Communicative-Language Teaching by Savignon

Savignon reflects on the development of the most prominent teaching approach today, communicative-language teaching (CLT). In her chapter she provides definitions, a historical perspective, and information about how to put CLT into practice. She closes the chapter by addressing some of the challenges CLT faces.

In the beginning she acknowledges that CLT is just one approach of many and that methodologies and approaches change over time. According to her CLT focuses not on language skills discretely (breaking it down into listening, speaking, reading, and writing) but rather looks at language as an integrated set of skill. Communication requires negotiation of meaning which necessitates speaking, listening, writing, and reading. She also points out that the terms of active (speaking and writing) and passive (listening and reading) are outdated, as even the previously termed passive skills require active engagement with the input received. The updated dichotomy of productive and receptive still does not satisfy Savignon, because of their lack of acknowledgment of the collaborative nature of making meaning while listening and reading. She further defines this collaborative nature as interpretation, expression, and negotiation. One could also refer to this as input processing, output, and negotiation of meaning.

At the center of CLT is communicative competence, the definition of which has changed over time. I will here only focus on the definition that Savignon adapts on pages 17 and 18. As can be seen in figure 1 on page 17, Savignon argues that communicative competence is an interplay of sociocultural, strategic, discourse, and grammatical competence – all of which are depended upon the context in which the language is used. Grammatical competence is the ability to use of the language when interpreting, expressing and negotiation meaning, Discourse competence goes beyond the word or sentence-level and focuses on the bottom-up and top-down processes necessary to comprehend discourse; as well as the ability to create and detect coherence and cohesion in a text. Sociocultural competence is the ability to use appropriate language given the context, the participants, the function of the interaction, and the information that is being exchanged. Sociocultural competence thereby requires the ability to apply pragmatic and cultural understanding in conversations. Strategic competence refers to the ability to use verbal and non-verbal coping strategies to negotiate for meaning, express, and interpret. Such strategies can include circumlocution, clarification requests, repetition, gestures, etc.

According to Savignon the best implementation of CLT for language teaching is a curriculum that includes 5 components: (1) Language Arts (the analysis of the language); (2) Language for a Purpose (meaningful use of the language in the classroom); (3) My Language Is Me: Personal English Language Use (the creation of a second language identity and self-realization through the second language); (4) You Be, I’ll Be; Theater Arts (the importance of acting and mimicking real-life situations as practice); (5) Beyond the Classroom (opportunities for community, tandem, and service learning to connect the class to the real world of target language users).

I really liked how Savignon described in detail how she envisions CLT. Often when I look at textbooks that claim to be following CLT, I realize that they do not follow the sentiments of CLT. The same can be said about teachers who say that they are teaching communicatively, they often are not. This is often especially evident in the forms of assessment that a teacher uses or that accompany an allegedly communicative textbook. Therefore I really like that Savignon explains how assessment or evaluation needs to look like when teaching from a CLT perspective. I suggest that you take a look at a textbook that says it is following a CLT approach and evaluate their testing materials. Let us know what you find out.

Here is a presentation by Phil Hubbard that is related to this point.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEsaTANIKAg

Another point that she raises that I find very important is the issue of the native speaker and the target language for learners of large world languages. The question that I often ask myself is, who will my students use German with? Will they speak it with Germans, or will they use it in Russia when they travel? Will they speak with academics in Germany or with the farmer on the country-side? All of those considerations mean different target language varieties that my learners have to learn.

One of the points that I felt she did not problematize enough is the issue that in a CLT classroom the learner has a lot of responsibility. If we accept that our instruction has little impact and that in a CLT classroom we are a coach or a facilitator, how can we then be accountable for the quality of our teaching? If students do not reach the level of proficiency that they ought to, can we now wash our hands and say: well, we are teaching communicatively and the learners have to do the work, so if they do not achieve, it is their fault. Or does our teaching effectiveness have to be evaluated using new measures? What do you think?