Have you seen Juup’s new book chapter:
Chapter 5: What is communicative language teaching
“There are two reasons for why I wrote this chapter called ‘what is communicative language teaching’. As a tutor on an MA TESOL course I meet English language teachers from around the world, and a common question I get is: What is communicative language teaching? Trying to respond to this question again and again I have come to understand that there is no straightforward answer. This is especially true if you imagine how communicative language teaching (CLT) may change as it is interpreted by teachers in very different parts of the world. This brings me to the second reason for why I wrote this chapter. There is currently a ‘movement’ within TESOL that says it is inappropriate to use a standard teaching method across different teaching contexts and with different learners. CLT is often a ‘casualty’ of this argument.
This is no surprise as there have been frequent attempts to impose a standard version of CLT in teaching contexts around the world. I wrote the chapter because I think it is a mistake to reject CLT on this basis, and I believe it is a mistake to think that there is such a think as a standard version of CLT. Instead, I think that because communication can be understood in many different ways, communicative language teaching can be, and probably should be, understood differently by teachers working in different contexts around the world. You may say, then, that I wrote the chapter to encourage English language teachers to formulate their own understanding of what communicative language teaching is, thereby saving me the effort of trying to answer a question that they can answer so much better themselves.”
This chapter appears in the following edited volume:
- Introducing Applied Linguistics: Concepts and Skills
- edited by Susan Hunston and David Oakey
- Published by Routledge (2010)
Read more about the authors here including LTE’s Juup Stelma.
