Advocating Communicative Language Teaching for Too Long Now: The Inevitability of Grammar Translation Method and a Balance Between CLT and GTM in Instructional Settings

Year 2016, Volume: 7 Issue: 2, 14 - 24, 20.08.2016

Fuat Fındıkoğlu Dilek İlhan

Abstract

Advocating Communicative Language Teaching for Too Long Now: The Inevitability of Grammar Translation Method and a Balance Between CLT and GTM in Instructional Settings

Abstract

The CLT, after it was introduced in 1970s, started to be rejoiced as many teaching approaches had often gone short of answering a wide range of needs as CLT. It was all of a sudden that the CLT became the most popular method of all as it attached specific utmost importance to the ultimate goal of learning a language: communicating in the target language. The CLT put everything else aside and focused on speaking activities, thus exposing students to real-life examples as much as possible. Gradually though, the main focus shifted from communicating in the target language to the fact that the very idea that it was actually the structures required to become communicatively competent, not to mention the recent studies indicating fluency and accuracy of communication were dependent upon the explicit grammar instruction. The CLT was a way of contradicting the GTM in a way at the beginning. However, along the way, it turned out that grammar was an indispensable part of building on knowledge of language and ensuring grammatically meaningful messages. For the two opposite models, this study suggests a re-evaluation of the two altogether and a balance of GTM on CLT. In doing so, different theories advocating and reasoning against both approaches were evaluated from different aspects along with attributing reference to course books designed in tune with CLT and still providing many tips for bits of grammar in great detail. In conclusion, this study reviews research from past till now and concluded that in selecting teaching approaches it shouldn’t be a matter of trading one approach for another or choosing one way over another, rather, with specific reference to CLT and GTM, the preference of an approach could be an integrated entity where bits of several teaching approaches are blended and act as a complementary approach.

Keywords

Communicative language teaching, grammar translation method; language teaching approaches

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