Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)

As the language theories underlying the Audiolingual methodand the Sitiuational Language Teaching method were questioned by prominent linguists like Chomsky (1957) during the 1960s, a new trend of language teaching paved its way into classrooms.Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) Which is an approach to the teaching of second and foreign languages, emphasizes interaction as both the means and the ultimate goal of learning a language. It is also referred to as “Communicative Approach”. Historically, CLT has been seen as a response to the Audio-Lingual Method (ALM), and as an extension or development of the Notional-Functional Syllabus. Task-based language learning, a more recent refinement of CLT, has gained considerably in popularity.

Shortcomings of structuralism and behaviorism

The theories underlying the audiolingual method and the situational language teaching were widely criticized during the 1960s. Noam Chomsky, for instance, rejected the structuralist view of language and demonstrated that there is a distinction between performance and competence.  The goal of the linguist is to study the linguistic competence native speakers are endowed with. He also showed, rightly, that structuralism and behaviorism were unable to account for one fundamental  aspect of language, namely the creativity and uniqueness of individual sentences. A child is able to produce an infinite number of sentences that s/he has never encountered. This makes  the factors of  imitation, repetition and habit formation weak arguments to account for any language learning theory.