Major influences on how a language is taught and learnt have often come from work in linguistics. Language teachers have long looked for guidance from linguists on how to teach languages and linguistics theories are often reflected in practices of the language teaching classroom.
Many theories have been evolved in the history of the learning and teaching of a foreign language. These theories, usually influenced by developments in the fields of linguistics and psychology, have inspired many approaches to the teaching of foreign languages. The study of these theories and how they influence language teaching methodology is called applied linguistics.
Communicative Language Teaching began in Britain in the 1960s as a replacement to the earlier structural method, Situational Language Teaching. This came partly in response to Chomsky’s criticism of structural theories of language and partly based on the theories of functional linguistics Firth and Halliday, American sociolinguists Hymes, Gumpers and Labov and the writings of Austin and Searle on speech acts.
Chomsky challenged previous assumptions about language structure and language learning methodologies of the Grammar Translation Method (the language is graphed) and the Audiolingual Approach (habit formation as a mode of learning). He took the position that language is creative and ruled governed. He believed that there was a set of rules and instructions governing the language system, which if followed rigidly would produce an infinite number of grammatically correct sentences. This transformational Generative Grammar, began as a study of syntactic structures in linguistics, gradually became an elaborate scheme trying to embrace the whole of linguistic analysis. However, most of these analyses were done without reference to meaning. Sentences which were generated from these ‘tree-structure’ paradigms could easily be senseless.
Chomsky’s linguistic theory stressed that language had two components: competence and performance. Competence refers to knowledge of the rules of grammar and the language structure while performance refers to how the rules are used in an actual sentence. Chomsky focused his linguistic theory on the knowledge and ability to produce grammatically correct sentences.
On the other hand, Hymes held a view that Chomsky’s view is sterile. Linguistic theory needed to be incorporated into a broader view of communication and culture.
The notion is intended to replace Noam Chomsky's dichotomy of competence and performance. Speakers draw on their competence in putting together grammatical sentences, but not all such sentences can be used in the same circumstances: Close the window and Would you mind closing the window, please? are both grammatical, but they differ in their appropriateness for use in particular situations. Speakers use their communicative competence to choose what to say, as well as how and when to say it. He made the point that (1979: P5):
‘There are rules of use, without which the rules of grammar would be useless’.
Hymes argues that linguists of the transformational school have been so concerned with the ‘possible’ structure alone that little was learnt about how language is used as a mean of communication. He pointed out (1979: P.15):
‘We have then to account for the fact that a normal child acquires knowledge of a sentence, not only as grammatical, but also appropriate. He or she acquires competence as to when to speak, when not, and as to what to talk about, with whom, when, where, in what manner.’
Hymes further stated that there were four aspects of this communicative competence (1979: P.19):
‘whether something is formally possible;
whether something is feasible;
whether something is appropriate;
whether something is in fact done.’
These features form integral part of the interaction in language. Hymes’s view had been extremely influential in steering development in secondary language theory and practice. He exemplified a move away from the study of language purely as an analytical system towards the study of language as social communication and appropriateness. This shift has provided the theoretical plan round to communicative language teaching.
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