What is Communicative Language Teaching and is there any place for it in EFL teaching?

In this essay, I will endeavor to: define Communicative Language Teaching; when and why it became an important approach in foreign language teaching; discuss attitudes to it; define communicative activities; discuss learner-directed activities and the teacher’s role; give examples of communicative activities and discuss the place of Communicative Language Teaching in my own teaching situation.

Put simply, the aim of Communicative Language Teaching is to help students move beyond mastering the structures in a foreign language to the point where they can use them to communicate meaningfully in real life situations. This assumes that people who learn the English language want to be able to communicate socially on an everyday basis with native or very able English language speakers. They will also want to be able to live normal lives if they are visiting, or living in, countries where English is the primary language.

The ‘communicative’ movement has been influential in teac...