The Pedagogical Maze: Retrospection on CLT in Hong Kong

http://blog.scirp.org/

Authors: Dan Lu & Julie Y. F. Ng Source: Open Journal of Modern Linguistics, Vol. 3 No. 4, 1-6.(scirp)

The Communicative Language Teaching approach (CLT thereafter) has been implemented in Hong Kong for the purpose of education reform since the early 1980s. English courses in Hong Kong schools have then started to emphasize the communicative use of the language rather than merely its linguistic forms and structures. However, over the last decade, there has been criticism from some sections of society about the continuously declining English proficiency of Hong Kong students. Apparently, this phenomenon reflects that the prevalent use of CLT is not suitableto Hong Kong classroom contexts.

In contrast with the traditional approaches and methods which put much emphasis on the knowledge about the target language, CLT places the focus on the learner’s competence of using the language for communication. In brief, CLT allows students to have more class time to practice the target language through interactive activities developed from authentic materials. In fact, if properly applied, some principles of CLT are applicable to the Hong Kong context and can Continue reading →

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