The comparison between CLT and the earlier structuralist tradition ...

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In 1972 a British linguist, D. A. Wilkins, proposed a functional or communicative definition of language that could serve as a basis for developing communicative syllabuses for language teaching. Wilkins’s contribution was an analysis of the communicative meanings that a language learner needs to understand and express. Rather than describe the core of language through traditional concepts of grammar and vocabulary, Wilkins attempted to demonstrate the systems of meanings that lay behind the communicative uses of language. He described two types of meanings: notional categories (concepts such as time, sequence, quantity, location) and categories of communicative function (requests, denials, offers, complaints).

Proponents of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) see it as an approach that aims to (a) make communicative competence the goal of language teaching and (b) develop procedures for the teaching of language skills that acknowledge the interdependence of language and communication. Its comprehensiveness thus makes it different in scope and status from any of the earlier traditions in language teaching. There is no single text or authority on it, nor any single model that is universally accepted as authoritative. What is essential in all of them is that at least two parties are involved in an interaction of some kind where one party has an intention and the other party expands or reacts to the intention.

(RICHARDS, J.C. & RODGERS,T. Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching. Cambridge: CUP, 2001. Adaptado)