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Argumentative Essay Example
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Introduction
The communicative approach or the Communicative Language Teaching is one of the most prominent techniques for the language teaching and the main difference with this approach is that it emphasizes upon the interaction with regard to both the goal of the study and the means of the ultimate study. This technique has been created over the last few years in order to meet the growing need for the good communications skills in the English and this has created the huge demand for the English learning around the world.
The Communicative Language Teaching has served as the influential approach regarding the teaching methods of English language. The Communicative Language Teaching was first proposed in the 1970s however, it has emerged rapidly over the recent years as the best means for teaching and a key component of the English Language Teaching (Harmer, 2000). This argumentative essay analysis and discusses the assumptions surrounding the evolution and the origin of the Communicative Language Teaching and its emergence within the English Language Teaching.
Argumentative Discussion
Most of the issues which are raised by the Communicative Language Teaching methodology are all relevant today and most of the teachers who are new to this profession are not familiar with these issues. The majority of the teachers who teach English Language today when asked about the methodology which they apply during their lectures in their classrooms is the communicative methodology as their most preferred methodology. Communicative Language Teaching today refers to the knowledge of the teachers or anyone teaching English language regarding the language and their ability and capacity to generate sentences in that language (McDonough, 2000).
It also refers to the basic and the most complex knowledge possessed by them regarding the building blocks of the sentences and these building blocks are the tenses, clauses, parts of speech and the sentence patterns. It also refers to how particular sentences are formed in order to depict the right meaning in front of the audiences. Grammatical competence is also considered an important ingredient for effectively teaching the language but it could never be mastered by an individual just by simply learning all the required rules for the formulation of the sentences in the language as they still could not be successful and skillful in forming the right kind of the sentences in the language in order to support the process of effective communication (Luke, 2009). Therefore, the latter capacity is the one which shows how much an individual possesses the communicative competence.
Communicative Language Teaching is usually defined as the much broader approach to teaching as compared to the most common classroom practices which are implemented by the teachers today. There are five key features of Communicative Language Teaching which have been stated by David Nunan in the year 1991 (Mitchell, 2005). These five features show that they are all interested in the connection of the language which is taught in the class and the way it is used outside of the classroom. Therefore, in this broad explanation, we can say that any teaching methodology which helps the children to develop their own communicative competence is the deemed, most authentic and the most acceptable form of the teaching. This is the reason that most of the teachers who are making the use of the Communicative Language Teaching implement this methodology in the form of the groups and pairs within the classrooms and these it requires the cooperation and the negotiation between the learners (Richards & Rodgers, 2001).
Fluency based activities are also conducted and this helps to boost the confidence of all the learners. Language functions are also developed and practiced by the students under which the students have to develop their own language functions and finally the pronunciation activities and the judicious use of the grammar activates are also conducted. Therefore, this communicative approach to the teaching had enabled all the teachers and their students to prompt a rethinking of the teaching methodology within the classrooms. It has been also argued that all the learners learn the language through the process of communicating and the communication process which is highly meaningful to the learners helps that learner to have the better opportunity for learning outside the class as compared to the grammar-based approach. There are some strong overarching principles regarding the Communicative Language Teaching and these could be summarized here. Communicative Language Teaching makes real-life learning the main focus of English learning (McDonough, 2000).
The learners get the opportunity to try out and experience whatever they get to know, increases the tolerance of the teachers as they know that the learner is building up the communicative competence, the learners are able to develop fluency and accuracy, the students are also able to induce all the grammar rules by themselves and link all the core skills such as reading, writing, listening together since they all are important for effective communication in the real-life situations. All of these factors are the core components on the basis of which the emergence of Communicative Language Teaching has increased rapidly within the English language learning throughout the past several years (Nunan, 2008).
With the advent of the Communicative Language Teaching methodology over the past years, the critiques of CLT have also increased over these years. One of the most prominent attacks on the Communicative Language Teaching methodology was from the Michael Swan and this attack had been in the 1985 English Language Teaching Journal. However, Henry Widdowson had also responded for this critique in the same year in the same journal. Most of the recent authors and the teachers have been criticizing the Communicative Language Teaching methodology for not paying sufficient attention to the context in which the learning of the learners and the teaching takes place. Most of the other authors believe that implementing Communicative Language Teaching means that ignoring and not giving enough importance to grammar. However, Communicative Language Teaching has also been defended against of all these charges which will be discussed. More often this Communicative Language Teaching process is considered as successful when the teacher understands the student more clearly (Mitchell, 2005).
Also, if the teacher is also from the same region as that of the student then the teacher would begin to understand and highlight all those kinds of the errors which would be occurring from their first language. That is why all the native speakers of the target language might face the difficulties in order to understand them. Therefore, this observation which has also been out forwarded by the authors also calls for the adaptation of the new communicative approach to the one which is currently being used. The new adapted approach of the communicative approach would have to be a simulation in which case the teacher will have to act in order to understand whatever the regular target speaker of the target language would say and then the teacher will have to then act accordingly. Nevertheless, the critiques are being answered and all the misconceptions of Communicative Language Teaching are being overcome day by day and the usage of the Communicative Language Teaching method is gaining huge role within the English Language Teaching (Harmer, 2000).
The most important misconception regarding the Communicative Language Teaching today is that Communicative Language Teaching means not teaching grammar at all and this is the most damaging and the most persistent argument and misconception put forward by the authors. However, it should also be admitted that are very good reasons for the existence of this huge misconception. There are a number of the applied linguistics and all of them have argued that the explicit grammar teaching should be now avoided theoretically in persuasive terms. One of the strong arguments in this favour is that the teachings of the grammar in the classroom should be avoided because the knowledge which needs to be possessed by the people in order to use in the language duri9ng speaking is highly complex (Whong, 2011).
Another argument is that the teaching of the grammar is highly unnecessary and the main reason for this is that the grammar knowledge is not like the knowledge about the other types of things and it can never be passed on to from one person to the other in the form of the statable rules and on the other hand the grammar skills could be acquired only unconsciously by the exposure of the learners to the language. Therefore, it was certainly understood that the emphasis on the structure of the language at the expense of the natural communication would create a lot of reaction. The second most important argument which is put forward with regard to Communicative Language Teaching is learning grammar through Communicative Language Teaching. This is an important question which has remained over that years that how grammar could be learned by the learners through his method (Luke, 2009).
However, in the consensus view, it has been today accepted that an appropriate time should also be allocated for grammar. However, this does not mean teaching all the traditional grammar rules. Most of the teachers have now the view that grammar is too complex which could be learnt by the learners in such an over the simplifying way and the focus of the teachers has now moved away from the grammar being covered in the class to the learners discovering the grammar by themselves (Luke, 2009). Whenever it is possible, all the learners are allowed to be exposed to the new language in a more comprehensible manner and this enhances these learners to understand the true functioning and the meaning of the language.
This is the only means through which the learners are then able to examine all the different grammatical forms which have been utilized in order to convey the meaning. Therefore, the discussion of the grammar needs to be made explicit in this way and the learners are the one who will have to work out and discuss it with the complete guidance from the teachers. The main rationale behind this whole strategy is the purpose of Communicative Language Teaching which is that it signifies the recognition that the learners in this way are more able to learn about the language by themselves as compared to what the teachers put in them. The third misconception is also there which is that Communicative Language Teaching means teaching only listening and this is because it emphasizes the learners to practice more (Savignon, 2009). However, this has also be addressed to a great extent and the role and emergence of Communicative Language Teaching is rapidly increasing in the field of English Language Learning.
Conclusion
Overall, looking at the dramatic and the significant changes in the attitudes of the learners, the teachers and also to the language with the advent and the development of Communicative Language Teaching it is not at all surprising for all of us that Communicative Language Teaching has taken a considerable time in order to work out for all the implications regarding all the aspects of the teaching and the learning process. However, on the other hand, it is also worrying that the concepts and the views of many people regarding the use of the Communicative Language Teaching in real life have stopped and have been hindered at the earliest stages of the experimentation and the questioning before the most significant and the prominent key issues are resolved.
Communicative Language Teaching is by no means the final answer and the teaching solution to all of these critics and there is absolutely some other type of the next revolution in the teaching of the language which is currently taking place somewhere else. However, whatever types of the innovations and new theories emerge in this regard they will be created against the changes in the background of the Communicative Language Teaching and all of these theories will have to reject completely or accommodate all of these changes. Therefore, it seems highly important to clear away all the misconceptions of the people regarding Communicative Language Teaching so that it emerges out to be the best language learning technique under English Language Learning.
References
Harmer. (2000). The Practice of English Language Teaching (2nd edn.). London: Longman .
Luke, M. (2009). “Throw away your textbooks”. The Guardian .
McDonough, J. a. (2000). Materials and Methods in ELT. Oxford: Blackwell.
Mitchell, R. (2005). “The communicative approach to language teaching”. Teaching Modern Languages. New York: Routledge .
Nunan, D. (2008). Communicative Tasks and the Language Curriculum. . Tesol Quarterly .
Richards, J. C., & Rodgers, T. (2001). Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching (2nd ed.). Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press.
Savignon, S. (2009). Communicative language teaching. Routledge Encyclopedia of Language Teaching and Learning .
Whong, M. (2011). Language Teaching: Linguistic Theory in Practice. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
