Communicative language teaching: gain and loss along the way

One of our teachers is ill and we have had no lessons today. As a result, I finished work earlier than when I go to university, and could take time to watch the whole video on communicative language teaching that I bring here. Our teacher used a section for our exam last term, and she provided us with the link, so we could watch the whole talk by Jeremy Harmer and Scott Thornbury.

I have enjoyed it a lot, starting with the format, where each of them interviewed the other for half an hour. Both have similar backgrounds regarding their early training in ELT, based on the audiolingual method, with lots of drilling and repetition, which they loved at the beginning, because of the sense of control it gave them. Then, they both shifted towards the communicative approach, as it developed. As a matter of fact, they took part in its development. After some time of being into the strong version of communicative language, Jeremy Harmer explains that he now doesn't see himself so much into it, whereas Scott Thornbury has maintained his view close to it.

I will just point out the bits I have underlined in the notes I have taken while I watched them talk, as being the things that have struck me most, or the ones that especially clarified aspects we have learned about during this academic year:

• The idea that if you manage to give students a good task, language learning will take care of itself, linked with the deep end strategy (throw your students into the pool to teach them how to swim). Doing things with the language, using it, solving problems in it; that's what will make you a successful language learner. Those are basic ingredients of the communicative approach, and they sound great. The hard bit is coming up with the right task, and that's what we have been practising this year.
• One of the main problems or risks nowadays is that every teacher believes they are doing communicative language teaching, because the communicative approach became such a wide concept that it seemed to accomodate almost anything. Many don't really know what the communicative approach is.
• A communicative activity has six main features, as Harmer argued in the early eighties: communicative purpose, desire to communicate, focus on content (not form), use of a variety of language (no focus on a particular grammatical structure), little or no teacher intervention and little materials control.
• The weak version of communicative learning is about learning a language in order to use it (there is some learning involved), and the strong version is about using a language in order to learn it. The strong version links with Krashen's view that you don't learn a language; you acquire it.
• According to Thornbury, the most motivating elements for students are actually the people in the classroom, and the best source of information gap is among them. Therefore, you should concentrate your efforts on creating opportunities to communicate in the classroom.
• Instead of providing your students with language structures and vocabulary prior to communicative tasks such as role playing and discussion, you can start the other way around, and provide instruction as students actually ask for it. This would be reactive teaching (instruction), as opposed to the preemptive teaching of the traditional approach.
• Thornbury's teaching unplugged would be a reaction against too much technology and materials; somehow going back to basics, to conversations among people.
• One of the good things that the communicative approach brought was the view on mistakes as something good in the learning process.
• TTT is important too, as it provides exposure to good input.

Finally, it is interesting to note that Scott Thornbury has a very interesting blog. For example, this is his view on the definition of a communicative activity, which goes beyond what Harmer proposed some decades ago.

In summary, I have spent a great afternoon-evening. Regarding my view on what they discussed, I guess that at the end of the day whatever works is ok, if I may use Woody Allen's film title. And whatever works will be different for each of us, and even for oneself in different contexts or moments in life.