CLT Method: English only?



CLT (Communicative Language Teaching) have long been a dominant method in ELT. And its main focus is…communication, of course! The more target language exposure the better they said. But is it effective to restrict classroom language to English only? There are, obviously some advantages like:
  • full immersion in L2
  • necessity to find new linguistic strategies from a student’s perspective
  • development of contextual guess
  • development of fluency especially in listening and speaking

But throwing an unprepared student in the ocean of a foreign language can lead to distressing results like:
  • stress and performance failures caused by a number of misunderstanding
  • unwillingness to produce speech, “silent mode”
  • growing feeling of self-consciousness, lack-of-knowledge complex
  • decrease of learning motivation

So, if you think that full immersion in another language is the best way of learning you might want to also put the consequences on the scale. What’s your opinion on language teaching methods? Share your ideas!

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