reflection+of+the+article

**REFLECTION OF THE ARTICLE **  I chose the article called “//Some misconceptions about communicative language teaching”// by Geoff Thompson to write a reflection. I chose it because I agree with the writer about there are some disagreements and misconceptions about CLT among teachers, teacher trainers and applied linguistics.  First of all, the writer states that many teachers are confused about what CLT is. I agree with this statement because one of them who are confused about what CLT is me as a future English teacher. Actually, I am a little bit doubtful about how to apply CLT in the real classroom especially in public school. As the writer stated, there is unanimity that CLT requires to communicate in the target language; therefore, it requires some speaking activities in the classroom. However, I think, in the real classrooms in Turkey, it might be difficult to do so much speaking activities because the average number of the students in each classroom in Turkey is about 30 to 35 and allowing each student to speak in English takes a lot of time. On the other hand, doing speaking activities in pairs might cause a chaos. In such a situation, in order to put the class in order, the teacher must be very experienced in my opinion. Actually, I went to a public school in Ankara two weeks ago and I attended an English class. There were almost thirty students and they were young learners. The teacher tried to do an exercise in the book about the weather and she sometimes spoke English such as “write the board, listen to me”. However, there was a chaos in the class because the students wanted to answer the questions and they made very noise. If the teacher had tried to do speaking activities in such a class, there would have been much bigger chaos.  The writer puts forward four misconceptions in the article. The first one is “CLT means not teaching grammar. I agree with the writer and this point of view does not reflect the reality. In my opinion, grammar and vocabulary are cornerstones of learning a language. Therefore, we need to learn the grammar and the vocabularies of that language in order to learn a language. I think we can internalize the grammar of the target language by communicating in the target language like the acquisition of the first language. While acquiring our mother tongue, firstly we try to say single words, later chunks. Afterwards, we try to form whole sentences according to grammar structure. At the beginning, we can make some grammar mistakes, but we correct them over time. The same situation is valid for second language. Besides, as the writer stated, learning grammar is not a simple; therefore, we need to be imposed to grammar even while speaking in the target language implicitly.  The second misconception stated in the article is “CLT means teaching only speaking”. However, CLT does not mean only communicating by the means of foreign language. As I said previous paragraph, CLT must also teach grammar of the target language implicitly and it provides opportunity to use the learned vocabularies in a sentence for the students, so the students can reinforce their vocabulary in the target language.  The third misconception is “CLT means pair work, which means role play”. As far as I can understand, the writer states that pair works used with the aim of CLT by teacher in the class is not so productive and flexible; however, pair works suggest more far flexible, productive and useful techniques. For example, in textbooks, the activities prepared for pair work already say everything students should say such as “you are customer, you make a question using this…etc.” That is to say, students are told what to say while doing pair work. The writer states “Even when pair work is used, the learners never choose what to say, they simply work out how to say what they are told to say”. Actually, I agree with this statement very much. I think that we as a teacher should give an opportunity to choose what they want to talk about. Besides, this provides more creativity for students and students have more information to say about what they know. The last misconception discussed in the article is “CLT means expecting too much from the teacher”. That is to say, CLT place more demands on the teacher than other approach and techniques. However, I do not agree with the writer about this statement because in my opinion, this is not a misconception; rather it is exactly true. From some perspective, actually CLT places also more demands on students because students have to produce something on their own. However; this does not means that more active students are, the more passive teachers are. On the contrary, teachers need to more attentive while applying CLT. As the writer accepted, CLT requires teachers to have high proficiency level of target language. That is, CLT is more appropriate approach and technique for native teachers. On the other hand, the writer supports his idea by saying that teachers have a chance to reevaluate their techniques and beliefs they use in their class; and they have a reason to develop their skills and their language knowledge. I agree with the writer about this; however, according to me, if a teacher wants to develop her or his skills, s/he does not need a reason.  Consequently, I agree with the writer mostly, but partially I disagree with him in some situation. However; this article provides very useful information for me about CLT. I want to use this approach in the future if I become a teacher.
 * Sinem ATEŞ / 1734557 **