Ineffectiveness of the Communicative Language Teaching approach in language Acquisition in an Arab non-native speaker context

Abstract

The CLT (Communicative Language Teaching) approach emerged in the late 1960s as a response to the prevailing discontentment with grammar-based instruction and audiolingualism in EFL (English as a foreign language) classrooms. However, the emphasis on fluency versus accuracy in the CLT approach has shown to fall short of the desired competency among non-native speakers of English. Learners typically express the need to know more vocabulary both for reading comprehension and to enable them to write on topics prescribed for their curriculum. This paper aims to identify the major components that can be combined with the communicative approach to support the teaching and learning of English in a non-native context at a Saudi university. The paper will also investigate the effectiveness of using non-native or authentic texts in the EFL classroom with reference to studies conducted in the field. The evidence for the qualitative data is collected from a Questionnaire and informally structured interviews with five volunteers who are faculty members at the university where the study was conducted. The research material used is mainly secondary. The paper will present an exploration of other researchers' work on the issue. The research hypothesis is that the CLT approach as it is being implemented at a Saudi university is ineffective in enabling language acquisition. The research findings indicate that for the CLT approach to be effective in non-native contexts, it has to be adapted to suit the needs of the context in which the English language is being taught.