Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) Assumptions And Principles

Before going through the assumptions and principles in CLT, let’s define the following four main terms related to language teaching.

Language Teaching Terminology:

1. Approach = “A set of assumptions dealing with the nature of language, learning, and teaching”
2. Method = “An overall plan for a systematic presentation of language based on a selected approach”
3. Procedures = “An ordered set of techniques to execute a method”.
4. Technique = “Certain practices and behaviours to implement a procedure according to a method”.

Ten Core Assumptions in CLT:

1. Engaging in interaction and meaningful communication facilitates language learning.
2. Effective classroom learning tasks provide students with the opportunities to extract meaning, expand language, notice how language is used, and take part in a meaningful interpersonal exchange.
3. Meaningful communication occurs when students process content that is relevant, purposeful, interesting, and engaging.
4. Communication is a comprehensive process that often calls upon the use of several language skills.
5. Language learning is facilitated both by activities that:
   • involve inductive or discovery learning of language rules, and
   • involve the analysis of language rules.
6. Language learning is a gradual process that involves creative use of language, and trial and error.
7. The ultimate goal of language learning is to be able to use the new language both accurately and fluently.
8. Learners develop their own routes to language learning, progress at different rates, and have different needs and motivations for language learning.
9. The role of the teacher in the language classroom is that of a facilitator, who creates a classroom climate conducive to language learning and provides opportunities for students to use and practice the language and to reflect on language use and language learning.
10. The classroom is a community where learners learn through collaboration and sharing.

Principles of Communicative Language Teaching:

• Make real communication the focus of language learning.
• Provide opportunities for learners to experiment and try out what they know.
• Provide opportunities for learners to develop both accuracy and fluency.
• Link the different skills such as speaking, reading, and listening together, since they usually occur so in the real world
• Let students induce or discover grammar rules.
• Be tolerant of learners’ errors as they indicate that the learner is building up his or her communicative competence.
• Focus more on achieving communicative competence with students without neglecting grammatical competence and on fluency without neglecting accuracy.

Grammatical Competence VS. Communicative Competence.

To achieve grammatical competence, Students learn the rules of sentence formation in a language.

But to achieve communicative competence students learn language through activities and they learn sentence formation and its use at the same time.

About the Grammatical Competence:

• The ability to produce sentences in a language.
• The knowledge of the building blocks of sentences (e.g. parts of speech, tenses, phrases, clauses, sentence patterns) and how they are formed.
• The unit of analysis and practice is typically the sentence.
• Accuracy is the main goal to achieve when learning a language.

About the Communicative Competence:

Communicative competence includes knowing how to:

• Use language for a range of different purposes and functions.
• vary our use of language according to the setting and the participants.
• Produce and understand different types of texts (e.g. narratives, reports, interviews, conversations)
• Maintain communication despite having limitations in one’s language knowledge.
• Achieve fluency, as well as accuracy.

Fluency VS. Accuracy.

Fluency Activities:

• Reflect the natural use of language.
• Focus on achieving communication.
• Require meaningful use of language.
• Require the use of communication strategies.
• Produce language that may not be predictable.
• Seek to link language use to context.

Accuracy Activities:

• Reflect classroom use of language.
• Do not require meaningful communication.
• Focus on the correct formation of examples of language.
• The choice of language is controlled.
• Produce free-error sentences.
• Practice language out of context.

Thanks For Reading

Liked This Article?

Share It With Your Networks.

You can also join my email list not only to be notified of the latest updates on elttguide.com but also to get TWO of my products: Quick-Start Guide To Teaching Listening In The Classroom & Quick-Start Guide To Teaching Grammar In The Classroom For FREE!

Join My Email List Now (It’s FREE)!

Want to Continue Your ELT Professional Development?

I offer various ELT publications on teaching English as a foreign language. 

In these publications, I put the gist of my experience in TEFL for +20 years with various learners and in various environments and cultures.

The techniques and tips in these publications are sure-fire teaching methods that worked for me well and they can work for you, as well, FOR SURE.

Go ahead and get a look at these publications to know more about each one of them and the problem & challenge each one focuses on to overcome.

Then, you can get what you have an interest in. It is very easy and cheap. You can afford it and you’ll never regret it if you decide to get one of them, FOR SURE.

Now, click to get a look at my Publications