The Role of CLT in Innovating the Intensive Reading Course for Second-Year English Majors in China
Since its initiation in the 1970s, communicative language teaching (CLT) has so far been well established as the dominant ELT model. Despite its great advantages and huge popularity in language teaching arena, it still meets with some resistance in certain highly-regarded yet tightly-constrained courses. This paper intends to explore the possibility of applying CLT in such a course in the Chinese context, i.e. the Intensive Reading Course (IRC), and the potential to initiate some changes in the course. The paper starts by probing CLT theoretically, analyzing its social and linguistic underpinnings, some key models of communicative competence, the major principles and features of CLT, as well as some theoretical problems and issues. It then discusses the innovation of IRC in a CLT framework, in such areas as reading materials, learner-centredness, communicative activities and teacher training, with a view to pushing for possible reforms in the teaching syllabus and assessment for the course.
