Content introduction chapter I. Communicative language teaching prioritizes developing students’ communication and interaction skills

2.2. To make use of communicative language teaching in your language classroom
Student-student interaction plays an essential role in applying a communicative teaching approach. As the more traditional teaching styles have usually been rather teacher dominant with students mainly learning through passive listening, student-student interaction, on the contrary, focuses on the active interaction among the students themselves during language classes. Student-student interaction embraces the strategies of cooperative learning in which each student’s learning success is dependent on the whole group’s input during the classroom sessions. This is an effective way of engaging the whole class as such exercises engage all students, not just the minority of active students who typically participate in a regular class. One popular CLT activity is role-playing. There is a playful component in role-playing that helps students practice speaking without feeling pressure. You can for example assign parts to your students, or let them decide on a specific setting. Choose a topic that is relevant to students, or one that connects to other topics explained in class. This will ensure that role-playing is an integral part of language lessons and not only a stand-alone experience. Collaborative tasks like assigning student groups to solve a puzzle using only the target language are also popular activities in CLT. This type of exercise allows not only to enhance students’ communication skills but also to experiment with the peer-learning approach, which is useful in strengthening relationships among students. Although a teacher’s role is not as dominant during exercises that emphasize student-student interaction, it certainly is substantial in making the interactional learning space as functional for the students as possible. In order to implement CLT methods successfully, it requires more than simply placing students into pairs and groups. To quote Felder and Henriquez (1995: 25): Each student in a language classroom has individual needs, levels of abilities, and interests. Therefore, having different tasks designed to meet the needs and skills of different students is essential in CLT. Also, providing a supportive learning environment makes participation easier for students, especially those who easily feel shy about active participation. Some of the challenges that teachers may face when implementing this method in their language classrooms are: Large class sizes: CLT is most effective in smaller groups where students can actively engage in communicative activities. In large classes, it can be challenging to manage and facilitate meaningful interaction between all students and the teacher’s time might not be sufficient to provide feedback and support for all student pairs/groups. Limited resources: Implementing CLT may require additional language learning resources, such as authentic materials, audio-visual aids, or digital tools. Inadequate access to these resources can hinder the effective application of CLT in the classroom. Student expectations: Some students might have a traditional view of language learning, expecting a focus on grammar and vocabulary. They may be resistant to the communicative approach or feel frustrated by the emphasis on speaking-based activities. Cultural barriers: In some cultures, students may be hesitant to speak up or engage in communicative activities due to societal norms, inhibitions, or concerns about making mistakes in front of their peers. Assessment challenges: Traditional language assessments and exams often focus on reading, writing and grammar skills rather than communicative competence. Teachers may find it difficult to assess students’ progress in a way that aligns with the goals of CLT and they might need to spend extra time redesigning their assessment and examination processes. Create a safe, inclusive and supportive environment where students feel comfortable to open up and express their thoughts and ideas. An atmosphere that allows students to ask if they need help is crucial to their academic success. It is important that at all stages of the teaching process you nurture this kind of non-judgemental environment. Having an open door policy and allowing students to pop in and talk about anything that may occur is a great way to promote good communication. Giving students extra support, tuition, or explanations before and after class helps shy students that don’t feel comfortable in class to ask questions to learn. Doing more team activities, and group work is a great way to take the focus off competing with one another and concentrate more on working together to get the best results. It can encourage communication, cooperation, and collaboration and help students talk more and effectively express themselves with their peers. Teamwork and collaboration are skills that are transferable across all aspects of life and will be particularly important in their future working lives. Consider incorporating some games and even some quizzes into your lesson plan. Split students into pairs or small groups and tell them that they need to work together to play or have a chance at doing well. Pair and group work will also have the added benefit of encouraging students that may not hang out together regularly to interact more; to ask questions, talk about themselves, and listen to others. Often teachers forget to mention when a student has performed well and instead focus on the negative aspects such as bad behavior. This can have significant effects and demoralize students. Although negative feedback can create positive outcomes by helping students to improve, giving positive feedback is a necessary part of promoting effective communication in the classroom. It has been shown that students that receive praise are more likely to believe that they can accomplish tasks and be successful. Other benefits are that it can help to build a student’s confidence, create a good rapport and supportive environment. Why stop giving feedback to students yourself? Why not teach students how they can provide positive feedback to one another, the importance of showing gratitude, recognition, and appreciation. Conversely, it can be beneficial to encourage your students to give you feedback. Allowing them to share their feedback on lessons or teaching styles shows that you appreciate and value their opinion as well as helping to improve learning. If you are looking for an easy way to get started with a lesson on feedback then we have put together a template on that very topic that you can download and use with just a click or two. Here everyone can submit anonymous feedback and give some well-deserved praise to their classmates. Moving around the classroom, and getting involved with the students will create less of a student-teacher feel. Moving away from the front of the classroom and joining them either at their desks to discuss ideas and getting involved in small discussions will help them feel more comfortable and more likely to open up. Moving around the room also has the added effect of changing students’ points of focus. By moving towards students who usually don’t speak up you can encourage them to participate by simply being in closer proximity. Some may not want to raise their voice around their classmates and simply being close means they can contribute without the added pressure that speaking aloud may bring. Listen to hear your students, not just to respond and give an immediate answer. Sometimes just lending an ear can be extremely useful in promoting a supportive and caring environment. Other times, students have a question about homework or need some clarification about a topic that has been discussed where an answer is needed. Listening to your students enables you to provide better assistance and consequently a better education. Likewise, helping to teach your students both the value and the skills of active listening will both help to improve their ability to understand instructions and lessons as well as their ability to connect with their peers. These are skills that will be invaluable throughout their time in education and throughout their lives. Another important aspect of improving communication in any setting, but especially in the classroom, is to make students feel safe and comfortable contributing. We mentioned earlier about the importance of creating a safe and supportive environment, students will naturally develop communication skills but some will do so more gradually than others as they may have a fear of speaking in front of a group or lack confidence in what they have to say. A tool like Mentimeter can help to alleviate and remove these fears and blockers. Collaborative learning – the practice of breaking students into small groups to answer questions, work on projects and learn from one another – has become one of the strongest core philosophies operating in classrooms today.The concept is not new; much of the early research on collaborative learning (also called cooperative learning) was done in the 1980s and 1990s when most classrooms favored the traditional teacher lectures and individual student work. But with the growth of technology and the increasing value society places on the ability to work in teams, collaborative learning has become more common. Here are 10 strategies for encouraging the success of collaborative learning:1. Deliberately select which students will work together. Left to their own devices, students will sort themselves into groups of friends who share common bonds. However, when a teacher creates the groupings, he or she can match students by strengths and weaknesses, deliberately mixing ability, diversity and social capability. 2. Size the groups for maximum effectiveness If a group is too small, ideas and discussion may not be diverse or energetic enough; if too large, some students won’t get involved. Optimum group size tends to be four to five. 3. Teach your students how to listen to one another. Among young learners, active listening isn’t a natural skill. Taking time to discuss and practice listening skills with your students – teaching them to make eye contact, avoid interruption and repeat important points – has both short and long term benefits. 4. Set the rules of language and collaboration. There will always be one or two students in each group who will be more likely to take the lead – or take over. Take the time to teach students how to clarify issues, how to paraphrase, how to disagree constructively and how to build on what others have contributed. 5. Make goals and expectations clear.Specific goals and expectations are important. If students are not clear on the goals they are expected to meet, group work has the potential to trail off into socialization or apathy. 6. Assign roles to the members of each group.With roles delineated, students are able to better understand what is expected of them. With roles like leader (directs the group’s actions for the day), recorder (takes notes and does all writing), encourager (enables discussion and gives positive feedback) and checker (checks the work and hands it in), its clear how each student needs to fulfill his or her responsibilities. 7. Use real-world problems, not imaginary ones. With practical, real-world assignments, students find information through research and forming real opinions. If you find a scenario that they feel involved in – an environmental issue, a recent Supreme Court case, a complicated social issue – they will take more ownership of the project. Even better, select a problem from the students’ own community and challenge them to solve it. 8. Consider giving each group a different task. Delegating tasks gives each group a sense of importance and emphasizes the fact that large problems are solved by people working together. By solving different pieces of an issue, your student groups will have a more personalized learning experience and will better refrain from ill-spirited competition or “borrowing” each other’s work. 9. Play a game to get students warmed up. This is particularly helpful for younger students, who may not be sure of their roles in the group or the classroom. Cooperative games require children to use the same skills that they do in collaborative schoolwork, and they can see results quickly. 10. Evaluate each group on its own merit. If you judge groups in relation to each other, students will feel like their success or failure is not entirely in their own hands. Try a system where you can give grades per how well each group met its goals, and/or how each student performed the duties of their assigned role. You can also reward by category, as in best discussions, best research or most original solution.Top of For It’s real! Advocates of the CLT approach highlight that it is just as important for students to just try to speak the language instead of learning key grammatical constructs by rote. They believe that languages are skills that are designed to be used and that learners are not just learning to simply acquire knowledge. CLT educators therefore specifically focus on giving students the skills to clearly and confidently communicate in real-world situations with native speakers of their target language, whether that’s in written or spoken form. By communicating real meaning in real-life situations, learners’ natural strategies for language acquisition are triggered. In doing so, students are increasingly motivated to learn – so if you’re struggling to get your students engaged using a CLT approach is certainly worth experimenting with. 2. Working with authentic language learning materials. Of course, it’s only possible to simulate real-life language situations in the classroom with authentic source materials. It’s essential to use genuine content (e.g newspapers, timetables, menus, podcasts, etc.) as part of a CLT approach so that students can easily see the similarity between the classroom activities and the real world. Such materials give students (particularly at higher ability levels) exposure to unregulated native-speaker language and text. They genuinely show the language as it is used by native speakers communicating with other native speakers and can therefore be really helpful in teaching language conventions. 3. Personal experience matters. For your students, nothing is as real to them as their own lives and lived experience. CLT classrooms are therefore characterised by the extensive use of learners’ backgrounds and current situations (e.g looking for work, finding friends, starting a new hobby, etc.), all of which are considered as invaluable contributions to the lesson’s content. For those language teachers who pride themselves on forming deep bonds with their students, the CLT method can be a powerful way to engage and support learners. Everyone in the classroom can practice forming questions by finding out information from their peers. And perhaps the combined wisdom of the classroom could help resolve some of the challenges international students might be facing. 4. CLT is a student-centred learning method.CLT lessons prioritise the use of teaching techniques that require learners to respond to real-world environments and situations. Group and pair work are therefore particularly relevant and widely-used activities to bring language learning to life. Having explained the key concepts in each lesson, the role of the language teacher is to provide scenarios in which students can practice what they have learned and understood. Students are therefore encouraged to spend most of the lesson communicating with their peers – through role plays that are guided but unscripted or through dilemmas and puzzles that need language and communication skills to solve. 5. Get creative.Clearly this type of lesson requires more thought than simply getting students to learn something by rote. But they also therefore offer opportunities for teachers to demonstrate their creativity and to take risks in generating original and entertaining ways to engage students. If you’re the type of teacher who enjoys creating lessons like this, then CLT is an approach you should definitely try! Your creativity will provide unique ways for students to maximise hands-on practice and to display their understanding of the key points through their communication. 6. Makes writing tasks more engaging for students.Writing is often a difficult skill for language educators to teach and for students to master. It’s also usually a solo activity, conducted in silence and as such is perhaps not that attractive as a classroom activity. Indeed for many educators, a writing task is often used as a piece of homework, although most people don’t actually write anything longer than a shopping list in their everyday lives. Making writing more purposeful and writing for a real audience can be powerful ways to use CLT techniques to improve students’ engagement with and attainment in writing tasks. And if you look hard enough, there’s no shortage of willing readers – e.g other educators, student peers or local communities – or of channels for students to use including newsletters, blogs or social media sites. 7. Develops students’ reading skills.Developing students’ reading skills is of vital importance for all language educators and can make a significant difference to their lives. To communicate effectively in their target language, students will need to be able to understand a wide range of written material such as local council communications, public notices, emails from their bank, tax demands and residency information.