What does Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) mean?

A colleague told me that if

you want to rule the world you have to master the definition of what you are studying, CLT
is an approach to language teaching (Richards and Rodgers, 2014) that emphasizes the
communicative competence (Hymes, 1972) that the learners use to interact with other
speakers, to make meaning, encouraging students to ask for information, to seek
clarification, to use as many words as possible and whatever other nonlinguistic and
linguistic resources they could muster to negotiate meaning. CLT aims at developing ways
of teaching the four skills of languague (listening, speaking, reading and writing) that
recognise the interdependence between language and communication (Nunan, 1989) I want
to offer you six interconnected characteristics for describing CLT: first, classroom goals are
focused on grammatical, discourse, functional, sociolinguistic, and strategic, second,
language techniques are designed to engage learners in the pragmatic use of language for
meaningful purposes, third, fluency may have to take more importance than accuracy to
keep learners involved in language use, then, students have to use the language outside the
classroom and appropriate strategies for autonomous learning, finally the teacher is a
facilitator and guide, so the students construct meaning through genuine interaction with
others.

After the brief definition, I mention above. now I want to take you to a suburban
Elementary School named Canaan where I have taught English since 2018, located in my
beloved youngest city of Mulukuku, an amazing place for teaching, spotless and safe for
me a picturesque school. It has good ventilation and lighting, never heard of a simple case
of bullying. I will focus on my Young learners in Sixth Grade, I have boys and girls. I have
a heterogenous group full of diversity; they have different child needs, motivation,
behavior, abilities, skills, and academic, social, emotional, and cultural backgrounds. Some
of them are very talkative in the target language and some of them are not, I mean I have
passive students and active ones, someday they enter the classroom amazingly happy, but
sometimes they are very chaotic and I feel very concerned about them. I also have child´s
school absenteeism.

This is my seventh year in this school and I have enjoyed my job so far. For all of these
years, I have studyed how my teaching have changed to faciliate meaningful disscussion in
the classroom, and I have been assessing how these changes have impact my students. I
always try to connect them beetween what they already know and the new knowledge they
encounter in L2. I believe that it is important that students can link the English content we
cover in the classroom and the world around them.

Going straight to the core of my English Classroom. Taking into account that all the
previous test we had done I found out that the main problem I face is that my students have
difficulties in writing and speaking, so that is why I use CLT strategies for fostering
productive skills in my students. What I am looking for in CLT is authenticity, real world
situations, and meanigful tasks. I increased the CLT strategies in my classroom such as:
scrambled sentences, language games, picture strip story, role-plays, problem- solving
tasks, debate and brainstorming. Sometimes we work in pairs, group or individually, taking
into consideration the collaborative learning proccess.

Also I want to mention two different kind of practices in CLT: Meaningful, and
communiccative. Meaninful practice refers to an activity where students are require to
make meaningful choice when carrying out practice. For example, in order to study the use
of prepositions to describe locations of places, students might be given a street map with
various building iodentified in different locations. They are also given a list of prepositions
such as: across from. On the corner of, near to, on, and next to. Then they have to answer
questions such as: Where is the bookshop? Where is the pólice station?, where is the bank?.
The class is meanigful because they have to respond according to the location on the map .
Communictive practice refers to activities where practice within a real communicative
context is the focus, where real information is exchanged, and where the languague used is
not totally predictable. For example, students might have to draw a map of their
neighborhood and answer questions about the location of different places, such as the
nearest bus stop or coffee shop. You can go from meaningful, to communicative practice in
the classroom.

Now it is time to talk about my experience, I mean the strategy I use to foster the
productive in writing and speaking skills in my six grade students, I do not know if you
have ever watched a film named the bucket list featured by Jack Nicholson and Morgan
Freeman where they performed two terminally ill men scape from a cancer Ward and head
off on a road trip with a wish list of to-dos before they die. I also watched the documentary
film presented by HBO 1. Every 2. Brilliant 3. Thing, over the course of two days in NYC,
camera recorded three performances of a one-man show about suicide each performance
was taped in front of a different audience every member of the audience was a potencial
performer as they took their seats, british actor Jonny Donahoe handed out examples of
brilliant things to read aloud. A son creates a list of things worth living for-all in an attempt
to raise the spirits of his cronically depressed mother. These Two Brilliant Little Things
paved me the way for designing my own strategy in CLT.
I use this strategy for feedback, presenting a specifict or to master vary contents. First of
all I design the list in pieces of papers using crayons or drawings by kids. I also use photo
or shots or realia, they have to look authentic material. I creat a piece of paper or give an
object for each of my student, number 1: an ice cream(drawing), 2: a book (object). 3. A
cat, 4. A teddy bear, 5: a kid (drawing) 6: an elephant. 7: a flower 8: a doctor 9. A teacher,
10: the color yellow. 11. Color blue. 12. A zebra 13; a monkey, 14, a rabbit, 15, an iguana.
I am as a teacher in the classroom as my students enters, talking to my students and giving
them scraps of paper, shots or objects. As I do so, I explain that when I say a number I want
the person with the corresponding entry to shout it out.
I sit my students in the most democratic way possible, ideally in the round. They will be
involved throughout and need to feel relaxed and safe. Greeting them also help the teacher
to cast the activity.
I call number 1 and my student with that entry shout it out Ice cream-
Teacher: What´s your favourite ice cream flavour?
Student: Chocolate.
Teacher: How much is a chocolate ice cream?
Student: 75 cordobas.
Techer: Do you serve ice cream in your birthday to your Friends?
Student; Yes I do, do you like to invite me to a vanilla ice cream?
Teacher; Of course, why not?
I call number 9 (the students must put attention) and my student with that entry shout it out
a doctor.
Teacher: is your father a doctor?
Student: Yes, he is.
Teacher: where does he work?
Student: In Carlos Fonseca Hospital.
Teacher: Do you like doctors?
Student: Yes, I do.
Teacher: What kind of doctor would you like to be?
Student: A VET.
Teacher: Why?
Student: Because I love pets.
I call number 2 and my student with that entry shout it out book.
Teacher: Do you like reading book?
Student: Yes, I do.
Teacher: What kind of books do you like to read?
Student: Novel and memory books.
Teacher: Who is your favourite writer?
Student: Kevin Trudeau.
Teacher: How do you spell his last name?
Student: T-R-U-D-E-A-U.
Assessment