23 1
The learners’ ability to communicate in the target language is the product of the language learning.
2 The contents of the language learning cover semantic notions and social
functions, rather than the language structures only. 3
Students regularly work in pairs or groups to deliver and negotiate meanings in a situation where a student has some certain information that
others do not process information-gap activities. 4
Students are frequently involved in role-plays or dramas to enable them to adapt the use of the target language in various social contexts.
5 The learning materials and class activities are authentic to reflect the real
world situation and demands. 6
The teachers’ roles are principally as facilitators of the students’ practice to communicate and secondary correctors of mistakes.
b. The Principles of Language Teaching
In order to handle a language classroom, there are some points that teachers should know. Nowadays, it is a post-method era of language teaching.
There is no certain method that teachers should strictly use. Teachers may combine any techniques as long as they fulfill the three parameters of language
teaching. Those, according to Kumaravadivelu 2001:538, are particularity, practicality and possibility. Particularity means that any technique used by
teachers should depend on the teaching situation i.e. where, when and whom they are teaching
. The situation is believed to determine the ‘how’ of teaching,
24
and the socio-cultural and political issues affect the kind of teaching. Practicality means that the technique should be applicable in the real situation
to make it possible to be practiced. Then, possibility means that the technique should be appropriate in any aspect of the context in which it is applied. In
other words, it should be appropriate socially, culturally, and politically. Besides the parameters above, there are also twelve principles of
language teaching proposed by Brown 2000:54. Those principles are then categorized into cognitive principles, affective principles, and linguistic
principles. Cognitive principles mainly concern on what teachers should pay attention to in delivering the learning materials in attempt to help students
achieve competences related to their mental processes in their brains. Affective principles concern on attitudes that students have to have toward language
learning. While linguistic principles deal with the language itself. Cognitive principles consist of automaticity, meaningful learning,
anticipation of reward, intrinsic motivation and strategic investment. Automaticity refers to the timely movement of control of few language forms.
To monitor this, teachers can monitor the st udents’ speeches, give feedback,
appropriate error treatment, etc. Meaningful learning emphasizes that whatever done in the classroom should of the students’ interest and related to their
existing knowledge. This principle argues that teaching students by involving what they have already known will help them memorize the materials in a
short-term memory. Next, the anticipation of reward will also benefit the students in terms of increasing their motivation in learning. The fourth is
25 intrinsic motivation. While anticipation of reward is sort of extrinsic
motivation, intrinsic motivation is a will to learn coming from the students themselves. The last principle included in cognitive principles is strategic
investment. What is meant by strategic investment is that the state of whether or not the students will be successful depends on their own investment of time,
effort and attention to the target language in the form of individual battery of strategies in comprehending and producing the language.
The affective principles cover language ego, self-confidence, risk-taking and the language-
culture connection. Language ego refers to the students’ new mode of thinking, feeling and acting after learning the target language. Self-
confidence means that students should be confident in practicing to use the target language they are learning if they want to be successful learners. Risk-
taking emphasizes that in order to be successful language learners, students should be willing to practice their language without being too much anxious.
They should not focus on the risk. Instead, they have to be brave in taking the risk. The best rate in taking risk is the moderate one. The last affective principle
is the language-culture connection. Those two things are indeed inseparable. Teaching language does not mean teaching words, structure and so on only but
the culture as well. The last but not least is the linguistic principles. This covers the native
language effect, interlanguage and communicative competence. The native language effect refers to the features of the students’ first language or mother
tongue which both facilitate and interfere with the process of acquiring the
26 target language. However, the interference seems to be more salient. Therefore,
the teachers should be aware of problems which may occur because of this. Next, interlanguage is the development of the students’ progress in learning
toward the full competence of the target language. In this case, feedback from teachers may help a lot. Finally, the communicative competence is the
competence covering the use and usage of the language. It consists of organizational competence i.e. grammar and discourse, pragmatic competence
i.e. functional and sociolinguistic, strategic competence, and psychomotor skills.
On the other hand, there are also principles of CLT Approach. Richards 2006 proposed the principles of CLT Approach as follows.
1
Make real communication the focus of language learning.
2
Give students opportunities to experiment and try out what they know.
3 Tolerate students’ mistakes since those mistakes imply that the students
are developing their communicative competence.
4
Give students opportunities to develop their accuracy as well as fluency.
5 Link different skills such as speaking, reading, and listening since they
usually interrelate in the real life.
6
Let students discover the grammar rules by themselves.
In line with the principles proposed by Richards above, Morrow 1981 declares that there are five principles of CLT approach. They are as follows.
1 Know what you are doing
27 Based on this principle, students are facilitated to learn how to do
something by using the target language they are learning. They are guided to learn the target language and be able to answer 1 Why do I learn this?;
and 2 What differentiates me before and after learning this?. At the end of the learning process, they are able to see that they finally can do
something that they could not do before, and that the thing is meaningful to them to communicate using the target language.
2 The whole is more than the sum of the parts
A crucial feature of a communicative method will be that it operates with stretches of language above the sentence level, and oper-
ates with real language in real situations. This principle may lead to procedures that are either synthetic or analytic. A synthetic procedure
involves students in learning forms individually and practicing to combine them. Meanwhile, an analytic procedure introduces complete interactions
of texts and focus on the learning goal that is how these are constructed. These two procedures similarly concern on the ‘whole’ rather than the
‘parts’. CLT is likely to make use of both procedures. 3
The processes are as important as the forms In CLT, the learning activities are designed to replicate as much as
possible the processes of communication in the real life so the practices of the target language can take place within a communicative framework.
Below are three processes of communication that can be incorporated either individually or together in teaching procedures.
28 a
Information gap In the real life, some communication occurs between two or more
people in which someone has some information that the others do not know. Thus, the communication occurs to bridge the gap between the
communication participants. In a classroom context, an activity can be designed by having one student know something that other students do
not know. Accordingly, the students have to communicate with each other to bridge the gap.
b Choice
Another crucial characteristic of communication is that each of the participants has a choice both in terms of deciding what they want
to say and how they will deliver that. In a classroom context, teachers have to give students freedoms to choose the expressions they want to
use to deliver their meanings in a certain context. c
Feedback The last but not least process of communication is responding to
feedback in turn. In the real life, someone talks to others because she wants to communicate what is in her mind. What she says to other
people will be designed to achieve her purpose of communicating and what other people give as the responses will then be evaluated in terms
of the communication goal achievement. As a result, feedback processing occurs during the whole communication. In a classroom
context, students should be trained to be good listeners that are honest.
29 For instance, when they do not get what their friend is saying, they
have to ask for clarification. Thus, teachers should teach the students the communication strategies to maintain the flow of communication
so that it can occur as how it is expected. 4
To learn it, do it In CLT, students learn how to communicate only if they are involved
in communicative activities. Accordingly, teachers need to provide sufficient opportunities for the students to practice such communicative
activities. The crucial point is that students learn the language usage grammar rules and try to practice using the rules in a communicative
situation that can be either in a classroom context or in the real life context. 5
Mistakes are not always a mistake There has been a discussion of treating students’ mistakes in
language learning. Some argue that mistakes in practicing the target language are crucial since they may mislead the communication. On the
other hand, some argue that minding the mistakes too much may lower the students’ confidence in practicing using the language. At this point, the
principle of seeing that mistakes are not always a mistake can be implemented by having two kinds of activities. One kind of activities
focuses on the students’ fluency development in which teachers must not interfere with attempts to correct the mistakes made by the students. The
other kind of activities is done after the students have done the activities
30 elaborated previously. It focuses on giving feedback to the students as an
attempt to improve their language accuracy.
c. The Criteria of an Effective Speaking Task
