Group 10: Eny Faizah and Ahmad Baidlawi F.

CC IN THE CLASSROOM: CLT AND TASK-BASED TEACHING

As the field of second language pedagogy has developed and matured over the past few decades, we have experienced a number of reactions and counter-reactions in methods and approaches to language teaching

A.    Communicative Language Teaching

Researchers have defined and redefined the construct of communicative competence (Savignon, 2005). With this storehouse of knowledge we have valiantly pursued the goal of learning how best to teach communications. In short, wherever you look in the literature today, you will find reference to the communicative nature of language classes.

CLT is the best understood as an approach, rather than a method. For the sake of simplicity and directness, I offer the following four interconnected characteristics as a definition of CLT.

1.      Classroom goals are focused on all of the components of CC and not restricted to grammatical or linguistic competence.

2.      Language techniques are designed to engage learners in the pragmatic, authentic, functional use of language for meaningful purpose.

3.      Fluency and accuracy are seen as complementary principles underlying communicative techniques.

4.      In the communicative classroom, students ultimately have to use the language, productively and receptively, in unrehearsed contexts.

These four characteristics underscore some major departures from earlier approaches. CLT pays considerably less attention to overt presentation and discussion of grammatical rules than traditionally practiced.

The fourth characteristic of CLT often makes it difficult for a nonnative speaking teacher who is not very proficient in the second language to teach effectivel. As educational and political instructions in various countries become more sensitive to the importance of teaching foreign languages for communicative purpose (not just for the purpose of fulfilling a “requirement” or of “passing a test”), we may be better able, worldwide, to accomplish the goals of communicative language teaching.

B.     Task-Based Instruction

Among recent manifestations of CLT, task-based instruction has emerged as a major focal point of language teaching practice worldwide. Task are a subset of all the techniques and activities that one might design for the classroom, and themselves might involve several techniques.

Task-based instruction is an approach that urges teachers, in their lesson and curriculum designs, to focus on many of the communicative factors discussed in this chapter.

Language teachers and researchers, in dialogue with each other, are in a partnership of fashioning an integrated and cohesive understanding of how learners acquire the ability to communicative clearly and effectively in a second language.