Underlying assumptions of language as communication, and the goal of learning as effective communication (CLT in China: A Re-examination)

Krashen stresses that provided that learners are exposed to enough comprehensive input in a relaxed setting, acquisition will take care of itself.

Inspired by the interactionists’ [e.g. Vygotsky] hypothesis, typical exercise types and activities compatible with CLT enable learners to have access to meaningful and comprehensible input through communication with teachers and among themselves. Such activities are often designed to engage learners in meaning negotiation through completing particular tasks.

Regarded as an approach (rather than a method) that spawns a handful of principles. Such principles have become dominant practices in ELT throughout the world… These principles include:

• Language use rather than language forms is emphasized.
• Fluency and accuracy are both important.
• Students, not the teacher, are the focus of the lesson.
• Classroom activities should engage students in authentic and meaningful communications.
• Communication often involves the integration of different language skills.
• Learner autonomy and responsibility are encouraged.
• Cooperative learning is promoted.

In CLT learners are primarily negotiator between the selves, other students, the teacher, the learning process, and the object of learning.

CLT has become a mainstream approach of English language teaching in China. Some Chinese teachers are intimidated by the demands of their various roles to play within the communicative classroom: overseer of his students’ learning, classroom manager, instructor, consultant or advisor, and co-communicator with his students.

In an EFL context in China, they have to serve, in most cases, as the only source of linguistic competence, pragmatic competence, discourse competence and strategic competence. Such burden may seem too tough for non-native teachers