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.
Another impetus for different approaches to foreign language
teaching came from changing educational realities in Europe. With the
increasing interdependence of European countries came the need for greater
efforts to teach adults the major languages of the European Common Market and
the Council of Europe, a regional organization for cultural and educational
cooperation. Education was one of the Council of Europe's major areas
of activity. It sponsored international conferences on language
teaching, published monographs and books about language teaching. The
need to articulate and develop alternative methods of language teaching was
considered a high priority.
In 1971 a group of experts began to investigate the possibility of
developing language courses on a unit-credit system, a system in which learning
tasks are broken down into "portions or units, each of which corresponds
to a component of a learner's needs and is systematically related to all the
other portions" (van Ek and Alexander 1980: 6). The group used studies of
the needs of European language learners, and in particular a preliminary
document prepared by a British linguist, D. A. Wilkins (1972), which proposed a
functional or communicative definition of language that could serve as a basis
for developing communicative syllabuses for language teaching. Wilkins's
contribution was an analysis of the communicative meanings that a language
learner needs to understand and express. Rather than describe the core of
language through traditional concepts of grammar and vocabulary, Wilkins
attempted to demonstrate the systems of meanings that lay behind the
communicative uses of language.
The work of the Council of Europe; the writings of Wilkins, Widdowson,
Candlin, Christopher Brumfit, Keith Johnson, and other British applied
linguists on the theoretical basis for a communicative or functional approach
to language teaching; the rapid application of these ideas by textbook writers;
and the equally rapid acceptance of these new principles by British language
teaching specialists, curriculum development centers, and even governments gave
prominence nationally and internationally to what came to be referred to as
the Communicative Approach, or simply Communicative Language Teaching.
(The terms notional-functional approach and functional
approach are also sometimes used.) Although the movement began as a
largely British innovation, focusing on alternative conceptions of a syllabus,
since the mid-1970s the scope of Communicative Language Teaching has
expanded. Both American and British proponents now see it as an
approach (and not a method) that aims to (a) make communicative competence the
goal of language teaching and (b) develop procedures for the teaching of the
four language skills that acknowledge the interdependence of language and
communication.
Howatt distinguishes between a "strong" and a
"weak" version of Communicative Language Teaching:
There is, in a sense, a 'strong' version of the communicative
approach and a 'weak' version. The weak version which has become more or less
standard practice in the last ten years, stresses the importance of providing
learners with opportunities to use their English for communicative purposes
and, characteristically, attempts to integrate such activities into a wider
program of language teaching.... The 'strong' version of communicative
teaching, on the other hand, advances the claim that language is acquired
through communication, so that it is not merely a question of activating an
existing but inert knowledge of the language, but of stimulating the
development of the language system itself. If the former could be described as
'learning to use' English, the latter entails 'using English to learn it.'
(1984: 279)
Finocchiaro and Brumfit (1983) contrast the major
distinctive features of the Audiolingual Method and the Communicative
Approach , according to their
interpretation.
Approach
The communicative approach in language teaching starts from a
theory of language as communication. The goal of language teaching
is to develop what Hymes (1972) referred to as
"communicative competence." Hymes coined this term in order to
contrast a communicative view of language and Chomsky's theory of competence.
Chomsky held that linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal
speaker-listener in a completely homogeneous speech community, who knows its
language perfectly and is unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant
conditions as memory limitation, distractions, shifts of attention and
interest, and errors (random or characteristic) in applying his knowledge of
the language in actual performance. (Chomsky 1965: 3)
For Chomsky, the focus of linguistic theory was to characterize
the abstract abilities speakers possess that enable them to produce grammatically
correct sentences in a language. Hymes held that such a view of linguistic
theory was sterile, that linguistic theory needed to be seen as part of a more
general theory incorporating communication and culture. Hymes's theory
of communicative competence was a definition of what a speaker needs to know in
order to be communicatively competent in a speech community. In Hymes's
view, a person who acquires communicative competence acquires both knowledge
and ability for language use with respect to
1. whether (and to what degree) something is formally possible;
2. whether (and to what degree) something is feasible in virtue of
the means of implementation available;
3. whether (and to what degree) something is appropriate
(adequate, happy, successful) in relation to a context in which it is used and
evaluated;
4. whether (and to what degree) something is in fact done,
actually performed, and what its doing entails.
This theory of what knowing a language entails offers a much more
comprehensive view than Chomsky's view of competence, which deals primarily
with abstract grammatical knowledge.
Another linguistic theory of communication favored in CLT is
Halliday's functional account of language use. "Linguistics ... is concerned...
with the description of speech acts or texts, since only through the study of
language in use are all the functions of language, and therefore all components
of meaning, brought into focus" (Halliday 1970: 145). In a number of
influential books and papers, Halliday has elaborated a powerful theory
of the functions of language, which complements Hymes's view of communicative
competence for many writers on CLT (e.g., Brumfit and Johnson 1979; Savignon
1983). He described (1975: 11-17) seven basic functions that language performs
for children learning their first language:
1. the instrumental function: using language to get things;
2. the regulatory function: using language to control the
behaviour of others;
3. the interactional function: using language to create
interaction with others;
4. the personal function: using language to express personal
feelings and meanings;
5. the heuristic function: using language to learn and to
discover;
6. the imaginative function: using language to create a world of
the imagination;
7. the representational function: using language to communicate
information.
Learning a second language was similarly viewed by proponents of
Communicative Language Teaching as acquiring the linguistic means to perform
different kinds of functions.
At the level of language theory, Communicative Language Teaching
has a rich, if somewhat eclectic, theoretical base. Some of the characteristics of this communicative view of language follow.
1. Language is a system for the expression of meaning.
2. The primary function of language is for interaction and
communication.
3. The structure of language reflects its functional and
communicative uses.
4. The primary units of language are not merely its grammatical
and structural features, but categories of functional and communicative
meaning as exemplified in discourse.
In contrast to the amount that has been written in Communicative
Language Teaching literature about communicative dimensions of language, little
has been written about learning theory. Neither Brumfit and Johnson (1979) nor
Littlewood (1981), for example, offers any discussion of learning theory.
Elements of an underlying learning theory can be discerned in some CLT
practices, however. One such element might be described as the
communication principle: Activities that involve real communication
promote learning. A second element is the task principle: Activities
in which language is used for carrying out meaningful tasks promote learning (Johnson
1982). A third element is the meaningfulness principle: Language
that is meaningful to the learner supports the learning process. Learning
activities are consequently selected according to how well they engage the
learner in meaningful and authentic language use (rather than merely mechanical
practice of language patterns). These principles, we suggest, can be inferred
from CLT practices (e.g., Little-wood 1981; Johnson 1982). They address the
conditions needed to promote second language learning, rather than the
processes of language acquisition.
More recent accounts of Communicative Language Teaching, however, have
attempted to describe theories of language learning processes that are
compatible with the communicative approach. Savignon (1983) surveys second
language acquisition research as a source for learning theories and considers
the role of linguistic, social, cognitive, and individual variables in
language acquisition. Other theorists (e.g., Stephen Krashen, who is not
directly associated with Communicative Language Teaching) have developed theories
cited as compatible with the principles of CLT. Krashen sees
acquisition as the basic process involved in developing language proficiency
and distinguishes this process from learning. Acquisition refers to
the unconscious development of the target language system as a result of using
the language for real communication. Learning is the conscious representation
of grammatical knowledge that has resulted from instruction, and it cannot lead
to acquisition. It is the acquired system that we call upon to create utterances
during spontaneous language use. The learned system can serve only as a monitor
of the output of the acquired system. Krashen and other second language
acquisition theorists typically stress that language learning comes about
through using language communicatively, rather than through practicing language
skills.
Johnson (1984) and Littlewood (1984) consider an alternative
learning theory that they also see as compatible with CLT-a skill-learning
model of learning. According to this theory, the acquisition of communicative
competence in a language is an example of skill development. This involves both
a cognitive and a behavioral aspect:
The cognitive aspect involves the internalisation of plans for
creating appropriate behaviour. For language use, these plans derive mainly
from the language system — they include grammatical rules, procedures for
selecting vocabulary, and social conventions governing speech. The behavioural
aspect involves the automation of these plans so that they can be converted
into fluent performance in real time. This occurs mainly through practice in
converting plans into performance. (Littlewood 1984: 74)
This theory thus encourages an emphasis on practice as a way of developing
communicative skills.
Design
Piepho (1981) discusses the following levels of objectives in a
communicative approach:
1. an integrative and
content level (language as a means of expression)
2. a linguistic and
instrumental level (language as a semiotic system and an object of learning);
3. an affective level of
interpersonal relationships and conduct (language as a means of expressing
values and judgments about oneself and others);
4. a level of individual
learning needs (remedial learning based on error analysis);
5. a general educational
level of extra-linguistic goals (language learning within the school
curriculum).
(Piepho 1981: 8)
These are proposed as general objectives, applicable
to any teaching situation. Particular objectives for CLT cannot be defined
beyond this level of specification, since such an approach assumes that
language teaching will reflect the particular needs of the target learners.
These needs may be in the domains of reading, writing, listening, or speaking,
each of which can be approached from a communicative perspective. Curriculum or
instructional objectives for a particular course would reflect specific aspects
of communicative competence according to the learner's proficiency level and
communicative needs.
Discussions of the nature of the syllabus have been central in
Communicative Language Teaching. We have seen that one of the first syllabus
models to be proposed was described as a notional syllabus (Wilkins 1976),
which specified the semantic-grammatical categories (e.g., frequency, motion,
location) and the categories of communicative function that learners need to
express. The Council of Europe expanded and developed this
into a syllabus that included descriptions of the objectives of foreign
language courses for European adults, the situations in which they might
typically need to use a foreign language (e.g., travel, business), the topics
they might need to talk about (e.g., personal identification, education,
shopping), the functions they needed language for (e.g., describing something,
requesting information, expressing agreement and disagreement), the notions
made use of in communication (e.g., time, frequency, duration), as well as the
vocabulary and grammar needed. The result was published as Threshold
Level English (van Ek and Alexander 1980) and was an
attempt to specify what was needed in order to be able to achieve a reasonable
degree of communicative proficiency in a foreign language, including the
language items needed to realize this "threshold level."
The range of exercise types and activities compatible with a communicative
approach is unlimited, provided that such exercises enable learners to attain
the communicative objectives of the curriculum, engage learners in
communication, and require the use of such communicative processes as
information sharing, negotiation of meaning, and interaction. Classroom activities are
often designed to focus on completing tasks that are mediated through language
or involve negotiation of information and information sharing.
The emphasis in Communicative Language Teaching on the processes
of communication, rather than mastery of language.
Several roles are assumed for teachers in Communicative Language
Teaching, the importance of particular roles being determined by the view of
CLT adopted. Breen and Candlin describe teacher roles in the following terms:
The teacher has two main roles: the first role is to
facilitate the communication process between all participants in the
classroom, and between these participants and the various activities and texts.
The second role is to act as an independent participant within the
learning-teaching group. The latter role is closely related to the
objectives of the first role and arises from it. These roles imply a set of
secondary roles for the teacher; first, as an organizer of resources and as a
resource himself, second as a guide within the classroom procedures and
activities.... A third role for the teacher is that of researcher and learner,
with much to contribute in terms of appropriate knowledge and abilities, actual
and observed experience of the nature of learning and organizational
capacities. (1980: 99)
Other roles assumed for teachers are needs analyst, counselor, and
group process manager.
NEEDS ANALYST
The CLT teacher assumes a responsibility for determining and
responding to learner language needs. This may be done informally and
personally through one-to-one sessions with students, in which the teacher
talks through such issues as the student's perception of his or her learning
style, learning assets, and learning goals. It may be done formally through
administering a needs assessment instrument, such as those exemplified in
Savignon (1983). Typically, such formal assessments contain items that attempt
to determine an individual's motivation for studying the language. For example,
students might respond on a 5-point scale (strongly agree to strongly
disagree) to statements like the following.
I want to study English because...
1. I think it will someday be useful in getting a good job.
2. it will help me better understand English-speaking people and
their way of life.
3. one needs a good knowledge of English to gain other people's
respect.
4. it will allow me to meet and converse with interesting people.
5. I need it for my job.
6. it will enable me to think and behave like English-speaking
people.
On the basis of such needs assessments, teachers are expected to
plan group and individual instruction that responds to the learners' needs.
counselor
Another role assumed by several CLT approaches is that of
counselor, similar to the way this role is defined in Community Language
Learning. In this role, the teacher-counselor is expected to exemplify an
effective communicator seeking to maximize the meshing of speaker intention and
hearer interpretation, through the use of paraphrase, confirmation, and
feedback.
GROUP PROCESS MANAGER
CLT procedures often require teachers to acquire less
teacher-centered classroom management skills. It is the teacher's
responsibility to organize the classroom as a setting for communication and
communicative activities. Guidelines for classroom practice (e.g., Littlewood
1981; Finocchiaro and Brumfit 1983) suggest that during an activity the teacher
monitors, encourages, and suppresses the inclination to supply gaps in lexis,
grammar, and strategy but notes such gaps for later commentary and
communicative practice. At the conclusion of group activities, the teacher
leads in the debriefing of the activity, pointing out alternatives
and extensions and assisting groups in self-correction discussion.
Critics have pointed out, however, that non-native teachers may feel less than
comfortable about such procedures without special training.
The focus on fluency and comprehensibility in Communicative
Language Teaching may cause anxiety among teachers accustomed to seeing error
suppression and correction as the major instructional responsibility, and who
see their primary function as preparing learners to take standardized or other
kinds of tests. A continuing teacher concern has been the possible deleterious
effect in pair or group work of imperfect modeling and student error. Although
this issue is far from resolved, it is interesting to note that recent research
findings suggest that "data contradicts the notion that other learners are
not good conversational partners because they can't provide accurate input when
it is solicited" (Porter 1983).
A wide variety of materials have been used to support
communicative approaches to language teaching. Unlike some contemporary
methodologies, such as Community Language Learning, practitioners of Communicative
Language Teaching view materials as a way of influencing the quality of
classroom interaction and language use. Materials thus have the primary role of
promoting communicative language use. We will consider three kinds of materials
currently used in CLT and label these text-based, task-based, and realia.
TEXT-BASED MATERIALS
There are numerous textbooks designed to direct
and support Communicative Language Teaching. Their tables of contents sometimes
suggest a kind of grading and sequencing of language practice not unlike those
found in structurally organized texts. Some of these are in fact written around
a largely structural syllabus, with slight reformatting to justify their claims
to be based on a communicative approach. Others, however, look very different
from previous language teaching texts. Morrow and Johnson's Communicate (1979),
for example, has none of the usual dialogues, drills, or sentence patterns and
uses visual cues, taped cues, pictures, and sentence fragments to initiate
conversation. Watcyn-Jones's Pair Work (1981) consists of two
different texts for pair work, each containing different information needed to
enact role plays and carry out other pair activities. Texts written to support
the Malay-sian English Language Syllabus (1975) likewise
represent a departure from traditional textbook modes. A typical lesson consists
of a theme (e.g., relaying information), a task analysis for thematic
development (e.g., understanding the message, asking questions to obtain
clarification, asking for more information, taking notes, ordering and
presenting information), a practice situation description (e.g., "A
caller asks to see your manager. He does not have an appointment. Gather the
necessary information from him and relay the message to your manager."), a
stimulus presentation (in the preceding case, the beginning of an office
conversation scripted and on tape), comprehension questions (e.g., "Why is
the caller in the office?"), and paraphrase exercises.
TASK-BASED MATERIALS
A variety of games, role plays, simulations, and task-based
communication activities have been prepared to support Communicative Language
Teaching classes. These typically are in the form of one-of-a-kind items:
exercise handbooks, cue cards, activity cards, pair-communication practice
materials, and student-interaction practice booklets. In pair-communication
materials, there are typically two sets of material for a pair of students,
each set containing different kinds of information. Sometimes the information
is complementary, and partners must fit their respective parts of the
"jigsaw" into a composite whole. Others assume different role
relationships for the partners (e.g., an interviewer and an interviewee). Still
others provide drills and practice material in interactional formats.
REALIA
Many proponents of Communicative Language Teaching have advocated
the use of "authentic," "from-life" materials in the
classroom. These might include language-based realia, such as signs, magazines,
advertisements, and newspapers, or graphic and visual sources around which
communicative activities can he built, such as maps, pictures, symbols, graphs,
and charts. Different kinds of objects can be used to support communicative
exercises, such as a plastic model to assemble from directions.
Communicative Language Teaching is best considered an
approach rather than a method. Thus although a reasonable degree of
theoretical consistency can be discerned at the levels of language and
learning theory, at the levels of design and procedure there is much
greater room for individual interpretation and variation than most methods
permit. It could be that one version among the various proposals for
syllabus models, exercise types, and classroom activities may gain wider
approval in the future, giving Communicative Language Teaching a status similar
to other teaching methods. On the other hand, divergent interpretations might
lead to homogeneous subgroups.
Communicative Language Teaching appeared at a time when British
language teaching was ready for a paradigm shift. Situational Language Teaching
was no longer felt to reflect a methodology appropriate for the seventies and
beyond. CLT appealed to those who sought a more humanistic approach to
teaching, one in which the interactive processes of communication received
priority. The rapid adoption and implementation of the communicative
approach also resulted from the fact that it quickly assumed the status of
orthodoxy in British language teaching circles, receiving the sanction and
support of leading British applied linguists, language specialists, publishers,
as well as institutions, such as the British Council (Richards 1985).
Now that the initial wave of enthusiasm has passed, however, some
of the claims of CLT are being looked at more critically (Swan 1985). The
adoption of a communicative approach raises important issues for teacher
training, materials development, and testing 'and evaluation. Questions that
have been raised include whether a communicative approach can be applied at all
levels in a language program, whether it is equally suited to ESL and EFL
situations, whether it requires existing grammar-based syllabuses to be
abandoned or merely revised, how such an approach can be evaluated, how
suitable it is for non-native teachers, and how it can be adopted in situations
where students must continue to take grammar-based tests. These kinds of
questions will doubtless require attention if the communicative movement in
language teaching continues to gain momentum in the future.
Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) merupakan suatu metode
pengajaran bahasa yang merupakan pengembangan dari metode-metode sebelumnya
seperti metode Situational Language Teaching dan metode Audio
Lingual. Salah satu ciri utama dari CLT adalah adanya kombinasi antara
aspek-aspek bahasa secara fungsional dan struktural. Secara struktural, CLT
menekankan pada sistem grammar atau tata bahasa, sedangkan fungsional
menekankan pada penggunaan bahasa itu.
CLT juga menekankan pada situasi,
misalnya dalam situasi yang bagaimana suatu tuturan diucapkan. Dalam CLT
terdapat berbagai kemampuan berbahasa yang terintegrasi (integrated skills)
yang mencakup kemampuan reading, writing, listening, speaking, vocabulary,
dan grammar. Jadi, melalui CLT ini para pembelajar bahasa asing
diharapkan dapat menguasai atau terampil berbahasa, tidak hanya menulis tetapi
juga berbicara dan tentunya dengan tata bahasa yang benar.
Adapun beberapa tujuan CLT antara
lain :
- Siswa akan belajar menggunakan bahasa sebagai alat untuk mengekspresikan sesuatu.
- Siswa akan menggunakan bahasa sebagai alat untuk mengekspresikan pendapat dan penilaian.
- Siswa akan belajar mengekspresikan fungsi-fungsi yang paling sesuai untuk berkomunikasi.
CLT menggunakan hampir setiap
kegiatan yang melibatkan pembelajar dalam suatu komunikasi yang autentik.
Littlewood (1981) membedakan dua jenis kegiatan:
- Kegiatan komunikasi fungsional
Kegiatan yang bertujuan untuk
mengembangkan kemampuan (skill) dan fungsi bahasa tertentu, tetapi tetap
melibatkan komunikasi.
- Kegiatan interaksi sosial
Misalnya percakapan dan diskusi,
dialog dan bermain peran (role play)
Communicative Language Teaching
Posted on February 28, 2012kurnianurainy
Communicative Language TeachingHal inilah yang sering didengungkan oleh dosen di kampus dulu. Bahwa paradigma pengajaran bahasa hendaknya diubah. Jika melihat buku-buku teks sekolah pada tahun 1970-1990an akan tampak bahwa pengajaran bahasa dalam hal ini Bahasa Inggris sangat kentara menekankan pada tata bahasa, atau grammar bahasa yang dipelajari (Grammatical competence).
Akan tetapi, bahasa adalah alat untuk berkomunikasi bukan sekedar seperangkat aturan. Jadi pengajaran bahasa sebaiknya berpedoman pada prinsip “Teach the learners to use the language” bukan “Teach the learners about the language”. Mengajarkan kepada siswa bagaimana menggunakan bahasa. Bukan mengajarkan siswa tentang bahasa yang dipelajari.
Implikasinya nanti pada akhir pengajaran evaluasi akan mengacu pada “Apa yang bisa kamu lakukan dengan bahasa (yang dipelajari)” bukan “Apa yang kamu tahu tentang bahasa (yang dipelajari)”. Jadi, Communicative Language teaching bermuara atau mempunyai tujuan akhir pada pencapaian communicative competence (kemampuan komunikasi dengan bahasa) melalui proses atau pendekatan komunikatif (Communicative approach).
Communicative approach adalah pendekatan yang dipakai di kelas dalam konteks CLT. Pendekatan itu diantaranya adalah berupa jenis-jenis aktifitas kelas yang mengarahkan siswa pada penggunaan bahasa. Seperti role play, interviews, information gap, games, language exchanges, surveys, pair work, learning by teaching, dan lain-lain.
Kesadaran akan prinsip communicative language teaching ini mulai dapat dilihat dalam pengajaran bahasa sekarang dimana buku-buku teks Bahasa Inggris telah menekankan pada pengajaran yang mengacu pada genre-based. Sehingga tampak bahwa siswa diajarkan tentang penggunaan bahasa yang mungkin mereka dapatkan di kehidupan sehari-hari.
Namun, ternyata CLT tidak serta merta harus diterapkan di semua konteks pengajaran bahasa Inggris. Dalam situasi kelas dimana tujuan siswa/peserta didik adalah untuk menguasai aspek tertentu dari bahasa Inggris (misalnya kelas persiapan tes bahasa inggris, toefl preparation, structure, dll) pengajaran menjadi lebih fleksibel.
Jika dalam kelas tertentu peserta didik memang bertujuan untuk belajar tentang tata bahasa (grammar) inggris, pengajar sebaiknya focus akan kegiatan drilling (latihan berulang-ulang). Dalam hal ini penjelasan tentang bahasa bisa dilakukan secara deduktif. Dan tidak kalah pentingnya, melatih siswa/peserta didik untuk memproduksi bahasa sesuai dengan struktur yang dipelajari merupakan salah satu cara agar pengajaran bahasa tersebut tidak hanya bermuara pada kemampuan ‘mengenal’ bahasa tapi juga ‘menggunakan’ bahasa
+ comments + 1 comments
mau tanya pak.. Communicative Activity t apa pak? lalu apa ada hubungan nyaa dengan CLT?
role play adalah salah satu contoh communicative activity?
trimakasih..
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