Communicative Language Teaching: What it is (not) - Dos and Don’ts in the Classroom

Evelyn Meyer, Associate Professor of German, evelyn.meyer@slu.edu

Dep. of Languages, Literatures & Cultures, Saint Louis University

Image source: https://www.modernenglishteacher.com/using-tasks-in-a-communicative-language-teaching-classroom

¡Bienvenido! Bienvenu! Grata! καλως ΗΡΘΑΤΕ! Welcome! Willkommen! 歡迎

Small talk to get to know one another

Please go around and find someone who has their birthday in the same month you do, and after you found 2 others, introduce yourselves and then talk about these questions:

• What was fun about your summer away from teaching?
• What are you most looking forward to this school year?
• What do you hope to get out of this workshop today?

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Did these two activities use the communicative language teaching approach? How (not)? Please explain your position.

Please find someone who did one of the following, whichever applies to you, or if it is several, pick your favorite scenario.

• Traveled outside the US this summer
• Traveled to another state in the US this summer
• Traveled within Illinois and/or Missouri
• Did not travel at all, but enjoyed a staycation at home

How do you define communicative language teaching? What does it do and what does it not do? – Please give specific examples!

Feel free to refer to the activities we have done so far today already as well, but especially to your own classroom, and even the activity you have planned for later in the workshop.

Image source: https://blog.languagejourneys.com/en/communicative-language-teaching/

What is Communicative Language Teaching?

What is Communicative Language Teaching NOT?

• Solving a problem with language skills you have
• Getting ideas across and gaining/sharing information
• Using idiomatic expressions
• Students-centered
• Prep/scaffolding for conversation (lower levels) and follow up with report, etc.
• Student: risk taking (must be okay with not being perfect)
• Teacher: error tolerance (must be okay with not being perfect)
• Teachers must set up tone at beginning of academic year
• Challenging for the teacher
• Make meaningful information sharing!

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• Not literal translations
• Not stage-on-the-stage lecture
• Not grammar-focused
• Do not use language as a weapon! (Students not allowed to mock other students because of mistakes.) Language should not hurt others!
• It is not just a task!

The items in both lists were generated during the workshop by participants of the 1818 Professional Development Day for foreign language teachers as part of the Summer Connection Conference, July 30, 2024.

• Unscripted, spontaneous language production
• emphasizes interaction of learners with one another and the instructor, both as a means and as the ultimate goal of learning
• working with „authentic texts/materials“ not produced for language learning
• converse about personal experiences
• focus on learning experience in addition to learning the target language
• priority and goal is to be able to communicate in target language, not primarily to achieve grammatical competence
• teaches sound oral and verbal skills prior to teaching reading and writing.

Image source : https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=426016369567819&id=100064783775888&set=a.151730510329741&locale=pl_PL

What are communicative classroom activities? or what makes them communicative (or not)?

• role-play: instructor sets location for conversation and goal/task, students converse in pairs for set time – students can practice and improve their communication skills, make it clear that this is a conversation, not an exercise in making utterances with set phrases and vocabulary, they need to create with language - pairs
• interviews: develops interpersonal skills in the target language. Students are given a list of questions, students take turn asking and answering questions (best used in lower levels, because of targeted nature of activity, higher levels should have unpredictable conversations in the target language where neither questions nor answers are scripted or expected) - pairs
• Group work: collaborative task with flexible format, you can assign students specific or individual tasks, they can break down the task to manageable units and then collaborate and discuss to pull it all together and present at the end; this makes working with authentic materials easier and less overwhelming - 4-6 people

Communicative classroom activities

• Information gap: collaborative activity whose purpose it is for students to find information in the target language that was previously unknown to them. This allows students to communicate about things unknow to them and find ways to find the information and how to communicate it with their skill set in the target language, ideally, they find the information in authentic materials (books/articles/online etc.) This needs effective preparation, especially with vocabulary and possibly grammar - multiple students
• Opinion sharing: a content-based activity whose purpose is to engage students‘ conversational skills, while talking about something they care about - pairs or small groups
• Scavenger Hunt: mingling activity that promotes open interaction between students, giving them the opportunity to talk to several students as they find the information - multiple students

The different approaches in comparison:�� Which ones do you use when and why? – Self Examination

Image source: https://blog.languagejourneys.com/en/communicative-language-teaching/

Let’s analyze a classic example from our textbooks

My example is from our beginning German textbook: Sag Mal, 3^rd ed. Vista Higher Learning, 2021

Cultural Reading (in English, chapter 1, but let’s pretend this is in the TL and students have had 3+ months of instruction): Are these activities CLT?

How would you describe these activities vis-à-vis a CLT approach? Would this be homework or in class work? And why?

What kind of activities for this reading text would you do with your students that use the CLT approach?

What I did in class after assigning the reading and the T/F exercises as homework:�Work with a partner and find similarities and differences between the German and your own school system using German for your discussion

Similarities

Differences

• elementary school then secondary school
• both have Kindergärten

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• Kindergarten not part of public school system in Germany
• grades: 1-6 in Germany, A-F in USA
• 3 types of HS in Germany, 1 in USA
• No Schultüten in USA
• no cafeteria in schools in Germany
• social stigma in Germany based on HS type attended, in USA stigma comes from economic standing in school district and how well students perform in it
• only some HS diplomas in Germany allow you to attend university

Das deutsche Schulsystem: (Work with new chapter vocabulary)

My First day of Elementary School

Das deutsche Schulsystem

Please draw a graph for the American/your native educational system or your school experience.

With your partner/group, compare the two systems. What are the strengths and weaknesses about either system?

Image source: http://atelierallemand.unblog.fr/2012/02/12/schulsystem/

What do you study? Which courses are you taking this semester? Which ones are for your major/minor? Which ones are for the university core? How will they help you achieve your career goals?

Please speak with at least 5 different people in the course.

The questions provided by Arline Cravens

• What is a true communicative activity?  
• How can I implement more communicative activities in my classroom?  
• How can I incorporate more authentic materials?  
• How can I connect culture with communication?  
• How can I connect oral communication with written communication? 
• What would a rubric for a communicative activity look like? 

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Assessment rubric for speaking (component on a quiz – beginning level & formal)

• ___ / 5 Content & quality of conversation overall (on topic)
• ___ / 5 Cultural knowledge and cultural comparison
• ___ / 5 Fluency of conversation / spontaneous language production
• ___ / 2 Vocabulary
• ___ / 2 Grammar
• ___ / 2 Pronunciation
• ___ / 2 time (can they sustain a conversation for the specified length of time?)

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Dos and Don’ts in Communicative Language Teaching

• What kind of CLT activities did we do during this session (or did I do in the sample lesson)?
• How much language did you/the students produce?
• What mattered? What mattered less?
• What roles did grammatical accuracy and scripted language play in these activities? How should you handle grammatical inaccuracies?

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Seriously, let your students speak, let them create with language, let them communicate and let them learn from errors along the way!