Communicative Language Teaching: A Fruitful Revisiting

Language education can be a demanding business. So much so that when the mirage of The Perfect Method glimmers on a distant horizon, it is often embraced. More than that: in the history of language teaching the arrival of a new method has, time and again, heralded the outright rejection of All That Went Before. And so it was when Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) rose from the giddy technicolor swirl of the late seventies. CLT certainly opened minds to thrilling new avenues in language learning (or acquisition, as the debate would have it). The trouble was the religious zeal with which it was followed (not to mention the sectarian differences of interpretation). 

Prof. William Littlewood at Universiti Malaya
(Image: mtcleroux)

Today it was my pleasure to have a ringside seat to a revisiting of CLT by one of its early proponents, Professor William Littlewood, at University Malaya. (A colleague introduced him to me as someone who had written the book (see References, below), as opposed to a book, on the subject.) What made a particular impression on me was the speaker's perspicacity in allowing his views to evolve - an all too rare gem in academic circles. Entitled Communicative Language Teaching: Where are we now? Where do we go from here?, the presentation gave a useful roundup of the past, present and future of CLT. Below is my very brief (and admittedly somewhat coloured-in) summary of the talk. Any inaccuracies are strictly my own. My less colourful summary can be found here. For the more zealous, the official full text from a previous presentation on the subject is also available elsewhere. Alongside the references, a few links to papers are included here. Please note that these are from around the World Wide Wild West and included strictly as reference rather than as authorized sources.

Where have we come from? 

Communicative Language Teaching, like many a Big Idea, was born with an identity crisis. The abandon with which the idea was embraced led early on to a multiplicity of definitions ranging from hazy to outright contradictory, but congregated around the central hub of language as a means of communication - "or something like that", many in the profession would admit. Agreement existed on one point: CLT Was Good - and this was readily taken as a blanket declaration around the world. Task-Based Language Teaching (affectionately known as TBLT, which sounds remarkably like a deli sandwich to the uninitiated) is a more recent, focused subcategory. 

Although everybody seemed to follow the communicative fashion (policymakers everywhere just LOVE a silver bullet), it evolved into two streams: the "strong" and "weak" versions, which were in respectively considered more and less exalted by purists. Attention to analysis and grammar, for example, were considered "weak" and inferior. And there lies the rub. In their heart of hearts, language teachers secretly feared that their instruction was not communicative enough - yet when they followed the communicative commandments, things promptly fell apart. Something had to give. 

Where are we now? 

Reality has a wonderful way of wearing down the sharp edges of a silver bullet. The secret shame of real-world language teachers continued to simmer silently until it was revealed - and absolved - in scholarly work. This was when consideration of the context finally made a welcome return to the language classroom: principles at last took their rightful place, with methods as an expansive "palette to paint from", to quote Diane Larsen-Freeman. In this "post-method" era, it is no longer the method but the principled pedagogy that guides the way. 

Where do we go from here? 

Professor Littlewood considered four ways forward for CLT: 

1. Adapt CLT elements to local practices

2. Integrate CLT elements into traditional approaches

3. Develop a framework of 'context-free' principles for 'context-sensitive' pedagogy

4. Teachers and researchers explore key specific issues for what Littlewood calls "communication-oriented language teaching".

A useful tool (related to point 3) is the Communicative Continuum (Littlewood 2004, 2011), where activities can be placed on a scale of varying communicative qualities. This can place teaching activities in perspective of principles, context and communicative value. The Macrostrategies suggested by Kumaruvadivelu (2003) can also be of benefit, as can Prabhu's concept of "plausibility" (1990).

Conclusion
What struck me about all this was how many teachers, and how many trainers, even, were reared under rigid CLT dogma and have not yet been unshackled from it by information like this. Indeed, undiluted CLT is still the last word in that realm of ELT where citizenship of an English-speaking country and an online TEFL certificate are the sole job requirements. An important reason for writing this post, and passing on the word, is to ensure that language teachers, specifically in ELT, can be liberated from the outdated prescriptions that haunt them. It is time for teachers to emerge into the sunlight of valuing principles, context, their learners and themselves as teachers. Methods are servants, not masters. 

Kumaravadivelu, B. 2003. Beyond methods: macrostrategies for language teaching. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Littlewood, W. 1981. Communicative language teaching: an introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Littlewood, W. 2004. The task-based approach: some questions and suggestions. In: ELT Journal, Vol. 58/4, p. 319-324.
Littlewood, W. 2011. Communicative language teaching: an expanding concept for a changing world. In: Hinkel, E. (Ed.) Handbook of Research in Language Teaching, Vol. 2. New York: Routledge.
Prabhu, N.S. 1990. There is no best method- why?  In: TESOL Quarterly, Vol 24/2, p. 161-176.