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competence tells what to say and how to say appropriately based on the situation, participants and the roles and intentions. In another word, CLT
replicates the real world situation where there are purposes, setting, roles and functions in communication.
b. The Origin of Communicative Language Teaching
Communicative Language Teaching has been widely used by many countries. It is originally created in Great Britain as the result of changing
English learning and teaching. As time goes by, there are innovations in teaching language. As explained by Brown 2000, the innovation in 1970s
brought the language teaching to the experimental language teaching techniques. During the late 1970s and the beginning of 1980s, there was a
technique as what we call as communicative approach. In the late 1980s and 1990s, real-world simulation, and meaningful task came up as the
results of communicative language, and classroom for teaching language. Those previous explanations are supported as well by Richards and
Rogers 1986 stressing that the origins of Communicative Language Teaching CLT are the innovation in the British language teaching
tradition from the late 1960. We can conclude that the grammatical competence is step by step substituted by communicative competences
proven by those statements of the researchers. Communicative Language Teaching emerges into the solution of English language teaching for
having both functional and structural features of language. Littlewood 1981 adds that one of the strengths of CLT is that it combines functional
and structural features of language into completely communicative feature of language.
c. Characteristics of Communicative Language Teaching
There are characteristics of Communicative Language Teaching CLT. As proposed by Brown 2000, he offers interrelated characteristics
of CLT. Some of them are presented below:
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1 Classroom goals are used mostly to all of the parts such as grammatical, discourse, functional, and sociolinguistic of
communicative competence 2 Fluency and accuracy are considered as the complement principles
under the use of communicative techniques 3 Opportunities are seen as the tool to equip students to focus on
learning process 4 The role of the teacher is as the facilitator and guide, not the person
who knows everything. Harmer 2007 gives his comparisons between non-communicative
activities and communicative activities as shown in the tables below:
Table 2: Comparisons between Non-Communicative and Communicative Activities.
Non Communicative Activities Communicative Activities
No communicative desire No communicative purpose
Form not content One language item only
Teacher intervention Materials control
A desire to communicate A communicative purpose
Content not form Variety of language
No teacher intervention No materials control
Those are the comparisons between non communicative and communicative activities in language teaching. In communicative
activities, learners are encouraged to have desire to communicate and they have a communicative purpose. Content is prioritised instead of form. It
asks to have variety of language. The teacher is seen as the facilitator and does not give any intervention as what non communicative activities have.
The example is such as acting from a script which the students are encouraged to communicave by acting from the script of the texts they
learn in the classroom. They are demanded to act to have communicative purpose with their friends. The teacher acts as the facilitator for the
students.
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d. Communicative Activities
