You may have noticed that the goal of most of the methods we have looked at so far is for  students  to  learn  to  communicate  in  the  target  language.Applying    the    theoretical    perspective    of    the    Communicative    Approach, Communicative  Language  Teaching  (CLT)  aims  broadly  to  make  communicative competence the goal of language teaching.Indeed,  Klapper  (2003) makes the point that because CLT lacks closely prescribed classroom techniques, as compared with some of the other methods we have just looked at, CLT is 'fuzzy' in teachers' understanding.Some observed that students could produce sentences accurately in a lesson, but could  not  use  them  appropriately  when  genuinely  communicating  outside  of  the classroom.Within a social context, language users needed to perform certain functions, such as promising, inviting, and declining invitations (Wilkins 1976).Such observations contributed to a shift in the field in the late 1970s and early 1980s from a linguistic structure-centered approach to a Communicative Approach (Widdowson 1990; Savignon 1997).However,  its  flexibility  also  means  that  classroom practices differ widely even when teachers report that they are practicing CLT. Others noted that being able to communicate required more than mastering linguistic structure, due to the fact that language was fundamentally social (Halliday
1973).In   short,   being   able   to   communicate   required   more   than   linguistic competence;   it   required   communicative   competence   (Hymes   1971)--knowing when and how to say what to whom.Nevertheless,   we   will   follow   our   usual   way   of   understanding   the   theory   and associated practices by visiting a class in which a form of Communicative Language Teaching is being practiced.All the paraphrases the students suggest are evaluated by the teacher and the other students to make sure they convey the same degree of certainty as the reporter's original prediction. Students may know  the  rules  of  linguistic  usage,  but  be  unable  to  use  the  language  (Widdowson
1978).What this looks like in the classroom may depend  on  how  the  principles  are  interpreted  and  applied.This fuzziness has given CLT a flexibility which has allowed it  to  endure  for  thirty  years.Experience

The teacher greets the class and distributes a handout.For example, the first two sentences on this side of the handout are:

Argentina may have an outside chance.Germany probably won't be a contender next time.