This
week’s readings included two articles exploring the issues of CLT and
Shekan’s article, which explores task-based instruction and
research surrorunding this approach.
Stephen
Bax’s article The end of CLT: A context
approach to language teaching discusses how CLT ignores context, a crucial
aspect to the language pedagogy. While he admits that CLT has been very useful and important
in the TESOL profession, the need for CLT has expired. CLT became popular in
order to correct problems found with other methods at the time but today, CLT
is negatively affecting the practice and needs to be replaced. As we have discussed in class, CLT
ignores context. So what is the reasoning behind the large amount of support of
CLT by researchers and professionals today?
Bax introduces the idea of the “CLT
attitude”. Some teachers ignore the culture, learning context, student needs,
and other contextual factors when looking into the classroom. They ignore these
contextual factors and if they see CLT is not being used in the classroom they
immediately consider the approach as “backwards”. Many, in fact, see CLT as the modern and overall best way to
learn language properly. Bax provides a number of examples including
perspectives of individuals observing language classrooms. These examples show
how many scholars and teachers look down on a culture and teachers because they
are not embracing CLT regardless of the learning context. Is a method better
because it is newer?
These
individuals see CLT as a whole and complete solution to learning a language,
when as we know; none exist. They assume that there is no other method that can
be better, choose to ignore other’s views and neglect the local context. We as
professionals in the TESOL field need to carefully analyze what we are seeing
in the classroom and abandon this CLT attitude.
So
what does Bax mean when he states that CLT ignores context, a crucial aspect to
language learning? Guagweu Hu provides an excellent example of this in his article,
which discusses the rising importance for English learning in the People’s
Republic of China and the inappropriateness of the CLT approach to learn
English. The traditional approach to learning English is described as a
“combination of grammar-translation method and audiolingualism” (Hu, 93). When this method was seen as failing to
develop good levels of communicative competence among learners an effort to
import the CLT method into the Chinese context began. A lot of time and money has been spent on putting CLT in schools.
However, these efforts and resources show little impact. As Hu states, “Chinese
teachers and learners of English do not seem to have gone through any
fundamental changes in their conception of effective language instruction and
in their daily practices (Hi 94). Despite the push for CLT, traditional approaches
are still found in most classrooms.
Why
don’t we see CLT in these classrooms?
While there are many versions of CLT out there, all versions share
positions that meaning is primary and that teaching should be centered on
communicative functions (Hu, 95). In CLT teaching is found to be learner
centered, focuses communicative competence and works to provide opportunities
to use the target language in real life experiences. However as we discussed
last week, even though this method sounds promising, CLT does not take learning
context into consideration. When
looking at the example of the People’s Republic of China in Hu’s article we see
why many times CLT is not the appropriate method.
Hu
states that cultural influences may prohibit Chinese teachers and students from
embracing this approach. There is
what he calls a “Chinese culture of learning”; a set of attitudes, expectations,
beliefs, perceptions, values, preferences, experiences and behaviors that are
all characteristics of Chinese society regarding teaching and learning (Hu, 96). Shouldn’t this be considered in the
classroom? Is CLT doing that?
Hu
discusses how education has been internalized in Chinese society, and that many
attach education to social mobility, strength and superiority. Hu states, that
many take education very seriously and may see games and communicative activities
often found in the CLT approach as out of place in the classroom (Hu, 97). Education
also has an affect on moral qualities, and this emphasis on moral education is
said to encourage imitation of socially approved models and collective
orientations. This discourages individuality, fulfillment of personal needs and
self-expression which play a very important role in CLT. We don’t want to over
generalize Chinese culture but it is important to consider contextual factors
like these when CLT is being applied. Another issue is that education traditionally
is viewed as a process of gathering knowledge rather than a practical process
of constructing and using knowledge for purposes (Hu, 97). This concept of
education in Chinese culture also contradicts with the principals of CLT. There
are a number of things considered part of the Chinese culture centered on
education that disagree with the CLT approach. As Bax discussed in his article,
when most see that a Chinese classroom perhaps does not use the CTL approach,
they consider this classroom as “backwards”, out of the loop, or less
effective. Is this true? No, these researchers Bax discusses simply do not
understand how CLT is not the right approach for everyone, for every culture,
for every context.
Bax
states in his article that though CLT is almost disguised by being called an
approach it is actually more of a method. What does he mean by this? As he states on page 280, CLT is often
seen as “the way we should teach”, the way things should be done. Looking at
the name alone tells us a lot, Communicative Language TEACHING, not
Communicative Language LEARNING. What is the difference here?
The main idea is that CLT ignores the context in which
teaching is taking place. We look at what teachers should say do, make and
prescribe a solution; a method.
While CLT tries to focus on communication, context is
ignored and it generates this idea that it is a solution that can be applied anywhere.-
as Bax calls it, a “magic solution” for all learners (281). CLT is not a magic solution. There are a
number of ways to learn a language, language learning is in fact very complex-
so why are we reducing language learning to one solution? What does this do?
What needs to be changed? What benefits do we get in including context?
Bax
discusses on page 285, that as teachers, we need to learn about our context
before we decide on how we should teach. When deciding on how we should teach
we must consider the individuals’ needs, learning needs, styles, wants and strategies.
We need to consider local conditions, classroom culture, school culture, national
culture and the many other factors that come into play. A classroom includes
all of these. As teachers it is not our job to apply one approach in teaching
language but to take our own, specific learning context into consideration and
teach to the best of our ability, for the best of our students. As teachers, we
shouldn’t be simply following a method but we must be expert context analyzers.
