CLT (communicative language teaching)

Background

The origins of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) are to be found in the changes in the British language teaching tradition dating from the late 1960s. Until then, Situational Language represented the major British approach to teaching English as a foreign language. In Situational Language Teaching, language was taught by practicing basic structures in meaningful situation-based activities.

British applied linguists emphasized another fundamental dimension of language that was inadequately addressed in current approaches to language teaching at that time - the functional and communicative potential of language. They saw the need to focus in language teaching on communicative proficiency rather than on mere mastery of structures.

silent way

The objective of The Silent Way Method of language teaching is for students to work as independent language learners. The teacher speaks very little when using this method. The role of the teacher is to draw the learners' attention to the way that they are going about the act of learning. The teacher facilitates the students' discoveries and helps the students to gain insight into the functioning of the language. In order to use this method some specific materials are required.

• A Sound/Color Wall Chart: made up of different color rectangles in which each color represents a phoneme or sound of the English language.
• Word Wall Charts: words are written using the same color code as the sound/color wall chart suggests. These charts display the structural vocabulary of the language.
• Spelling Charts: These charts are referred to as the Fidel. They show the possible spellings for each phoneme and they also use the same color code as the sound/color wall chart.
• Rods: these are cards containing sounds which correspond to the sound/color wall chart. These rods allow students to create words using phonemes.

A pointer should be used by the teacher to help guide the class as they vocalize the sounds. A pointer can also help to teach which syllable has the stress on it by tapping that syllable harder than the others. This aids in the development of proper pronunciation of words in the target language.

direct method

The direct method of teaching was developed as a response to the Grammar-Translation method. It sought to immerse the learner in the same way as when a first language is learnt. All teaching is done in the target language, grammar is taught inductively, there is a focus on speaking and listening, and only useful ‘everyday' language is taught. The weakness in the Direct Method is its assumption that a second language can be learnt in exactly the same way as a first, when in fact the conditions under which a second language is learnt are very different.

Example
The teacher explains new vocabulary using realia, visual aids or demonstrations.
In the classroom
Aspects of the Direct Method are still evident in many ELT classrooms, such as the emphasis on listening and speaking, the use of the target language for all class instructions, and the use of visuals and realia to illustrate meaning.