The communicative approach The Communicative Approach or simply Communicative Language teaching (CLT) is one of the most important

and current application in language teaching nowadays thus it works as an umbrella approach for the current development of methods. Its revolutionary change from the forms or structures to the use or functions of language and its focused on communicative competence have given it world wild relevance up to the point of saying that it has now become the only teaching method that many teachers have experienced (Cook, 248) The Communicative Approach began in Britain in the late 1960s as a replacement to the earlier structural method called The Situational Language Teaching which privileged practice of basic structures in meaningful situation-based activities. As a criticism, Chomsky demonstrated that structural theories were incapable of accounting for the creativity and uniqueness of individual sentences. In addition, British linguistic also pointed out the need to focus on communicative proficiency rather than on mastery of structures. There was also the need for a new approach because of the important changing educational realities in Europe which required. CLT owes its conception to several linguists and academics (Richards and Rodgers, 153161). Wilkins, among others, was an important contributor. He analyzed the communicative meanings that a learner needs to understand and express; these include quantity and location or communicative functions like request or complaints. Thus, the communicative approach starts from a theory of language as communication. The goal would be according to Hymes to develop communicative competence (what a speaker

needs to know in order to be communicatively competent in a speech community) including knowledge of formality, appropriateness, etc. Canale and Swain worked on Hymes competence adding important dimensions of communicative competence: Grammatical (grammatical and lexical capacity); Sociolinguistic (understanding social context including roles, shared information and communicative purpose); Discourse (interpretation of individual message elements in relation to the entire discourse) and Strategic (coping strategies that communicators employ to initiate, terminate and maintain communication) Another important theoretical framework is Hallidays functional approach. It is a theory of the functions of language that complements Hymess competence. Language is seen to get things, to control behavior, to interact, expresses feelings, to learn, create and communicate information. CLT is seen as an approach that makes communicative competence as a goal and aims to develop procedures for the teaching of the four lang. skills that acknowledge the interdependence of lang. and communication. Learning Krashen theory has been cited as compatible with the principles of CLT. Krashen sees acquisition as the basic process involved in developing language proficiency and distinguishes this process from learning. Acquisition refers to the unconscious development of the target language system as a result of using the language for real communication. () The learned system can serve only as a monitor of the output of the acquired system

(Richards and Rodgers, 161-162). Therefore, language learning occurs using meaningful communication. Principles (Down, 1992) Roles: The teacher is a facilitator that manages classroom activities, setting up communicative situations. The students are communicators, actively engaged in negotiating meaning. Teaching/Learning Process: Activities are communicative; speakers have a choice of what to say and how to say it; they receive feedback from the listener that will verify that a purpose has been achieved. Authentic materials are used. Students usually work in small groups because they are expected to interact primarily with each other. They should work with language at discourse level. Dealing with Feelings: Students are more motivated since they are learning to do something useful with the language. Individuality is encouraged, as well as cooperation with peers, which both contribute to sense of emotional security with the target language. Role of Students' Native Language: Students' native language usually plays no role. Response to Students' Errors: Errors of form are considered natural; students with incomplete knowledge can still succeed as communicators. Activities Students use the target language in class a great deal through communicative activities. Most activities can be turned into communicative ones but the most common are those such as games (information gap like predict or bridge two different slightly information), roleplaying, problem-solving tasks like picture strip story. (Larsen-Freeman:132-134)

Adolescent students should be able to explore and learn language in a wider variety of ways. Advantages and Criticism Some of the advantages of CLT would be the real use of language in meaningful situations and the integration of students but there seems to be a need to bridge formal structures and language use in everyday situations as grammatical structures are not the priority, they may be left out. In terms of requirements to work in the classroom (group work and teaching aids and materials), they can be difficult to manage even though they create interest on the learner. Because of this and the nature of activities, the syllabus may place heavy demand on the learner.

Works Cited. Cook, Vivian. Second Language Learning and Language Teaching. London: E. Arnold, 1991. Print. Snow, Don. "CAL: Digests: Eight Approaches to Language Teaching." Center for Applied Linguistics. Dec. 1992. Web. 16 Dec. 2011.

<http://www.cal.org/resources/digest/eightapproaches.html>. Larsen-Freeman, Diane. Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002. Print.