Research on Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) Adopted for English Teaching in Colleges

Hou Yi

(Changjiang Polytechnic,Wuhan 430074, China)

Research on Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) Adopted for English Teaching in Colleges

Hou Yi

(Changjiang Polytechnic,Wuhan 430074, China)

The aim of this essay is to find out how efficient the Communicative Language Teaching Policy is adopted in English teaching for Chinese students. It is clear that CLT policy is at the heart of the English Education Reformation for Chinese university students. In order to answer the question, the methodology used for this research tries to be compared with the GT. Therefore, it is easy to know what the advantages and disadvantages of CLT are. Finally, findings and discussions could be concluded and followed by a summary at the end of this essay.

CLT; English teaching; colleges

1 Overview of History of CLT

Right now,Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) has become at the heart of the English Education Reformation since 2002 in China. This concept was first occurred in the 1970s during which period linguists began to look at language as a tool of expressing meaning instead of a set of lexical, grammatical and phonological rules. From the beginning of the 1990s, communicative language teaching became widely used in most of the big cities, especially the coastal cities like Shanghai and Guangzhou, where CLT was adopted in most of the universities. It is clear that the emphasis is on real-world situations, authenticity, interactive fluency and meaningful tasks in English language teaching. Nowadays, developments in CLT have been concentrated on social, cultural and pragmatic aspects of language learning. Surely, more efforts have been made to improve students′ linguistic fluency instead of accuracy. Besides, how to equip learners with communicative competence in “real-world” scenarios has become a significant element of CLT teaching.

2 Evaluation of the English Education Reformation

There is no doubt that CLT has many advantages for language learning. It seems that an effective communicator may not be always the person who is best at manipulating language structures. Actually, he might be skilled at process involving in taking the knowledge which is already shared between them. Therefore, the CLT has become a proven teaching method with plenty of success around the world.

2.1 Arguments for CLTApplied in China

The aim of today′s English learning in China has changed from simply passing the English exams to being able to communicate in English. The reason is that English is not only a language used in limited graphical regions, but also is a communicative tool for global interaction.

The traditional English teaching method inChina is mainly involved in Grammar Translation Method which has the following drawbacks: it has limited practical use, ignores the social function of language and provides few opportunities to communicate. Compared with the GT, communicative language teaching focused on task-oriented and student-centered language teaching practice, attempts to address the actual needs of life. It is evident that appropriateness of language use, communication skills and students′ problem-solving ability training are the emphasis of CLT. Specifically, the communicative approach of teaching has the following three advantages: First, Brown (2001) states that the relationship of teacher and students is an equal, interactive, harmonious relationship, rather than the traditional teaching with teacher-centered teaching method. Second, CLT emphasizes the learners′ cognitive ability and operational capabilities, which allow them to think and express individually. Thirdly, CLT greatly enhances students′ interest by their participating in classroom activities so that students are more close to life and, in turn, increase their enjoyment in learning English (Nunan, 1989). The other important factor needed to mention is the creation of innovation atmosphere. In order to encourage students, it is not important for students to pass the exam only. The more important thing is to build students′ confidence in oral communication. Some solution of developing learners′ confidence is to allow pair-checking of answers before open-class checking takes place or to provide group discussions before they speak in front of the whole class (Brown, 2001). These activities of CLT can stimulate students to communicate their enthusiasm and can make the whole teaching more natural and effective.

This is agreed byGrant (1988) who believes that great number of grammatical practice makes learners even lost their interests in English learning while CLT which aims at improving learners′ communicative competence rather than solely grammar based on American or British norms can effectively develop students′ communicative competence.

2.2 Arguments against the Adoption of CLT

2.2.1 Cultural conflicts in China

In traditional learning in China, education has been treated with great importance. Confucius attached great significance to education which had been regarded as a means of cultivating an ordinary person into a superior one and a weak nation into a strong one (Hymes, 1967). Besides, education can bring along social recognition and rewards like higher salary and social status which can benefit individuals′ development in China (Jackie, 2009).

Another feature of traditional Chinese education isteacher-dominated hierarchical relationship between teacher and students. “The teacher, whose job is imparting the knowledge, has usually been regarded as a symbol of authority and cannot be judged and doubted. Similarly, students are expected to maintain a high level of receptiveness, whole-heartedly embracing the knowledge from their teacher or books” (Jackie, 2009) and not to challenge the transmitted knowledge or present their own ideas until they have mastered sufficient knowledge to make informed judgements (Doman, 2005).

2.2.2 Different language family

Apart from statement mentioned above, the main reason for Chinese students′ weakness in English interaction is not the teaching method, rather than the basic learning of pronunciation and grammar. English, which belongs to the Germanic group of languages, shares the similar pronunciation and grammar with French, German and Dutch. While Chinese derived from the Indo-Chinesische family has many differences with English. The most notable is the writing, pronunciation and grammar. It can be found that Chinese and English derived from two different language systems claim completely distinctive characters in linguistics. Therefore, it is hard for Chinese students to learn English as they have to start from “zero” with whatever teaching methods are used. For this reason, Brown (2001) believes learning English from younger ages can be helpful as children are always very successfully in language learning because from physiology aspect. Surely, children may be more tremendous subconscious, which can be beneficial to their language learning.

3 Conclusion

Taking the above evaluation into consideration, it is clear that though some positive effects of CLT, there still are many difficulties in adopting CLT policy in English teaching due to the barriers from traditional educational culture such as cultural conflict and different language family in China. Therefore, in the future researching, it is worth exploring language preference of the students as well as teachers′ teaching experience in more details. On the other hand, the way of optimizing the English assessment might be a direction of researching as well.

In conclusion, it is essential to advocate the CLT policy for English teaching in the colleges and university. Then, the language learning efficiency could be greatly enhanced by communicative teaching between teachers and students.

[1] Brown, D. (2001)Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy. (2ndEdition). USA: Longman.[M]

[2] Doman, E. (2005) ‘Current Debates inSLA′, Asian EFL Journal 9[J]. Available at: http://www.asian-efl-journal.com (Accessed: 20 December 2006), pp. 23-27.

[3] Grant, G. (1988)Tracing reasons for the different attitudes of informal carers towards the future care of people with mental handicap[M]. Dublin: International Congress of IASSMD.

[4] Hymes, D. (1967) ‘Models of the interaction of language and social setting′, Journal of Social Issues 23(2)[J], pp. 8-20.

[5] Jackie, L. (2009) ‘Perceptions of ELT Among English Language Teachers in China′ in Education Journal《教育學報》37[J], pp. 120-133.

[6] Nunan, D. (1989)Designing Tasks for the Communicative Classroom[M]. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.

H314

A

1673-3878(2017)02-0090-03

2017-01-12

侯毅(1989-)，女，湖北武汉人，硕士，长江职业学院公共课部讲师；主要研究方向：英语教育．