ELTWeekly Issue#18, Research paper: The Ecology of Communicative Language Teaching: Reflecting on the Singapore Experience

By Tarun Patel

The Ecology of Communicative Language Teaching: Reflecting on the Singapore Experience

Source: Online Submission, Paper presented at the Annual CELEA International Conference (Guangzhou, China, Nov 11-13, 2006)

Publication Date: 2006-11-11

Pages: 14

Abstract

This paper addresses the ecology of communicative language teaching (CLT) by reflecting on the Singapore experience. It reviews how CLT was conceptualized, advocated and implemented in stages/phases as reflected in the different syllabuses by the Ministry of Education, Singapore.

In anchoring the discussion against a historical backdrop and examining the ecology and evolution of English language teaching in Singapore, it focuses on two English Language syllabuses published in 1991 and 2001 respectively.

It illustrates the operational issues in reference to the two syllabuses, with a focus on the ecology of such pedagogical innovations and how the ecological nature of CLT is mirrored in the syllabuses.

Highlighting issues such as mismatches between what the syllabus documents stipulate and what practitioners bring into English language classrooms and how success in implementation can be achieved when training is provided timely, it also discusses theory-practice connection and the integration issue that is most often debated in the teacher-education literature.

It concludes with a discussion of possible implications of the Singapore CLT experience for ELT in China. (Contains 1 table, 2 figures, and 1 footnote.)

To access the full paper, please visit: http://www.eric.ed.gov

ELTWeekly Issue#18 commento

1 Comment

April 28th, 2009

About... Tarun Patel

This author published 569 posts in this site.
Tarun Patel (http://tarunpatel.net/blog/) is an ELT and Communication skills teacher, working with Charotar University of Science & Technology (CHARUSAT - http://charusat.ac.in/). He has been dealing with the Language learning processes for last seven years. 'Technology in Teaching English' is his favorite domain and he has presented several research papers in national and international conferences on the same theme. He is the founder editor of ELTWeekly (http://eltweekly.com/), India's first weekly ELT eNewsletter which reaches in more than forty countries and benefits more than 1600d teachers of English and Communication Skills. Have a look at his personal blog http://tarunpatel.net/blog/.