Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), Role of Grammar and Teachers' Beliefs

Abstract

This review article focuses on Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) highlighting the role of form based activities and the importance of teachers' beliefs concerning English language teaching. Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) has been used by language teachers for the last few decades in second language classroom. It has a long history in the second language teaching scenario throughout the world. This approach to language teaching has many methods used by language teachers. The main focus in all of the methods is on developing learners' communicative skills through the use of authentic language in meaningful contexts. Thus, the study is an attempt to highlight the difference between communicative competence and grammatical accuracy underscoring the point of view of some of the prominent scholars and researchers concerning the use of form-based activities in the CLT classroom. This is a review article and literature related to the topic has been reviewed and synthesized. Despite some of the strong criticism on the use of grammar in CLT classroom, many scholars believe in integrating communicative and form-based activities in the language teaching classroom. The researchers believe that integrating communicative activities, teaching of grammatical structures inductively and teachers' beliefs can result in meaningful teaching and learning of English language.

Headnote

Abstract

This review article focuses on Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) highlighting the role of form based activities and the importance of teachers' beliefs concerning English language teaching. Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) has been used by language teachers for the last few decades in second language classroom. It has a long history in the second language teaching scenario throughout the world. This approach to language teaching has many methods used by language teachers. The main focus in all of the methods is on developing learners' communicative skills through the use of authentic language in meaningful contexts. Thus, the study is an attempt to highlight the difference between communicative competence and grammatical accuracy underscoring the point of view of some of the prominent scholars and researchers concerning the use of form-based activities in the CLT classroom. This is a review article and literature related to the topic has been reviewed and synthesized. Despite some of the strong criticism on the use of grammar in CLT classroom, many scholars believe in integrating communicative and form-based activities in the language teaching classroom. The researchers believe that integrating communicative activities, teaching of grammatical structures inductively and teachers' beliefs can result in meaningful teaching and learning of English language.

Keywords: Communicative Language Teaching, Form-Based Activities, Communicative Competence, Linguistic Competence

Introduction

The era of communicative language teaching began in the beginning of 1970s as this concept spread mostly after the research contributions of experts of Council of Europe (Al-Mutawa and Kailani, 1989). To be precise, according to Al-Mutawa and Kailani(1989)the concept started and grew mainly since the mid of 1970s as a consequence of the Council of Europe experts' efforts. It is believed that Long's Interaction Hypothesis (1983a, 1983b, 1996) has greatly influenced the beginning of CLT. However, Chomsky could be credited for this method as this can be traced back to his works. In the 1960s, Chomsky put forward the notions of 'competence' and 'performance' in response to the predominant language teaching methods such as: audio-lingual method or structural method. According to Hedge (2000) 'Competence' and 'performance' were later on developed by Hymes into 'communicative competence' which refers to speech governing rules such as social, cultural and psychological rules, which bound the learners to use a particular speech. Hymes was concerned with the cultural and social knowledge that is necessary for the speakers to develop an insight into the usage of linguistic structures. His views dealt with both knowledge and the ability to apply that knowledge in practical communication in real or realistic situations. The available literature which identified the aspects of Hymes' concept of "communicative competence" underscores grammatical or linguistic competence, pragmatic or sociolinguistic competence, strategic competence, discourse competence and fluency (Richards & Rogers, 1986; Hedge, 2000).Hymes argues that the focus of linguistics should be communicative competence which means the ability to generate appropriate sentences. He is of the view that "an adequate approach must distinguish and investigate four aspects of competence: systemic potential; appropriateness; occurrence; feasibility" (as cited in Coulthard, 1985). Since these developments, the L2 (second language) teachers and instructors have devised diverse techniques for communicative teaching in their language classrooms. The interaction and active involvement of the learners have been the central points of CLT; hence, the instructors invariably provide activities which comprise pair or group work.

CLT Approach and Methods

Richards and Rogers (1986) opine that it would be more suitable to consider CLTas an approach and have differentiated it from a language teaching method. Methods are fixed teaching systems which have prescribed practices and techniques, on the other hand, an approach represents philosophies of language teaching which can be understood in many ways and similarly can be applied in a different number of ways in the classroom practice (Rogers, 2001).

According to Richards and Rogers (1986)a holistic theory of language teaching underlies the Communicative Approach which can be considered to have language as communication as its base. Widdowson (1984) furthers this point by including the usage and use of the language and states that these two aspects are part of this approach. The Communicative Language Teaching primarily aims at preparing the non-native language learners to engage in negotiating meaning, therefore, the language instructors do not deal strictly with the errors of the learners. Moreover, the range of activities and exercises is very wide and the learner is the centre of all of these activities performed in the language classroom (Al-Mutawa and Kailani, 1989). However, this does not mean that the role of the teacher can be negated or ignored in this approach. In other words, a proficient, skilful and reflective language instructor remains a strong basis for the effective achievement of the objectives using CLT.

According to Krashen and Terrell (1983) the different methods used in the communicative teaching cover structured input, task-based instruction, immersion and The Natural Approach. The teaching of grammar, in communicative language teaching, CLT is one of the main issues and has been long debated, which has been discussed in detail in this paper. There have been many lists for the activities in the CLT classroom. Nunan (1991) has listed the general characteristics and principles applied in CLT which are:

1. An emphasis given to learning for communication through target language interaction,

2. Authentic texts introduction into the situation where learning takes place,

3. Providing opportunities to concentrate on language as well as management of language learning processes,

4. Improvement of the learner's learning experiences as important elements to learning,

5. To link classroom activities for language learning with language performance outside.

The Communicative Language Teaching instructors claim that Nunan's (1991) list of features highlights that the main focus in the CLT classroom is the needs and desires of the learners. Similarly, it also describes the strong connection between the language practice in the classroom and language performance outside the classroom. This list makes it easy for the practitioners to decide that any teaching practice that develops communicative competence of the learners in are all learning context is an authentic form of language teaching. Through communication meanings are conveyed by the people to develop a common understanding and shared meaning; Vygotsky (as cited in Bentham, 2002) has termed this shared understanding as inter subjectivity. Moreover according to him this inter subjectivity is reached both by reading information and discussing it with each other. In addition, collaboration and cooperation are the main outcomes of communication among people, in this case, the language learners in a language classroom. The communicative language teaching that gives emphasis only to meaning with little or no attention to forms cannot be enough for the language learners to achieve the expected native-like fluency and accuracy (Pica, 2000). Although previously according to scholars such as Krashen (1982, 1985) grammar instruction has limited role to play in second language acquisition. The revision of Interaction Hypothesis by Long (1996) made Communicative Language Teaching scholars highly interested in integrating form-focused instruction and communicative activities in their language classrooms (Spada&Lightbown, 2009). These conflicting arguments show that the importance of grammar in CLT should be rationalized and only teacher beliefs should not affect teaching practices in English language classrooms.

Communicative Competence vs. Grammatical Accuracy

Being an approach,CLT is supported by different hypotheses which have been derived from the theories of language and second language learning and teaching. Researchers and practitioners are of the view that it is an approach which offersa number of language teaching techniques and methods for the classroom teaching. Brown (2002), while referring to Nunan, says that the focus has shifted to align classroom activities with processes involved in second language acquisition. Dialogues, games, role plays and group work are some of the classroom activities that are used by a teacher who uses CLT; these activities make communication among the learners a basic principle and allow the teacher to be a moderator and a guide for the students.

The primary focus on function over form is emphasized by the CLT advocates; they focus on the language fluency instead of teaching vocabulary and grammar as discrete units, it is a shift which is largely influenced by Krahsen, who emphasizes on meaningful input and communication instead of focusing on rules of grammar and memorization (Lightbown &Spada, 2006). Krashen in collaboration with Terrell puts forward the Natural Approach whose premise is that acquisition can take place in the classroom by providing acquisition like environment to the learners. They postulated five hypotheses for second language learning form this proposition. In his learning and acquisition hypothesis, Krashen differentiates language learning from language acquisition. According to him rules and forms are learnt in learning, and in acquisition unlike learning the learners are exposed to input in the target language. Similarly, the use of authentic texts is important in CLT classrooms and according to Larsen-Freeman and Anderson (2011) authentic material provides an environment to real communication in the classroom which is an important aspect of CLT. The use of authentic texts can best fulfil the basic communicative purpose of communicative language teaching and learning the rules and memorization of structures come as a result of communication and discussion and are never taught directly and explicitly. In their lesson Larsen-Freeman and Anderson have used sports columns of a newspaper from which they teach different forms of language for one function. These different forms are based on real life communication which implies that CLT focuses on preparing the language learners for real life meaningful communication. It further implies that though the communicative competence is the primary focus of this approach, however, this communicative competence could not be realized without learning the form and mastering the linguistic aspects of the language. Therefore, it can be easily said that communication and interaction with others to develop learners' communicative competence in L2 is the fundamental goal of CLT (Canale& Swain, 1980; Mochida, 2002).

Rickheit, Strohner and Vorwerg (2008) argue that communicative competence refers to effective and appropriate conversation during communication. According to them effective conversation is outcome oriented and appropriate conversation refers to a conversation which takes place in a proper context with appropriate forms depending upon the real situation of the social interaction (Rickheit, Strohner, & Vorwerg, 2008, p. 16).

Savignon (1972) was of the view that learners have communicative competence if they can use the language in real communication or real communicative environment where they have spontaneous interaction with people. Savignon (1976) explains and expands the point further and says that in such communication meaning is negotiated; it is a step forward to linguistic structures. Where Savignon (1972) emphasized spontaneity in communicative competence, Hymes focused on appropriateness, fluency and accuracy (linguistic proficiency) in a particular context.

Swain (1985) lists four aspects of competence: linguistic, discourse competence, strategic, and sociolinguistic competence, which according to him are mandatory for learners to gain communicative competence. The use of lexical items and grammatical structures is the part of linguistic competence. In order to have linguistic competence a mastery of lexis and structures is very important (Canale, 1983; Canale& Swain, 1980).

Sociolinguistic competence deals with learner's ability to use language appropriately in different situations. Discourse competence refers to speakers' ability to use appropriate as well as meaningful language in a particular context. In other words it deals with the use and the usage of a language. Strategic competence deals with the ability to use different strategies to enhance linguistic, sociolinguistic and discourse competencies.

Studies prove that each of this competence plays a very vital role to acquire and develop communicative competence. Although some of the research scholars and teachers seem to deemphasize grammatical accuracy when they employ CLT approach in their CLT classrooms for the language learners. Here it is important to state a difference between communicative ability and communicative competence (Savignon, 2002).

All these different aspects contribute to the development of communicative competence, which means that linguistic competence also plays an important role in acquiring the communicative competence. However, some of the classroom practitioners ignore the role of grammar and grammatical accuracy in teaching English when they use CLT approach in their English language classrooms.

Communicative competence is different form communicative ability; the former refers to negotiating meaning whereas the later refers to the ability to use linguistic structures in an appropriate way. The former refers to meaning whereas the later refers to form. Therefore, the learning of grammar seems important to acquire communicative competence.

Grammar and Teachers' Beliefs

As mentioned earlier, the communicative approach for language teaching focuses engaging students in meaningful communication in learning the language (Larsen-Freeman & Anderson, 2011). It means that CLT aims at enabling language learners to use language in real situations and to communicate purposefully. It implies that fluency should be preferred to grammatical accuracy. That is why those grammatical mistakes are tolerated by teachers using this approach as pointing out grammatical mistakes at an earlier stage and correcting students' mistakes can hinder students' fluency which is not desirable in this approach. However, the researchers feel that it would be more helpful for students to learn a language when both the form and function are integrated. But the use of forms should be meaningful and appropriate following the rules of semantics and pragmatics respectively (Nho, 2005). As a result there has been an increase in the form-focused teaching as compared with the meaning-focused instruction which consists of meaning based tasks and activities.

The inclusion of grammar in teaching instruction in CLT has both supporters and opponents. Scholars such as Prabhu (1987) are against explicit grammatical instructions in classroom whereas some scholars such as (Spada&Lightbown, I993)are of the view that grammar is a necessary component of ELT pedagogy and should be included even in Communicative language Teaching. Krashen is of the view that acquisition can take place better if learners are given exposure to sufficient linguistic input. He differentiates between learning and acquisition of language. In learning the grammatical rules are learned whereas acquisition takes place in a natural environment where there is sufficient linguistic input. Acquisition helps fluency whereas learning monitors the use of appropriate and correct rules and as such it filters fluency of learners.

Form-focused teaching is important and necessary for the development of communicative competence (Swain, 1985). It is evident from the studies in which the students who were immersed in the linguistic input without teaching explicit grammatical structures to them and were involved in interactive discussions, but they had grammatical errors in their utterances. Williams (1995) identified that side-lining form focused activities resulted in the learners' grammatical inaccuracy.

On the other hand it is argued that communicative activities and form-focused language teaching must be integrated and combined for better effect. For example Wang (2009) views that if the forms are learnt in real situations the learners pay more attention to these and the forms become part of their memories. Lee and Van Patten (2003) posit that structured input activities are one of ways of the communicative approach to grammar. This kind of teaching can guide students for giving concentration to the target language by arranging input which the language instructors design according to the context by combining form and content. These activities are termed as "structured input activities". Meaningful contexts are the hallmark of such activities. The basic proposition of these activities is to enhance the awareness of the English language learners. Teachers believe, according to some of the recent studies, grammar as necessary part in second language teaching (Farrell and Lim, 2005), hence, they recommend instruction of grammar and exercises of grammar too. Wang (2009) opines that teachers consider grammar drills very important in teaching learning process. Wang, however, has not excluded communicative activities from practice in teaching second language in this study. In order to enable the learners to speak fluently their role cannot be denied. It shows that there is a wide gap in what the English language teachers believe concerning teaching grammar in CLT and what they practice.

Brown (2000) views that teacher's grammar by giving students exposure to different grammatical categories implicitly reducing students exposure to explicit grammatical structure. It shows that explicit grammar teaching is not the focus of attention in CLT.Ausubel (1960) was an influencing factor in initiating the principle of immersed grammar in teaching and learning of English. He opined that the teaching and learning of English could be made more meaningful in this way, believing that the background knowledge of the learners could be activated when the language input is related to their new learning experiences. Authentic language plays an important role in achieving meaningful learning. The goal of CLT according to Richards (2006) is to enable the learner communicative competence prior to achieving grammatical competence. A learner is said to be communicatively competent if s/he can use a specific language according to appropriate context keeping in view the setting, the purpose of the communication and the participants. Furthermore, a communicatively competent learner can use multifarious communicative strategies when needed. One of the hall marks of CLT is achieving communicative competence rather than grammatical competence because sometimes language users know grammatical rules but cannot express themselves in certain situations particularly when involved in meaningful communication.

CLT and Teachers' Beliefs

Different research methods and theories contributed to CLT have been enlisted by Mangubhai et al. in 2007 discussing the different constructs of CLT which are environment, classroom, teachers and learners' roles and their attitudes towards errors and instruction of grammar. Mangubhai et al. (2007) claim that a comprehensive view of CLT and its implementation in foreign language classrooms has no evidence even no authentic text is available that can guide the practitioners how to implement CLT practically. Nevertheless, Joyce and Weil's (1994) frame work is suggested that may come near to the satisfaction level of the practitioners and the scholars who advocate CLT (Mangubhai et al. 2007). This shows the varied activities and methods used in CLT classrooms. Some scholars have also conducted studies regarding what the teachers believe and what they implement in classrooms (Hiep, 2007). He identified the multifaceted practices of teachers and their beliefs about Communicative Language Teaching and found that this approach could offer different ways to develop students' comprehension. He has given different explanations of the approach and has discussed teachers' understanding of the method and that what they think about its implications in the classrooms (p. 193). The results reveal that the teachers opined about the potential of success in the learners who are taught with the help of CLT. With regard to the use of CLT, the teachers stated that there was a strong vacuum between the beliefs and the practice and they needed to create activities which consist of the meaningful communication that would help enhance the learning process of the language learners. The research conducted by Hiep (2007) foregrounds that the teachers have positive attitudes to CLT but the methods and the activities which are used by the teachers in the classroom to realize the principles remain a point of concern as the teachers are not clear about it. The teachers knew about the different constructs of CLT, nonetheless, some of them viewed that students did not have motivation concerning the use of some activities in language classrooms because they felt that English was not used for communicative purposes in their society. Cultural restrictions, some teachers believe are also a barrier in the application of CLT in classrooms. Hesitation, shyness, criticism and many other factors which are present in the culture also become factors against the practice of CLT activities in the classroom.

All these studies conducted on the beliefs of teachers and their attitudes highlight the varied difficulties in the proper use CLT. It is often debated that communicative language teaching approach is very vast and teachers are unable to explain the boundaries and activities of CLT which is a barrier in its appropriate implementation. In the same way, some culture-related issues exist in CLT because some cultures do not allow close interaction among teachers and students and students and students. Similarly, teachers' use of traditional methods also interfere their use of CLT as they have been used to practicing them for a long time in their profession. Likewise, new teachers use the methods through which they have been taught as students. In addition, Borg (2009) is of the view that most of the teaching techniques employed by the teachers depend upon the way through which they have been taught and these practices have undeniable impact in the language teaching process. This complex situation in the teachers' minds creates difficulties for the teachers to apply CLT in language classrooms.

Borg (2009) reviewed different studies about English language teaching. He highlighted that teachers did not necessarily practice the teaching methods that they believed were the most effective. In other words, there was a huge gap between what the teachers thought was the best method and what they actually did in the classroom. Borg (2009) believes that the use of a teaching method by a teacher largely depends on their perceptions, the contextual factors and practices.

Conclusion

Communicative Language Teaching focuses mainly on communicative activities which are arranged in realistic and meaningful situations to enhance the communicative competence of the learners. However, the researchers feel that linguistic competence and knowing the structures of the target language also contribute to the communicative competence of language learners. Thus amalgamation of communicative activities with form based activities is viewed as an effective strategy in teaching a second or foreign language depending also on the contextual factors. The researchers believe that involving language learners in communicative activities, inculcating linguistic structures in the language learners inductively and teachers' beliefs have a positive impact on the teaching and learning processes. CLT is an approach which has multiple methods; the core of all of the methods is communicative activities. The implementation of CLT in English language teaching depends largely on the teachers' beliefs, thinking and understanding. The role of grammar is very important but it is not a necessary part of communicative language teaching classroom. Recently many scholars emphasize integrating communicative activities and form-focused activities so that the learners can acquire both fluency and grammatical accuracy in learning the target language.

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