Asian EFL Journal: English Language Teaching and Research Articles

May 2005 Conference Proceedings

Speech Title

The Rise and Fall of Communicative Language Teaching

Address
Assoc. Prof. Phyllis Ghim-Lian Chew

Profile
.

Assoc. Prof. Phyllis Ghim-Lian Chew lectures ELT methodology at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University. She has published widely in the areas of education and linguistics, comparative religion and women's studies. Her research on language has appeared in journals such as World Englishes, Language, Culture and the Curriculum, International Journal of the Sociology of Language, Applied Linguistics and Linguistics and Education . She has also authored &/or directed several language textbooks for Singapore school and is President of the English Language and Literature Association of Singapore.

This paper charts the reasons behind the rise and fall of Communicative Language Teaching in Singapore and discusses the extent teaching methods from the West are suitable for Asian classrooms. It will also share findings from an ethnographic and quantitative survey undertaken in the Singapore classroom on language learning and language teaching. It will end with a sociological discussion on the concept of "change" in language teaching.

The rest of this article is available in Hard Cover version.