Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)

Language Teaching is about

• Defining language goal; what we want the learners to be able to do with the language.
• Understanding the principles behind how we acquire language
• Planning the classroom activities based on the principles that will help us reach our language goal.
• Define and plan the role of teachers and learners and implement that in the class.

The communicative language teaching approach developed in the 1970s provide a good framework second language programs.

Content Based Instruction (CBT), and Task Based Language Teaching (TBLT) are good tools to implement CLT.

What should the syllabus be like?

Teach Tamil for specific purpose instead of general language material.

Classroom activities: plan real life situations instead of reading textbooks and doing language drill exercises.

Focus on fluency first and then accuracy.

Implement information gap activities. It means activities that requires learners to get information they do not have.

Have a open ended discussion topic of learners’ interest.

Go for process based approaches instead of product based approach.

Conclusion

Lots of good opportunities exist to take Tamil to our next generation. We can consider using CLT in community schools like ours.

But wait...

CLT is one of the several poplar language teaching methods. While it is true that, CLT has advantages over grammar translation method, it can not meet the needs of all types of language learners. A trend has been emerging since 1990s and it is called "Post method conditioning". See trend in language education (TBD).

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