How grammar is viewed in the communicative language teaching perspective

Being communicative in language teaching is a main characteristic of today's English classrooms. It is reasonably true since Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) is the method that is perceived as the best approach in teaching English, even though as often stated by many language teaching experts , "there is no single approach which is the best and better that the other." The idea that the ability to communicate in English should be prioritized rather than the mere teaching of language for the sake of understanding the language seems to be strongly shared by most English teachers, including those based in Indonesia. This idea is undoubtedly unquestionable since it seems that there are no other reasons for any language program to approach other than this communicative goal. However, this does not mean that in the field, there are no problems arising with regard to the enthusiastic implementation of this approach. Just like a side effect, grammar is now pessimistically considered in English classrooms due to an exclusive, and perhaps false, understanding of Communicative Language Teaching. In this small paper, the issue of grammar exclusion in the realm of CLT is discussed . However, the concept of how grammar is viewed in CLT is also focused in order to be able to give a fair judgment toward how grammar should be approached in language teaching.

One reason why English teachers are so fanatic about CLT and therefore, leave behind the importance of grammar is that learning a language should be directed to the ability of using the language for communicative purposes. A psycholinguistic view put forward by Krasherians might also have a considerable influence. Based on this view, grammatical knowledge is labeled as a filter to the fluent production of language. Due to awareness of language rules, a learner becomes more careful in producing a language and eventually makes her/him look reluctant for example, , as often obviously demonstrated by ESL learners when speaking.

Another perspective comes from the naturalistic view. Based on this view, language should be mastered in a natural process. Grammar and the other aspects of language are not learned separately. They are learned simultaneously through language exposures, many of which are in the form of communicative interactions. By this, naturalists argue that speaking should be learned and done first above the other skills as it provides language exposures to the students.

Many clinical examples on how grammar is outlooked can be observed in the real practices of English instructions. For example, in a speaking class, a teacher often deliberately neglects language errors committed by her/his students after performing a speaking task. No comments are attempted to review the students' misunderstanding or failure in grammars. The assumption is that grammar is already reviewed prior to giving a speaking task and correcting the students' mistakes after a given task will be demoralizing for them. The teacher thinks that fluency should be put above accuracy if communicativeness is really approached.

Another instance is how English teachers consider grammar in a writing class. Many teachers, as they strongly influenced by CLT, regard that content is more important than grammar. Therefore, they often give more weight on the content aspect than the grammatical aspect in their scoring guideline. In fact, many students cannot express their ideas that they have in their mind well because of their poor competence in grammar.

Grammar in CLT

How should English teachers perceive grammar in language teaching is very important because it will enlighten our practices in the sense that they can position grammar appropriately in their teaching. According to Canale and Swain, communicative competence is a compact and interrelated construct since it consists of four competences which support one another, i.e. linguistic competence, discourse competence, strategic competence, and sociolinguistic competence. In other words, they should not be discretely viewed because they have the same importance in the successful production of language. Under this view, one competence thus, cannot be over-emphasized so as to disregard and exclude any account of the other competences.


to be continued

Tips for making a good lesson plan

Making a good lesson plan very often can be a difficult job for English teachers. Actually, it is not that hard. But, as a good lesson plan is always juxtaposed to the word 'creative', the English teachers start to have wrinkles on their forehead. As long as they have all the necessary stuffs before creating it, a lesson plan is just a piece of cake, indeed.

Characteristics of a good lesson plan

• it contains clear indicators, deriving from the standard competency and basic competencies focused.
  
• the teaching learning activities should be clear and refer to recent and innovative language teaching methodologies, characterized by their meaningfulness, relevance to learners' characteristics and environment, and suitability to teaching goals, to name a few.
• the time allotment shows a logical teaching time-line based on each activity planned.
• learning materials are relevant to learners' characteristics and innovative, which can cover the use of texts, audios, and videos.
  
• learning sources from which the texts, audios, and videos used derive from should be referred to appropriately.
  
• it reflects innovative use of teaching media, one of which is the inclusion of ICT.
• the assessment should be authentic and can really reflect students' current competence.
  
• it shows a coherence among all of its components in the sense that the activities are relevant to the set instructional goals and indicators, which in turn are reflected by the assessment planned.
• it uses effective and grammatical sentences, which are easily comprehended.
  

Components of a lesson plan

A lesson plan shares a number of components, such as subject identity usually put on the top of it, standard competency, basic competency(-ies), instructional objective(-s), learning indicator(s), taught materials, teaching-learning activities with time allotment, teaching methods/techniques, learning sources, teaching aids/media, and assessment.

A good understanding to what each of them requires is of high importance in making a good lesson plan. Therefore, each of them will be further explained in detail below.