Editing Communicative language teaching (section)

== Background ==
=== Societal influences ===
The rise of CLT in the 1970s and the early 1980s was partly in response to the lack of success with traditional language teaching methods{{fact|date=March 2024}}<!--How exactly was there 'lack of success'? It's not as if people hadn't succeeded in learning the languages they studied during all the decades and centuries in which grammar-translation was the standard approach.--> and partly by the increase in demand for language learning. In Europe, the advent of the [[European Common Market]], an economic predecessor to the [[European Union]], led to migration in Europe and an increased number of people who needed to learn a foreign language for work or personal reasons. Meanwhile, more children were given the opportunity to learn foreign languages in school, as the number of secondary schools offering languages rose worldwide as part of a general trend of curriculum-broadening and modernization, with foreign-language study no longer confined to the elite academies. In Britain, the introduction of [[comprehensive schools]], which offered foreign-language study to all children, rather than to the select few of the elite [[grammar schools]], greatly increased the demand for language learning.<ref name=":0" />

The increased demand included many learners who struggled with traditional methods such as [[grammar translation]], which involves the direct translation of sentence after sentence as a way to learn the language. Those methods assumed that students aimed to master the target language and were willing to study for years before expecting to use the language in real life. However, those assumptions were challenged by adult learners, who were busy with work, and by schoolchildren who were less academically gifted and so could not devote years to learning before they could use the language. Educators realized that to motivate those students an approach with a more immediate reward was necessary,<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|title=Communicative Language Teaching in Practice|last=Mitchell|first=Rosamond|publisher=Centre for Information on Language Teaching and Research|year=1988|isbn=978-0-948003-87-5|location=Great Britain|pages=23–24, 64–68}}</ref> and they began to use CLT, an approach that emphasizes communicative ability and yielded better results.<ref>Richards, Jack C. ''Communicative language teaching today''. SEAMEO Regional Language Centre, 2005.</ref>{{page needed|date=March 2024}}{{clarify|date=March 2024}}<!--How exactly were the 'better results' established?-->

=== Academic influences ===
Already in the late 19th century, the American educator [[John Dewey]] was writing about learning by doing,<ref>1897 My Pedagogic Creed</ref> and later that learning should be based on the learner's interests and experiences.<ref>1910.  How We Think.</ref>  In 1963, American psychologist [[David Ausubel]] released his book ''The Psychology of Meaningful Verbal Learning'' calling for a holistic approach to learners teaching through meaningful material.  American educator Clifford Prator published a paper in 1965 calling for teachers to turn from an emphasis on manipulation (drills) towards communication where learners were free to choose their own words.<ref>Prator, Clifford H. "Development of a Manipulation-Communication Scale. NAFSA Studies and Papers." English Language Series 10 (1965).</ref> In 1966, the sociolinguist [[Dell Hymes]] posited the concept of [[communicative competence]] considerably broadening out [[Noam Chomsky]]'s syntactic concept of competence.  Also, in 1966, American psychologist Jerome Bruner wrote that learners construct their own understanding of the world based on their experiences and prior knowledge, and teachers should provide scaffolding to promote this.<ref>1966. Toward a Theory of Instruction.</ref>  Bruner appears to have been influenced by [[Lev Vygotsky]], a Russian psychologist whose [[zone of proximal development]] is a similar concept.

Later in the 1970s British linguist [[M.A.K. Halliday]] studied how language functions are expressed through grammar.<ref name=":8">Littlewood, William. ''Communicative language teaching: An introduction''. Cambridge University Press, 1981, pp. 541–545</ref> 

The development of communicative language teaching was bolstered by these academic ideas. Before the growth of communicative language teaching, the primary method of language teaching was [[Language pedagogy#The oral approach and situational language teaching|situational language teaching]], a method that was much more clinical in nature and relied less on direct communication. In Britain, applied linguists began to doubt the efficacy of situational language teaching, partly in response to Chomsky's insights into the nature of language. Chomsky had shown that the structural theories of language then prevalent could not explain the variety that is found in real communication.<ref name=":10">{{Cite book|title=Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching|last1=Richards|first1=Jack|last2=Rodgers|first2=Theodore|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=2014|isbn=978-1-107-67596-4|location=Cambridge|pages=23–24, 84–85|edition=3nd}}</ref> In addition, applied linguists like Christopher Candlin and [[Henry Widdowson]] observed that the current model of language learning was ineffective in classrooms. They saw a need for students to develop communicative skill and functional competence in addition to mastering language structures.<ref name=":10" />

In 1966, the linguist and anthropologist [[Dell Hymes]] developed the concept of [[communicative competence]], which redefined what it meant to "know" a language. In addition to speakers having mastery over the structural elements of language, they must also be able to use those structural elements appropriately in a variety of speech domains.<ref name=":9" /> That can be neatly summed up by Hymes's statement: "There are rules of use without which the rules of grammar would be useless."<ref name=":0" /> The idea of communicative competence stemmed from Chomsky's concept of the [[linguistic competence]] of an ideal native speaker.<ref name=":9" /> Hymes did not make a concrete formulation of communicative competence, but subsequent authors, notably Michael Canale, have tied the concept to language teaching.<ref name=":11">{{cite journal |doi=10.1093/applin/I.1.1 |title=Theoretical Bases of Communicative Approaches to Second Language Teaching and Testing |year=1980 |last1=Canale |first1=M. |last2=Swain |first2=M. |journal=Applied Linguistics |pages=1–47 }}</ref> Canale and Swain (1980) defined communicative competence in terms of three components: grammatical competence, [[sociolinguistic]] competence, and strategic competence. Canale (1983) refined the model by adding discourse competence, which contains the concepts of [[cohesion (linguistics)|cohesion]] and [[coherence (linguistics)|coherence]].<ref name=":11" />

An influential development in the history of communicative language teaching was the work of the [[Council of Europe]] in creating new language syllabi. When communicative language teaching had effectively replaced situational language teaching as the standard by leading linguists, the Council of Europe made an effort to once again bolster the growth of the new method, which led to the Council of Europe creating a new language syllabus. Education was a high priority for the Council of Europe, which set out to provide a syllabus that would meet the needs of European immigrants.<ref name=":10" /> Among the studies that it used in designing the course was one by a British linguist, D. A. Wilkins, that defined language using "notions" and "functions," rather than more traditional categories of grammar and vocabulary. The new syllabus reinforced the idea that language could not be adequately explained by grammar and syntax but instead relied on real interaction.<ref name=":10" />

In the mid-1990s, the Dogme 95 manifesto influenced language teaching through the [[Dogme language teaching]] movement. It proposed that published materials stifle the communicative approach. As such, the aim of the Dogme approach to language teaching is to focus on real conversations about practical subjects in which communication is the engine of learning. The idea behind the Dogme approach is that communication can lead to explanation, which leads to further learning. That approach is the antithesis of situational language teaching, which emphasizes learning by text and prioritizes grammar over communication.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Savignon |first1=Sandra J. |title=Communicative language teaching |journal=Theory into Practice |date=1 September 1987 |volume=26 |issue=4 |pages=235–242 |doi=10.1080/00405848709543281 }}</ref>

A survey of communicative competence by Bachman (1990) divides competency into the broad headings of "organizational competence," which includes both grammatical and discourse (or textual) competence, and "pragmatic competence," which includes both sociolinguistic and "[[illocutionary act|illocutionary]]" competence.<ref name=":12">{{Cite book|title=Fundamental Considerations in Language Testing|last=Bachman|first=Lyle|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1990|isbn=978-0-19-437003-5|location=Oxford|pages=84–92}}</ref> Strategic competence is associated with the interlocutors' ability in using communication strategies.<ref name=":12" />