Communicative Language Teaching CLT

4. Communicative Language Teaching CLT

There are many teaching methodologies used by the teacher in teaching English. One of them, which still relevant applied until nowadays is Communicative Language Teaching. This methodology aims “...to apply theoretical perspective of the Communicative Approach by making communicative competence the goal of language teaching and by acknowledging the interdependence of language and communication”. Larsen-Freeman 2005: 120 In short, CLT requires communicative competence in teaching English. The teacher has to use English as the vehicle of communication not only a matter of object study. This means both the teacher and students communicate in the target language in the classroom. Moreover, the communication is done in the target langauge in order to make the students acquire the target langauge easily. CLT focuses on the real language use and it emphasizes on the process of communication rather than the mastery of language forms. The role of students is more dominant according to CLT in which the teacher gives more opportunities to the students in communication among them. Nonetheless, the teacher still plays an important role as a facilitator of communication in the language classroom. The teacher’s main responsibility is to establish good situations in the students’ communication. Concerning to the theory of CLT, the classroom should be a student- centered class. However, the task of the teacher cannot be ignored. According to this methodology, the teacher is someone who acts as an adviser, answers to the students’ questions and monitors the students’ performances. Therefore, the teacher also takes a big part on presenting some part of the lesson, such as when facing with linguistic accuracy and evaluating the students’ performances.

B. Theoretical Framework

This section presents the theoretical framework used in this study. There are four theories discussed to answer the research problem. Each theory supports the other theories. Therefore, they complete each other because all theories have each role in collecting the data to answer the questions formulated in problem formulation.

1. Teacher’s Introductory Language

The theory of teacher’s talk is related with the other theories. They are theory of cognitive development by Piaget 2003 and the theory of the teacher’s talk by Nunan 1989. The Senior High School students as said by Piaget in Educational Psychology Interactive cited by W, Huitt Hummel 2003, are in the age of around 15 above which are included in the stage of formal operational stage. In this stage, they have an abstract thinking so they can understand the material taught well. They actually can speak English but have a little understanding on pronunciation, diction and grammar so they still need an English teacher who can be the source of the knowledge. The teacher’s introductory language which is known as the teacher’s talk is a language used by the teacher in classroom to teach the students whose complexity varies according to the level of the learners. It means that the teacher needs to adjust the language the teacher uses to the students proficiency level. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI