Dell Hymes /Canale&Swain

CLT origins,can be found in changes in the

Brisitsh language teaching tradition in the 1960s
Back then the situational language teaching
was the norm
SLT consisted internalizing the structures of
language
Mostly learning grammar rules without
vocabulary
 The SLT did not fill the need to
developlanguage competence in
language teaching

A group of experts saw the need to

focus in communicative proficiency
rather than mastery of strustures
 The objective of language learning is to
learn and express communication
functions and categories of meaning
Ultimate aim is communicative
competence in target language
A person who acquires communicative
competence acquires both knowledge
and ability for language use
 Richards and Rodgers (1986) described
CLT as an approach rather than a
method, since it represents a philosophy
of teaching that is based on
communicative language use.
Advocated by many applied linguists,
CLT in their views emphasizes notional-
functional concepts and communicative
competence, rather than grammatical
structures, as central to teaching.
Canale and Swain (1998) identify four
dimensions of communicative
competence:

Grammatical competence- similar to

linguistic competence by Chomsky by
what is formally possible
Sociolinguistic competence-
understanding of the social context in
which communication takes place,
including role relationships, the shared
information of the participants, and the
purpose for their interaction
 Discourse competence- the
interpretation of individual message
elements in terms of cohesion and
coherence
Strategic competence- the coping
strategies to initiate, terminate, maintain,
repair, and redirect communication
 Dell Hymes
His theory of communicative
competence was a definition of what a
speaker needs to know in order to be
communicatively competent in a
speech community.
Held the view that linguistic theory
needed to be seen as part of a more
general theory incorporating
communication and culture.
 Michael Halliday
Theory: the functional account of language
use
Linguistic is concerned with the description
of speech acts or texts, since only though
the study of language in use are all the
functions of language , and therefore all
components of meaning brought into
focus.
He has elaborated a powerful theory of the
functions of language, which complements
Hymess view of communicative
competence for many writers on CLT.
Seven basic functions: instrumental,
regulatory, interactional, personal, heuristic,
imaginative, representational.