ALR B3 | Communicative Language Teaching Flashcards
In the early 1960s, the terms ‘_____’ and ‘_____’ were all the rage.
communication, communicative
Communication had been invoked as a tool for post-war reconstruction; mass media were now being credited with turning the word into a ‘_____’.
global village
Driven by innovations in technology, university
courses on ‘communication _____’ and ‘communication _____’ proliferated.
studies, sciences
To sell anything or to get votes, ‘communication skills’ were considered _____.
essential
At the same time, a new branch of linguistics was emerging: sociolinguists were training their sights on the relationship between _____ and _____, interested less in language as an abstract system and more in how it is put to use in actual communication.
language, society
It was in this intellectual climate, in 1966, that Dell Hymes put forward the idea of ‘_____’, i.e. ‘competence as to when to speak, when not, and as to what to talk about with whom, when, where, in what manner’ (Hymes 1972).
communicative competence
Communicative competence, it followed, involves
more than having a _____ of the sum of the _____ that were enshrined in the typical syllabuses of the time.
command, grammatical structures
It involves being
sensitive to the effect on language choices of such contextual factors as the purpose of the _____ and _____ between the participants.
exchange, relation
Communicative competence was to become the ‘_____’ that would underpin _____ and give it its name.
big idea, Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)
It came to fruition a few years later with the publication of a number of courses based not on a syllabus of grammatical structures but on a syllabus of _____ – such as making requests, complaining, narrating and so on.
communicative functions
As an _____ to one of the first of these
courses, _____ (Abbs, et al. 1975) the writers quoted David Wilkins (1976), a consultant on the Council of Europe project, to the effect that:
what people want to do through language is more important than the mastery of language as an _____.
epigraph, Strategies, unapplied system
If emphasis is placed on learning a language for communicative purposes, the methods used to promote learning should _____ this.
reflect
A communicative methodology will therefore encourage students to _____ language in pairs and groups, where they have equal opportunity to ask, answer, initiate and respond.
practise
The teacher assumes a
_____, initiating activity, listening, helping and advising.
counselling role
Students are encouraged to communicate effectively rather than merely to _____ grammatically correct forms of English
produce
By realigning the goals of instruction away from grammatical _____ and towards _____ (however defined), and by making a strong commitment to _____, i.e. that communication is best acquired by communicating, the quality and quantity of classroom interaction was set to change radically.
accuracy, fluency, experiential learning
The Council of
Europe had urged the adoption of _____ syllabuses, i.e.
syllabuses made up of items such as requesting, making comparisons,
narrating, duration.
functional-notional
Others argued for a _____ syllabus. Either way, allegiance to the grammar syllabus – on the grounds that grammar items are
more _____, easier to sequence, and, of course, easier to test – was unshakeable.
task-based, generaliable
And, since grammar items are not easily learned by _____, the ‘_____’ teaching cycle that had originally been proposed, in which learners communicate to the best of their ability, and then get feedback, was sidelined and re-packaged as Task-based Language Teaching (see chapter
16).
experience, fluency first
It was replaced by a less deep-end version of CLT, in which _____ activities (typically with a structural focus) precede _____ activities.
pre-communicative, communicative
Effectively, the PPP model inherited from
Situational Language Teaching (see chapter 14) was dusted off and
stretched a little, so as to include more _____ activities (such as information-gap tasks, role plays and discussions) but not a lot else changed.
production
By the time English language teaching became a global industry in the
1980s and 1990s, it was this ‘_____’ version of CLT that was taken to be the _____. In many EFL contexts there was no ‘_____’ at all.
weak, default form, communicative revolution
If widespread _____ is any indication of effectiveness, then CLT – especially in its weak form – would seem to have worked.
adoption
Most teachers,
teacher educators, publishers and institutions subscribe, in principle, at
least, to ‘_____’.
being communicative
What this means is not always clear, but
there seems to be a general commitment to the idea that _____ is at least as important as _____, that language is a _____ as much as a _____, and that the goal of second language learning is _____,
rather than _____.
fluency, accuracy, skill, system, communicative competence, native-like mastery
However, CLT has not been without its critics. Resistance to CLT in many (especially non-Western) contexts is argued on the grounds that it might not be appropriate in cultures where _____ is valued more highly than _____, and where _____, not _____, is the goal of
language education.
theoretical knowledge, practical skills, accuracy, fluency
Moreover, a method that prioritizes _____ would seem to favour teachers who are themselves
_____, which in many – perhaps most – EFL contexts is not necessarily the case.
communicative competence, communicatively competent
The lasting legacy of CLT is the idea of the ‘_____’.
communicative activity
That is to say, an activity in which there is a genuine exchange of _____, and where participants can use any communicative means at their disposal.
meanings
In other words, they are not restricted tot he use of a _____ grammar item.
pre-specified
Whether or not a programme consisting solely of such activities enables language acquisition has been thrown into doubt by research suggesting that a ‘_____’ - such as attending to features of the grammar - is necessary.
focus on form
But such activities have made _____ more interesting, and even fun.
classrooms
