Communicative Language Teaching And Its Application To Spoken English Instruction

At the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, the rise of sociolinguistics, pragmatics, the theory of communicative competence, etc. started a revolution in the field of linguistics. Many linguists began to view language not only in terms of its structure, but also the communicative functions that it performs. The shift of emphasis in the aim of linguistic study has exerted a great influence on language teaching and finally it leads to a new approach in language teaching –communicative language teaching (CLT). As an approach to second or foreign language teaching, CLT emphasizes that the goal of language teaching is to develop "communicative competence"coined by Hymes, the ability not only to apply the grammatical rules of a language in order to form grammatically correct sentences, but also to know when, where and to whom to use these sentences. Hymes'broad view of communicative competence is shared by many linguists, such as Halliday, Canale and Swain, which has a considerable influence on our view of language and language learning. It is insufficient to teach students to manipulate the structures of language. They must also develop strategies related language structures and their communicative functions. It should be explored that the application of CLT in spoken English teaching with the aim of enhancing Chinese students'ability to communicate in English effectively and efficiently. The crucial part in teaching spoken language in the communicative classroom is designing communicative activities based on the information-gap principle and task-dependency principle. With proper classroom management, communicative activities such as simulation, role-play, games, problem-solving, drama, etc. are extremely helpful in developing the learner's communicative competence. Similar to other teaching approaches or methods, communicative language teaching itself is not perfect. It will no doubt have some ill effects on learners if improperly carried out. Its negative effects will also affect the learning process. What an English teacher is supposed to do is to make the best of its advantages and avoid its disadvantages after careful study of CLT.