Communicative Language Teaching: A Pedagogical Proposal based on the Content and Language Integrated Learning

Abstract

Because of its international demand and recognition as a worldwide language, English has recently become part of our education system. Accordingly, the use of the English language has increased in different sectors all over the world. However, there has been a clear lack of Communicative Competence (CC) since learners are not able to use the language communicatively. This fact seems to prove that the traditional methods were not an appropriate way of teaching. Hence, this research aims to analyse the methods and approaches during the 20th century, moving from the traditional teaching methods to one of the most recent approaches: Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approach and its methods: Task Based Language Teaching (TBLT) and Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). Whereas in the first learning is done through a series of activities seen as steps to complete the task successfully; the second one focuses on the use of a Second/Foreign Language (L2/FL) to teach content and language. CLT is very effective for teaching communicative and functional English because it gives importance to the acquisition of the four language skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking) in a natural way. Moreover, the language is taught through real life situations since students find easier to feel identified with them.