COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING: MANAGING THE LEARNING PROCESS

Abstract

The article deals with the issues of the nature of communicative language teaching. Changing views on the nature of language and learning in relation to theories, objectives, syllabus, classroom activities and the roles of learners, teachers and material which led to the emergence of communicative language teaching are analyzed.

Methodology as a communicative process is investigated as well as communicative abilities of interpretation, expression and negotiation. The roles of the teacher and the learners within a communicative methodology are identified. Moreover, the concept of learner-  centeredness is analyzed within the learning process domain.

A learner-centered curriculum has been compared with the traditional one pointing out similarities and differences between them. It is argued that communicative language teaching has had a major influence on language curriculum development. Therefore, curriculum decision-making in high-structure and low-structure contexts at the planning,  implementation and evaluation stages is outlined in this paper. One of the main issues to be considered within curriculum content is needs analysis which provides a basis for setting goals and objectives. Hence, the salient characteristics of the three approaches to needs analysis are presented according to their educational rationale, the type of information collected, the method and the purposes of data collection.