The Communicative Language Teaching Approach

19 language, the kinds of classroom activities which best facilitates learning and the roles of teachers and learners. This set of principles brought great changes to language teaching. Previously, language teaching primarily focused on the development of students’ grammatical competence. Now, the focus of language teaching is to develop students’ communicative competence. In order to develop this competence, the English teachers should follow the principles of Communicative Language Teaching in their English language teaching and learning process. Richards 2006: 22-23 explains ten core assumptions of current communicative language teaching. They are explained as follows: a. Second language learning is facilitated when learners are engaged in interaction and meaningful communication. b. Effective classroom learning tasks and exercises provide opportunities for students to negotiate meaning, expand their language resources, notice how language is used, and take part in meaningful interpersonal exchange. c. Meaningful communication results from students processing content that is relevant, purposeful, interesting and engaging. d. Communication is a holistic process that often calls upon the use of several language skills or modalities. e. Language learning is facilitated both by activities that involve inductive or discovery learning of underlying rules of language use and organization, as well as by those involving language analysis and reflection. f. Language learning is a gradual process that involves creative use of language, and trial and error. Although errors are a normal product of learning, the ultimate goal of learning is be able to use the new language both accurately and fluently. g. Learners develop their own routes to language learning, progress at different rates, and have different needs and motivations for language learning. h. Successful language learning involves the use of effective learning and communication strategies. i. The role of the teacher in the language classroom is that of a facilitator, who creates a classroom climate conducive to language learning and provides opportunities for students to use and practice the language and to reflect on language use and language learning. 20 j. The classroom is a community where learners learn through collaboration and sharing. Those principles are important in language teaching in order to develop students’ communicative competence. Armed with these ideas, it can be concluded that CLT is a set of principles which focuses to develop students’ communicative competence. To develop students’ communicative competence, an English teacher should design communicative activities so that students can be accustomed in using the language in real communication.

4. Text-Based Approach

As the Communicative Language Teaching is developed, there are approaches which share the same goal, which is to develop students’ communicative competence, with the CLT approach. However, these approaches focus more on the outcomes or products of learning as the starting point in course design than on classroom processes. One of them is Text-Based Instruction. Text-Based Instruction, also known as Genre-Based Approach, is an approach which suggests the importance of the mastery of different types of texts during the English teaching and learning process. The texts, according to Richards 2006:36, are used in a special sense to refer to structured sequences of language that are used in specific ways. The text can be in the form of spoken and written texts. Text-Based Instruction suggests that students should learn different kinds of texts in the specific contexts of their use to develop their communicative 21 competence. Feez and Joyce in Richards 2006: 36 state several important points in using this approach in teaching language. They are: a. Teaching explicitly about the structures and grammatical features of spoken and written texts b. Linking spoken and written texts to the cultural context of their use c. Designing units of work which focus on developing skills in relation to whole texts d. Providing students with guided practice as they develop language skills for meaningful communication through whole texts To implement this approach, there are several stages that should be done in the teaching and learning process. Feez and Joyce in Richards 2006: 39 – 41 explain how the text-based approach should be implemented in the English teaching and learning process as follows: a. Building the Context This stage aims to build students’ background knowledge of the text. In this stage, the English teacher introduces the social context of an authentic model of the text being studied. The students also explore the immediate context of the situation by examining the register of a model text which has been selected on the basis of the course objectives and students’ need. b. Modelling and Deconstructing the Text In this stage of Text-Based Instruction, students are given a text and learn it. They will examine the structural pattern and language features of the text. c. Joint Construction of the Text Joint Construction of the Text is a phase in which students can begin to contribute to the construction of whole examples of the text type. In this phase, students must do the activity in group.