a learner in Communicative Language Teaching

Speaking is considered as the most challenging skill in language teaching since students are required to construct meaning (Celce-Murcia and Olshtain, 2000) to communicate, retrieve and use appropriate words to convey that meaning. At the same time, the structured answers have to be correct. In Communicative Language Teaching, teacher’s aim is to develop speaking sub skills, comprising interaction, accuracy and fluency. The great emphasis on this work is put not only on a teacher but also on language learners.

Communicative Language Teaching has changed the role of a teacher and a learner (Richard, 2006). Now learners have to work more cooperatively than individually, they are supposed to work comfortably with peers, be ready to an interaction pattern different from Teacher-Student pattern, and finally they have to be managers for their own learning. Teachers’ role in a communicative classroom is that of a monitor and a facilitator. Teachers are supposed to speak less but listen more (Richard, 2006).

From the perspective of Diane Larsen-Freeman (1985), the role of a teacher also implies being an ‘adviser’ who can answer students’ questions and help them work on their errors later during accuracy-based exercises. In some cases, the teacher may actively take part in communication as well, thus serving as a сo-communicator, ‘but more often he establishes situations that prompt communication between and among students’ (p. 130).

However, while using Communicative Language Learning we have to bear in mind that there are some drawbacks of the approach voiced by Michael Swan. In his opinion there might be problems in implementing this approach for teaching beginners because ‘unfortunately, grammar hasn’t become any easier to learn since communicative revolution’ (1985, p. 78). An attempt to concentrate only on meaning leads to the loss of correctness, which in its turn leads to fossilization of errors. He approves of the strategy used by skillful teachers when they first practice grammar structures in isolation, only then they ‘do interesting thing with them’, meaning communicative activities.

There is one more aspect that stirs up controversy. Though advocating the contribution made by CLT to language teaching, Swan touches upon ‘the “real-life’ fallacy” (1985, p. 82). It means that classroom conditions cannot fully represent real life communication and there can be a certain extent of ‘artificiality’ in exercising language items. Therefore teachers do not need to feel guilty when alongside with a large number of communicative activities there will be some that do not have ‘an immediate communicative value’ like repetitions, drills, translation (p. 83).

From the perspective of Swan (1985) any communication is like ‘filling in an information gap’ (p. 83). Some people have information that another person needs. It will be a good idea if communicative activities are based on information that is relevant to leaners. Activities should contain information that is nearer to leaners’ life.

Each individual in a class already possesses a vast private store of knowledge, opinions, and experience; and each individual has an imagination that is capable of creating whole scenarios at a moment's notice… If student X can be persuaded to communicate some of these things to student Y—and this is not very difficult to arrange—then we have a basis for genuinely rich and productive language practice. (1985, p. 84). But Swan thinks that ‘communication of this ‘personal’ kind seems to be seriously under- exploited’ in teaching practice (p. 84).

Nevertheless, what different authors agree about is in defining the kinds of communicative activities. Richards (2005) classifies them into the following categories: information - gap activities, task - completion activities, jigsaw - activities, opinion - sharing activities, information - gathering activities, and information - transfer activities, reasoning - gap activities and role plays.

References

Celca-Murcia, Olshtein E. (2000). Discourse and context in language teaching. A guide for language teachers. Cambridge University Press

Larsen-Freeman, D. (1986). Techniques and principles of language teaching.Oxford:Oxford University Press.

Richards, J.C.(2006). Communicative Language Teaching today. USA: Cambridge University Press.

Swan, M. (1985). A critical look at the Communicative Approach (2).ELT Journal, 39 (2), pp 76-87. Retrieved from http://eltj.oxfordjournals.org/