CLT?

I have seen my fair share of TESOL theories over the course of my ISU education, but I have always been a big fan of the Communicative Language Theory. It has just struck me as the most practical and applicable of the approaches. I firmly believe that the main purpose of any language class, be it ESL for ELLS or high school German, is for students to leave with the ability to utilize the language that they are learning. To that means, CLT has always appealed the most to me. Other methods, such as the direct translational method or the reading approach may have useful applications, as pointed out in our article for today, but I do not feel that they should dominate the class. I will always try to make sure that my students are fully able to utilize the language concepts that we cover in class.