¡Descarga evolucion didáctica lenguas extranjeras y más Apuntes en PDF de Idioma Inglés solo en Docsity!
- Evolución de la didáctica de las lenguas. Tendencias actuales de la didáctica del inglés lengua extranjera. Los enfoques comunicativos.
1.1. INTRODUCTION
1.1. What Is Communicative Language Teaching? 1.2. The goals of language teaching
1.3. How learners learn a language
1.4. The Kinds of Classroom Activities That Best Facilitate Learning
1.5. The Roles of Teachers and Learners in the Classroom
1.2. EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE TEACHING. The Background to CLT
1.6. Phase 1: traditional approaches (up to the late 1960s)
1.7. Phase 2: classic communicative language teaching (1970s to 1990s)
1.3. CURRENT COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING
1.8. Ten Core Assumptions of Current Communicative Language Teaching
1.4. CONCLUSIONS
INTRODUCTION
The ever-growing need for good communication skills in English has created a huge demand for English teaching around the world. And opportunities to learn English are provided in many different ways. The worldwide demand for English has created an enormous demand for quality language teaching and language teaching materials and resources. The demand for an appropriate teaching methodology is therefore as strong as ever.
What Is Communicative Language Teaching?
Communicative language teaching can be understood as a set of principles about the goals of language teaching, how learners learn a language, the kinds of classroom activities that best facilitate learning, and the roles of teachers and learners in the classroom.
Let us examine each of these issues in turn.
The Goals of Language Teaching
Communicative language teaching sets as its goal the teaching of communicative competence. What does this term mean? Perhaps we can clarify this term by first comparing it with the concept of grammatical competence. Grammatical competence refers to the knowledge we have of a language that accounts for our ability to produce sentences in a language. It refers to knowledge of the building blocks of sentences (e.g., parts of speech, tenses, phrases, clauses, sentence patterns) and how sentences are formed. Grammatical competence is the focus of many grammar practice books, which typically present a rule of grammar on one page, and provide exercises to practice using the rule on the other page. The unit of analysis and practice is typically the sentence. While grammatical competence is an important dimension of language learning, it is clearly not all that is involved in learning a language since one can master the rules of sentence formation in a language and still not be very successful at being able to use the language for meaningful communication. It is the latter capacity which is understood by the term communicative competence.
Communicative competence includes the following aspects of language knowledge:
- Knowing how to use language for a range of different purposes and functions
- Knowing how to vary our use of language according to the setting and the participants (e.g., knowing when to use formal and informal speech or when to use language appropriately for written as opposed to spoken communication)
- Knowing how to produce and understand different types of texts (e.g., narratives, reports, interviews, conversations)
- Knowing how to maintain communication despite having limitations in one’s language knowledge (e.g., through using different kinds of communication strategies)
How Learners Learn a Language
In planning a language course, decisions have to be made about the content of the course, including decisions about what vocabulary and grammar to teach at the beginning, intermediate, and advanced levels, and which skills and microskills to teach and in what sequence. Decisions about these issues belong to the field of syllabus design or course design. Decisions about how best to teach the contents of a syllabus belong to the field of methodology. Language teaching has seen many changes in ideas about syllabus design and methodology in the last 50 years, and CLT prompted a rethinking of approaches to syllabus design and methodology.
We may conveniently group trends in language teaching in the last 50 years into three phases:
- Phase 1: traditional approaches (up to the late 1960s)
- Phase 2: classic communicative language teaching (1970s to 1990s)
- Phase 3: current communicative language teaching (late 1990s to the present)
Let us first consider the transition from traditional approaches to what we can refer to as classic communicative language teaching.
Phase 1: Traditional Approaches (up to the late 1960s)
Traditional approaches to language teaching gave priority to grammatical competence as the basis of language proficiency. They were based on the belief that grammar could be learned through direct instruction and through a methodology that made much use of repetitive practice and drilling. The approach to the teaching of grammar was a deductive one: students are presented with grammar rules and then given opportunities to practice using them, as opposed to an inductive approach in which students are given examples of sentences containing a grammar rule and asked to work out the rule for themselves. It was assumed that language learning meant building up a large repertoire of sentences and grammatical patterns and learning to produce these accurately and quickly in the appropriate situation. Once a basic command of the language was established through oral drilling and controlled practice, the four skills were introduced, usually in the sequence of speaking, listening, reading and writing. Techniques that were often employed included memorization of dialogs, question-and-answer practice, substitution drills, and various forms of guided speaking and writing practice. Great attention to accurate pronunciation and accurate mastery of grammar was stressed from the very beginning stages of language learning, since it was assumed that if students made errors, these would quickly become a permanent part of the learner’s speech.
Methodologies based on these assumptions include Audiolingualism (in North America) (also known as the Aural-Oral Method), and the Structural-Situational Approach in the United Kingdom (also known as Situational Language Teaching). Syllabuses during this period consisted of word lists and grammar lists, graded across levels.
In a typical lesson according to the situational approach, a three-phase sequence, known as the P-P-P cycle, was often employed: Presentation, Practice, Production..
The P-P-P lesson structure has been widely used in language teaching materials and continues in modified form to be used today. Many speaking- or grammar-based lessons in contemporary materials, for example, begin with an introductory phase in which new teaching points are presented and illustrated in some way and where the focus is on comprehension and recognition. Examples of the new teaching point are given in different contexts. This is often followed by a second phase in which the students practice using the new teaching point in a controlled context using content often provided by the teacher. The third phase is a free practice period during which students try out the teaching point in a free context and in which real or simulated communication is the focus.
The P-P-P lesson format and the assumptions on which it is based have been strongly criticized in recent years, however. Skehan (1996, p.18), for example, comments: The underlying theory for a P-P-P approach has now been discredited. The belief that a precise focus on a particular form leads to learning and automatization (that learners will learn what is taught in the order in which it is taught) no longer carries much credibility in linguistics or psychology.
Under the influence of CLT theory, grammar-based methodologies such as the P-P-P have given way to functional and skills-based teaching, and accuracy activities such as drill and grammar practice have been replaced by fluency activities based on interactive small-group work. This led to the emergence of a “fluency-first” pedagogy (Brumfit
- in which students’ grammar needs are determined on the basis of performance on fluency tasks rather than predetermined by a grammatical syllabus. We can distinguish two phases in this development, which we will call classic communicative language teaching and current communicative language teaching
Phase 2: Classic Communicative Language Teaching (1970s to 1990s)
In the 1970s, a reaction to traditional language teaching approaches began and soon spread around the world as older methods such as Audiolingualism and Situational Language Teaching fell out of fashion. The centrality of grammar in language teaching and learning was questioned, since it was argued that language ability involved much more than grammatical competence. While grammatical competence was needed to produce grammatically correct sentences, attention shifted to the knowledge and skills needed to use grammar and other aspects of language appropriately for different communicative purposes such as making requests, giving advice, making suggestions, describing wishes and needs, and so on. What was needed in order to use language communicatively was communicative competence. This was a broader concept than that of grammatical competence, and included knowing what to say and how to say it appropriately based on the situation, the participants, and their roles and intentions. Traditional grammatical and vocabulary syllabuses and teaching methods did not include information of this kind. It was assumed that this kind of knowledge would be picked up informally.
The notion of communicative competence was developed within the discipline of linguistics (or more accurately, the subdiscipline of sociolinguistics) and appealed to many within the language teaching profession, who argued that communicative
CURRENT TRENDS IN COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING
Since the 1990s, the communicative approach has been widely implemented. Because it describes a set of very general principles grounded in the notion of communicative competence as the goal of second and foreign language teaching, and a communicative syllabus and methodology as the way of achieving this goal, communicative language teaching has continued to evolve as our understanding of the processes of second language learning has developed.
Current communicative language teaching theory and practice thus draws on a number of different educational paradigms and traditions. And since it draws on a number of diverse sources, there is no single or agreed upon set of practices that characterize current communicative language teaching. Rather, communicative language teaching today refers to a set of generally agreed upon principles that can be applied in different ways, depending on the teaching context, the age of the learners, their level, their learning goals, and so on. The following core assumptions or variants of them underlie current practices in communicative language teaching.
Ten Core Assumptions of Current Communicative Language Teaching
- Second language learning is facilitated when learners are engaged in interaction and meaningful communication.
- Effective classroom learning tasks and exercises provide opportunities for students to negotiate meaning, expand their language resources, notice how language is used, and take part in meaningful interpersonal exchange.
- Meaningful communication results from students processing content that is relevant, purposeful, interesting, and engaging.
- Communication is a holistic process that often calls upon the use of several language skills or modalities.
- Language learning is facilitated both by activities that involve inductive or discovery learning of underlying rules of language use and organization, as well as by those involving language analysis and reflection.
- Language learning is a gradual process that involves creative use of language, and trial and error. Although errors are a normal Communicative Language Teaching Today 23 product of learning, the ultimate goal of learning is to be able to use the new language both accurately and fluently.
- Learners develop their own routes to language learning, progress at different rates, and have different needs and motivations for language learning.
- Successful language learning involves the use of effective learning and communication strategies.
- The role of the teacher in the language classroom is that of a facilitator, who creates a classroom climate conducive to language learning and provides opportunities for students to use and practice the language and to reflect on language use and language learning.
- The classroom is a community where learners learn through collaboration and sharing.
Current approaches to methodology draw on earlier traditions in communicative language teaching and continue to make reference to some extent to traditional approaches. Thus classroom activities typically have some of the following characteristics:
- They seek to develop students’ communicative competence through linking grammatical development to the ability to communicate. Hence, grammar is not taught in isolation but often arises out of a communicative task, thus creating a need for specific items of grammar. Students might carry out a task and then reflect on some of the linguistic characteristics of their performance.
- They create the need for communication, interaction, and negotiation of meaning through the use of activities such as problem solving, information sharing, and role play.
- They provide opportunities for both inductive as well as deductive learning of grammar.
- They make use of content that connects to students’ lives and interests.
- They allow students to personalize learning by applying what they have learned to their own lives
Classroom materials typically make use of authentic texts to create interest and to provide valid models of language. Approaches to language teaching today seek to capture the rich view of language and language learning assumed by a communicative view of language. Jacobs and Farrell (2003) see the shift toward CLT as marking a paradigm shift in our thinking about teachers, learning, and teaching. They identify key components of this shift as follows:
- Focusing greater attention on the role of learners rather than the external stimuli learners are receiving from their environment. Thus, the center of attention shifts from the teacher to the student. This shift is generally known as the move from teachercentered instruction to learner-centered instruction.
- Focusing greater attention on the learning process rather than the products that learners produce. This shift is known as the move from product-oriented to process-oriented instruction. 3. Focusing greater attention on the social nature of learning rather than on students as separate, decontextualized individuals
- Thinking skills: Language should serve as a means of developing higher-order thinking skills, also known as critical and creative thinking. In language teaching, this means that students do not learn language for its own sake but in order to develop and apply their thinking skills in situations that go beyond the language classroom.
- Alternative assessment: New forms of assessment are needed to replace traditional multiple-choice and other items that test lower-order skills. Multiple forms of assessment (e.g., 26 Communicative Language Teaching Today observation, interviews, journals, portfolios) can be used to build a comprehensive picture of what students can do in a second language.
- Teachers as co-learners: The teacher is viewed as a facilitator who is constantly trying out different alternatives, i.e., learning through doing. In language teaching, this has led to an interest in action research and other forms of classroom investigation.
These changes in thinking have not led to the development of a single model of CLT that can be applied in all settings. Rather, a number of different language teaching approaches have emerged which reflect different responses to the issues identified above. While there is no single syllabus model that has been universally accepted, a language syllabus today needs to include systematic coverage of the many different components of communicative competence, including language skills, content, grammar, vocabulary, and functions. Different syllabus types within a communicative orientation to language teaching employ different routes to developing communicative competence. We will now examine some of the different approaches that are currently in use around the world and which can be viewed as falling within the general framework of communicative language teaching.
CONCLUSIONS
Since its inception in the 1970s, communicative language teaching has passed through a number of different phases. In its first phase, a primary concern was the need to develop a syllabus and teaching approach that was compatible with early conceptions of communicative competence. This led to proposals for the organization of syllabuses in terms of functions and notions rather than grammatical structures. Later the focus shifted to procedures for identifying learners’ communicative needs and this resulted in proposals to make needs analysis an essential component of communicative methodology. At the same time, methodologists focused on the kinds of classroom activities that could be used to implement a communicative approach, such as group work, task work, and information- gap activities. Today CLT can be seen as describing a set of core principles about language learning and teaching, as summarized above, assumptions which can be applied in different ways and which address different aspects of the processes of teaching and learning. Some focus centrally on the input to the learning process. Thus content-based teaching stresses that the content or subject matter of teaching drives the whole language learning process. Some teaching proposals focus more directly on instructional processes. Task-based instruction for example, advocates the use of specially designed instructional tasks as the basis of learning. Others, such as competency-based instruction and text-based teaching, focus on the outcomes of learning and use outcomes or products as the starting point in planning teaching. Today CLT continues in its classic form as seen in the huge range of course books and other teaching resources that cite CLT as the source of their
methodology. In addition, it has influenced many other language teaching approaches that subscribe to a similar philosophy of language teaching.
