The Communicative Language Teaching approach focuses on fluency, authenticity, and communication skills helping students acquire the skills to speak outside the classroom in daily situations through discussions about current events, cooking, politics, sports, personal matters, hobbies or any topic of interest.
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The method relies on a few basic
principles:
- Authentic texts we see in our daily lives like newspapers, videos,
and blogs.
- Interactive feedback with peers using games and information-gap
activities, for example: role-play activities and basic conversation
around a structured activity while trying to understand the speaker’s
intentions. Games are crucial as they allow for exchanging ideas
and receiving immediate feedback.
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| Photo by Katerina Holmes from Pexels |
- Small group activities to allow for maximum practice time for the
speakers.
- Prioritizing language fluency
over language accuracy for example the teacher won’t halt an activity to
correct grammar mistakes in order not to break the flow of the conversation.
- Incorporating choice of language into conversation for example
older students may be able to use various forms of expression while
younger students may require more structure and scaffoldings.
- Preparation for communicating in social
situations being able to
adjust your language to the mood and tone of the situation for example
speaking with an elderly person would require more formality while
chatting with a friend over coffee would be more informal.
- A focus on cohesion and coherence for
example giving students scrambled sentences requiring them to unscramble
them, requiring them to make order of confusion.
- Expression of ideas and opinions.
How to adapt to technology
Communication in authentic situations
may be lacking when we learn from a distance but here are a few ways we can
adapt this method while teaching remotely.
1. Create
Breakout sessions on Zoom: Make sure
you divide students into small groups as small
group activities give maximum practice time to speakers. Make sure you visit
the rooms and help by answering questions.
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2. Create
role-play activities on Flipgrid: Make sure the students comment so there
is a thread of communication. These video
incorporate creative filters and stickers giving students a creative
space. Make sure you give students instruction about how to give feedback and
give the students a goal to focus the conversation, motivate them
to participate and give them the satisfaction of reaching a goal. For example, students collectively need to create a list of
the four best practices for throwing the best party. Another example of a
FlipGrid activity is the group must watch a TedTalk beforehand (it can be
embedded in the instructions) about climate change. The group must then decide
on the three most urgent issues related to climate change from that specific
talk.
A video tutorial:
3. Role-play
activities on Toontastic app: This app has different scenes and characters to choose from. The
students can use this to create a short animation movie to present to their
peers. The teacher can facilitate dialogue by giving students a problem to
solve within their chosen scenario. For example if the students have chosen to
be pirates in the “pirate ship” scenario, the teacher can present a
problem to them like a storm or coming under attack from another ship. Now the
students must work together to solve the problem.
A video tutorial:
4. Use Powerpoint
to create story-strips: One student creates the story strip on Powerpoint
while the other needs to guess the next segment of the story. This induces a
dialogue about predictions and provides immediate feedback, showing the student
if they were right or wrong immediately.
5. Use Edpuzzle to induce interaction with
authentic videos: Edpuzzle is
an interactive video website that allows
the teacher to take an authentic video and insert questions that will pop up on
the screen while the video is playing. This can be used to test comprehension
and ask students to predict what will happen next and then see if their
predictions are correct.
A video tutorial:
Technology can help us reach our students, even when they
are far away. When learning remotely, the Communicative Language approach should be adapted and not
discarded. In fact now it’s more important than ever because we need to
compensate for what has been withdrawn during these
times.
Join my
facebook group to keep in touch and see more ideas:
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Tags: English, Distance learning, remote learning, CLT, communicative approach, communicative, speaking, technology
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