Posted by Kaleigh Bangor on Monday, October 7, 2013 in News.

Communicative Language Teaching, or what is often referred to as CLT, is an approach that allows for a variety of different teaching strategies, such as task-based learning, in foreign language learning instruction. The approach combines various techniques from prior methods, but ultimately strives to stress above all else the ability to communicate in the target language, rather than learn about a foreign language. The techniques employed should focus on real life circumstances: those that a student could potentially encounter in the country or countries, where the target language is spoken, but more importantly, tasks that people actually do in everyday life regardless of location. A main goal of CLT is to stress vocabulary and introduce grammatical structures implicitly. I believe that restatement of the grammar rules should explicitly appear in this approach, but preferably as a secondary step, after the students have made their own hypotheses.  With a student-centered approach and an emphasis on peer-to-peer and small group learning, this technique strives to lower the anxiety level, or affective filter, in the classroom in order to create a space, where students feel comfortable and excited to use the target language freely.