Teacher Roles in Communicative Language Teaching (TLC) in an EFL Setting

As noted by Gumperz (1972, as cited in Wardhaugh, 2002), “communicative competence describes speakers’ ability to select from the totality of grammatically correct expressions available to them, forms which appropriately reflect the social norms governing behavior in specific encounters” (p. 249). In this sense, it can be concluded that teachers must give consideration to combining those two different types of communicative activities in the EFL conversation class. Such an attempt can be realized through the syllables designed to encourage students to participate both in “planned discourse” (e.g., eacher-directed situation drills) and “unplanned discourse” (e.g., free discussions) throughout the classroom activities. In other words, adopting the different “teacher roles” from each type of activities (i.e., authentic vs. non-authentic communicative activities) in classroom will be effective to help students achieve improved communicative competence in the target language.

According to Johnson (1995), teachers are responsible for making the classroom atmosphere encouraging, supportive, and open to any and all students’ contributions and participation. As shown in the authentic communicative language activities, such as free discussions and interview, where the interaction takes place with the main focus on meaning of conversation, teachers should adopt non-authentic communicative activities. That is because the EFL students need the sufficient amount of accurate input and the opportunities to get feedback on their performance through controlled communicative activities. (Through the course evaluation, students in my conversation classes expressed this need for formal instruction on their grammar and vocabulary.) Therefore, incidental feedback or form-focused instruction in the shape of communication during the authentic communicative activities will be effective ways to supplement students’ ability to participate beyond their current level of competence in the second language.

In addition, students are encouraged to strategically use a certain type of expressions in predictable discourse situations. Providing students with opportunity to learn the second language norms as well as to negotiate meaning in class will lead the students to higher levels of L2 proficiency.