Communicative Language Teaching

Introduction
In week 6 for my language class, the session started with our teacher reading in the target language and after every other sentence asking us if we understood and if we were able to translate what was read into English. What he read was his own short biography and hobbies and asked us to do the same.
For this week’s reflection I will be using Rolfe, Freshwater & Jasper’s (2001) framework model and the approach of Communicative Language Teaching to reflect on my experiences in my language class; I will discuss what I believe was a critical moment and use the approaches and methods techniques that I learnt in my approaches and methods module to address the critical incident.

The teacher asked us to write 100 words in the target language about our biographies and hobbies and then asked us to present it to the rest of the class. I observed as one of the students presented, and this was followed up with questions from my teacher who also urged the rest of us to ask questions or make comments about what was said. He asked questions such as “Why do you study Law?” “Where do you play football?” “You mentioned your favorite cuisine, but what is your favorite dish in that cuisine?” I immediately noticed the reasons he was asking was not to show interest in the presentation for the sake of it, but what he was doing instead was probing the student to communicate and answer questions in the target language.

The significance of using the Communicative Language Teaching approach really shunned in this incident, the teacher applied this approach to get the students who were presenting to engage in the target language. This compelled us to think on our feet and respond to both questions and comments with the terminologies we had been learning over the previous few weeks. We had to utilize the words that we memorized and construct a sentence out of them to form sentences to communicate. Furthermore, I believe he orchestrated this session to observe the communication between the students. In the approach of Communicative Language Teaching the teacher has two roles: the first role is to facilitate the communication process between all participants in a classroom. The second role is to act as an independent participant within the learning-teaching group (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p.167). In this session the teacher certainly adopted both roles for the purposes of getting us engaged with the target language.

This approach made learning more enjoyable and relatable. Furthermore, the session included a practical component where we learned how to ask and answer questions in a presentation in the target language. This skill is pivotal for real-world communication, and the teacher’s method of teaching this was highly effective. We practiced constructing and answering questions, which will undoubtedly prove valuable in future language interactions.

Reflecting on this enriching learning experience, I am confident that I will adopt elements of this approach in my future career as an English language teacher. The way our teacher combined active student participation, personal connections, and practical language skills development was not only engaging but also highly effective.
Bibliography:
Richards, J.C. and Rodgers, T.S. (2001). Approaches and Methods in language teaching. Cambridge (Ingalterra) Cambridge University Press.

Rolfe, G., Freshwater, D. and Jasper, M. (2001) Critical reflection for nursing and the helping professions: A user’s guide. Basingstoke: Palgrave.