Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)
Our Foundation in Proven Pedagogy
TDSO employs Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) as our core methodology for English teacher training. CLT is a research-backed approach that revolutionised language education globally, shifting from rote memorisation and grammar drills to student-centred interaction and meaningful communication.
We selected CLT as our foundation because it makes the learning process completely visible and requires practice-based approaches. Unlike subjects where learning can remain hidden, language teaching demands active student participation, immediate practice, and real-world application. These requirements created teaching methods that prove effective across all subjects, the foundation from which our TPA framework emerged.
CLT’s transformative power lies in its core principles. Teachers learn to facilitate student interaction rather than lecture, create practice opportunities rather than assign memorisation, and build systematic progression through communicative tasks. These approaches don’t just improve English teaching; they transform how teachers think about learning itself.
Understanding CLT
(Communicative Language Teaching)
What is CLT?
Communicative Language Teaching emerged in the 1970s and 1980s as a revolutionary approach to language education. It challenged the dominant grammar-translation method (where students memorised rules and translated sentences) with a radically different philosophy: language is learned through communication, not through learning about language.
The Core Principles of CLT
CLT rests on eight interconnected principles that fundamentally changed how languages are taught:
1. Communication is the Goal
Students need to communicate effectively in the target language, not just know grammatical rules. A student who can order food, ask directions, and hold conversations (even with some errors) has learned more useful language than a student who can recite perfect grammar but cannot communicate.
2. Meaning Over Form
Focus on the message students are trying to convey, not just grammatical accuracy. Errors are addressed without destroying students’ willingness to try communicating.
3. Learner-Centred Approach
Students are active participants, not passive recipients. The teacher facilitates communication opportunities; students do the communicating. Most class time is spent on students practising, not teachers lecturing.
4. Authentic Tasks
Students engage in tasks with real-world communication purposes: information gaps (one student has information, another needs it), problem-solving activities, role-plays, and simulations. These tasks mirror actual communication needs.
5. Practice Through Interaction
Students learn by interacting with each other through pair work, group work, and peer communication. Language develops through use, not through isolated study.
6. Errors are Natural and Productive
Making mistakes is part of learning, not evidence of failure. Students must feel safe communicating, even when uncertain. Teachers provide appropriate feedback without undermining confidence.
7. Systematic Scaffolding
Teachers provide comprehensible input (language slightly beyond students’ current level), move from controlled practice to guided practice to free practice, and gradually remove support as competence grows.
8. Multimodal communication and learning
CLT recognises that communication and learning occur through multiple modalities—verbal, visual, bodily-kinaesthetic, tactile, digital, and artistic. Students demonstrate their developing language competence and understanding through varied modes of expression: physical movement and gesture, visual representation, digital creation, dramatic performance, and artistic production, not solely through written or spoken language.
This multimodal approach acknowledges diverse learning preferences and capabilities whilst more authentically reflecting how humans communicate and make meaning in real-world contexts. By validating and utilising multiple modalities, CLT creates more inclusive and effective learning environments that enable all students to access, process, and demonstrate their knowledge.
Read bibliographic references about CLT here
Why CLT Works: The Evidence Base
Professional Expertise as Foundation
CLT is not theoretical speculation. Decades of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research demonstrate that learners acquire language through meaningful communication, not through memorising rules. Practice and interaction accelerate language development. Comprehensible input combined with opportunities for output produces effective learning. Task-based approaches engage learners and produce measurable gains. Peer collaboration enhances language acquisition.
This research base, built by scholars like Krashen, Swain, Long, and others, provides solid evidence for CLT’s effectiveness.
TDSO's CLT Implementation Approach
TDSO’s approach to implementing CLT in Cambodian schools developed through three interconnected components:
Experiential training (the EFT programme – English for Teachers): Workshops are structured so that teachers first experience CLT as learners. They participate in communicative activities, games, role-plays, and task-based exercises entirely in English, followed by structured reflection on what made these activities effective.
Classroom application (the EPPS programme – English for Public Primary Schools): Teachers are encouraged to take concrete techniques back to their classrooms and adapt them to their own students, class sizes, and available resources.
Ongoing coaching (coached PLCs – Professional Learning Communities): Trained TDSO coaches visit schools to observe lessons, provide feedback, and co-plan next steps with teachers through structured professional learning communities.
Evidence from Practice: EPST Programme Impact (2025)
TDSO’s English for Public School Teachers (EPST) programme demonstrates these principles in action. A 2025 impact evaluation at Prey Chruk and Prasat Primary Schools measured outcomes from 21 teachers and 99 students over a 40-week programme.
Teachers reported significant shifts from traditional to communicative approaches. As one teacher explained: “Before we used traditional ways for teaching, students were not engaged in the learning process. Since TDSO provides such training, teachers have received new teaching methods, thereby enhancing their teaching skills.”
The programme produced statistically significant improvements in student outcomes. Speaking skills showed substantial gains (Cohen’s d = 0.93), with written skills also improving meaningfully (Cohen’s d = 0.67). These effect sizes indicate that CLT-based training produces measurable learning improvements, not merely changes in teaching behaviour.
CLT and Related Pedagogical Approaches
CLT does not exist in isolation. It draws upon and integrates with several complementary pedagogical approaches that strengthen language learning and teaching.
CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) combines subject content learning with language learning. Students learn mathematics, science, or other subjects whilst simultaneously developing language proficiency. This approach recognises that language and content are inseparable – you cannot teach content without language, and authentic language use requires meaningful content. (read more)
Play-Based Learning uses games, simulations, role-plays, and creative activities to create low-anxiety environments where students experiment with language freely. Play naturally incorporates the CLT principles of meaningful communication, learner agency, and practice through interaction. (read more)
Constructivism holds that learners actively construct knowledge rather than passively receiving it. Students build understanding through experience, reflection, and social interaction. CLT embodies constructivist principles: learners construct language competence through meaningful communication, not through transmission of grammatical rules. (read more).
TBLT (Task-Based Language Teaching) organises learning around meaningful tasks that mirror real-world communication needs. Rather than teaching discrete language items in isolation, TBLT engages learners in purposeful activities—such as planning an event, solving a problem, or completing a project—where language use emerges naturally from the task requirements.
This approach embodies core CLT principles: learners focus on meaning and communication, practice language in authentic contexts, and develop fluency through engagement with genuine communicative purposes. TBLT complements CLT by providing a systematic framework for designing lessons around meaningful interaction rather than grammatical syllabi. (read more).
These approaches—CLIL, Play-Based Learning, Constructivism, and TBLT—are not alternatives to CLT but complementary frameworks that enrich communicative language teaching. They share fundamental principles: learner-centred practice, meaningful engagement, active construction of knowledge, and authentic communication. Together, they form a coherent pedagogical foundation for effective language teaching.