Communicative Language Teaching: 40 Years On: A Public Presentation by Scott Thornbury

Join us for a public presentation by New School MA TESOL (newschool.edu/matesol) faculty Scott Thornbury, sponsored by English Language Studies (newschool.edu/public-engagemen...) at The New School (newschool.edu) and Pearson English (pearsonelt.com).
It is 50 years since Dell Hymes first coined the term ‘communicative competence’ and it took only another ten before the concept became the foundation of a new approach to second language teaching. Forty years on, where is the communicative approach? Are the goals of language teaching still communicative competence? If so, what happened to the idea that ‘you learn to communicate by communicating’? In this talk Scott Thornbury reviews the core concepts that inspired CLT, and traces how they were developed and then - through want of a coherent learning theory - abandoned. He will argue that it is well past time that we revisited the foundational principles of CLT and argue that there are now good grounds - including a coherent theory of learning (or two) - to rehabilitate it.
Scott Thornbury (MATEFL, with distinction, University of Reading, UK), a native of New Zealand currently residing in Spain, is the series editor of the Cambridge Handbooks for Teachers series. He has been a prolific writer of books and articles for teachers and students and a tireless presenter at international ELT conferences, sharing the knowledge gained from his more than 30 years of experience as a teacher, teacher trainer, and CELTA and UCLES examiner.
Location: John L. Tishman Auditorium, University Center
Monday, July 10, 2017 at 6:00PM

[@umyde]

REFERENCES: - RINVOLUCRI, Mario, GRAMMAR GAMES: COGNITIVE, AFFECTIVE AND DRAMA ACTIVITIES FOR EFL STUDENTS (1985) (6:08) - HYMES, Dell, "On Communicative Competence" (1966) (9:54) - NEWMARK, Leonard, "How Not To Interfere With Language Learning" (1966) (11:24) - CORDER, S. Pit, THE VISUAL ELEMENT IN LANGUAGE TEACHING (1966) (13:09) - ALEXANDER, Louis G., FIRST THINGS FIRST (1967) (14:01) - ABBS, Brian / COOK, Vivian / UNDERWOOD, Mary, REALISTIC ENGLISH DRILLS (1978) (15:23) - BARNETT, James Arthur / BROUGHTON, Geoffrey / GREENWOOD, Thomas, SUCCESS WITH ENGLISH: TEACHER'S HANDBOOK 1 (1968) (17:16) - POSTMAN, Neil / WEINGARTNER, Charles, TEACHING AS A SUBVERSIVE ACTIVITY (1969) (17:55) - FREIRE, Paulo, PEDAGOGIA DO OPRIMIDO (Pedagogy Of The Oppressed) (1968) (18:54) - CANDLIN, Christopher N., SOCIOLINGUISTICS AND COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING (1971) (21:04) - SAVIGNON, Sandra J., COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE: AN EXPERIMENT IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING (1972) (21:42) - WIDDOWSON, Henry G., THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH AS COMMUNICATION (1972) (22:28) - BRUMFIT, Chris, "Communicative Language Teaching: An Educational Perspective", in BRUMFIT, C. J. / JOHNSON, K. (eds.), THE COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH TO LANGUAGE TEACHING (1979) (22:40) - ABBS, Brian / AYTON, Angela / FREEBAIRN, Ingrid, STRATEGIES - STUDENT'S BOOK (1975) (25:24) - HARMER, Jeremy, "What Is Communicative?", in ELT JOURNAL, 36/3 (1982) (30:43) - SOARS, John / SOARS, Liz, HEADWAY: STUDENT'S BOOK (1986) (32:43) - KRAMSCH, Claire, "Applied Linguistics: A Theory Of the Practice", in APPLIED LINGUISTICS 36/4 (2015) (36:40) - ORTEGA, Lourdes, "Sequences And Processes In Language Learning", in LONG, Michael H. / DOUGHTY, Catherine J., THE HANDBOOK OF LANGUAGE TEACHING (2011) (37:49) - ELLIS, Rod / SHINTANI, Natsuko, EXPLORING LANGUAGE PEDAGOGY THROUGH SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION RESEARCH (2014) (38:16) - LIN, Angel, "Toward Paradigmatic Change In TESOL Methodologies: Building Plurilingual Pedagogies From the Ground Up" (2013), in TESOL 47/3 (42:33) - The Participatory ESOL Planning Project (50:39) - STREVENS, P., SPOKEN LANGUAGE - AN INTRODUCTION FOR TEACHERS AND STUDENTS IN AFRICA (1956) (52:40) - Language Learning in the Wild (53:08) - The Hands Up Project (55:35) - The Cambridge Handbook series (1:04:50) - The Cambridge Handbook for Language Teachers series (1:05:11)

[@gracenoch3072]

Umide Sacoor Thank you

[@pete_shand]

This is a really great talk. It was nice to get such a comprehensive history of teaching methods up until now, felt like a real journey.

[@amjadenglish4026]

Thank you Scottt. This is an enlightening lecture. I have been watching for one year.

[@kliudrsfhlih]

Loved this

[@isabellaireland1700]

Waste of time