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Just the other day I had an argument with another English teacher who claimed that Communicative Language Teaching is being overrated. He said that on the ground that unlike mastering the core of grammar, all the conversional practices and drills could be easily forgotten and wouldn?t last long without everyday practice. Being a passionate admirer of English Grammar myself, I realized at that moment that, probably, every single teacher has one?s own conception of Communicative Language Teaching, for my set of ideas and approaches in this field extend far beyond aggressive conversational practice only. There are plenty of communicative strategies and very often (most of the time) the speaker?s choice depends on the purposes, working context, appropriate register, cultural environment, and personal competence; and teachers are supposed to give necessary knowledge and polish the skills in order to build a solid matrix of foreign language in their students. Though, fortunately, no single methodology or fixed set of techniques is prescribed. Communicative competence includes many aspects of language knowledge, and they cannot be taught at once, but it is always helpful to cling on logic, sequence the activities, be consistent, point out the context and try to avoid overloading students with information. ESA approach lets us engage students, get them grasping new information, processing it and using it themselves, practising new knowledge and performing some communicative tasks either orally or in writing. In terms of CLT one of the major tasks and challenges for the teacher is to be able to navigate perfectly in the vast ocean of authentic materials, which should be not only adopted and adjusted according to the purpose, but updated regularly as well, because ?real-life language use? is an important aspect of CLT. All the four language skills are intertwined and support each other in real-life language use, so no skill can be omitted when teaching, that is why integrated curriculum proves to be really effective. As soon as we demonstrate and teach students how language is built from many separate pieces, they become attuned to many aspects even during very specific activities (e.g. they pay attention to pronunciation and connected speech while listening or practicing grammar). Following language knowledge are certainly better to be taught involving CLT: Knowing how to vary use of language according to the settings and participants (formal/informal, written/spoken, polite/disregarding); Knowing how to produce and understand different types of texts (narratives, reports, descriptions, interviews, small talks, debates, discussions, chitchat etc.); Knowing how to use different communicative strategies in order to maintain conversation despite being limited in language knowledge (asking clarifying questions, sticking to key words etc.) All in all, Communicative Language Teaching is based on a view of language as communication tool and does not constitute a method in itself; it is rather a set of principles framing an overarching approach to language teaching which may be carried out according to a variety of different methods.
