CLT in The Language Classrooms Today: Effectiveness and Challenges

With the increasing industry and professional demands, the methodology for language teaching keeps on changing so as to keep pace with the changing requirements and the situations. Earlier where language learning implied mastering the language itself, today it is more of using it for practical purposes. With the wide emergence of specialisations and super specialisations in the various fields of learning, language also has acquired diversified roles and approaches and as such there is a need to give it a more specialised form and usage. Among the various innovative approaches to learn languages, Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approach has acquired great acceptance and is being increasingly applied in the language classrooms. Its origin can be traced back to the vast human trafficking emerging in North America and Europe as immigrants and guest workers, thus resulting in language teaching for specific purpose and combined with functional-notional level of language learning, forming a cohesive whole: CLT. The paper tries to assess the effectiveness of the CLT approach in the language classrooms in Rajasthan, for which a questionnaire was prepared and was administered to teachers from different colleges of Rajasthan. The paper analyses the findings and throws light on the fact that CLT needs to be made more popular as a language teaching technique in states like Rajasthan in India where learning English is still a challenge.