Communicative Language Teaching

When I think about what I am going to teach in my own class, a million things come to mind. Not only am I going to teach how to use the language (grammar), but I am going to teach how to use the language in every day context and with other speakers of that language. What does this mean? This means that in teaching the language, I also have to teach mannerisms and competence of the target language. Cross-culturally speaking, each and every language varies in terms of how social deixis is seen, what is acceptable and non acceptable when communicating, and the list goes on. For example, in Spanish there are two forms used when talking to someone directly. You may use 'tu' which is used for more informal situations, or you can use 'Ud' which is used for formal situations. It is important to incorporate such material into your classroom and explain why it is important to know such things. Also, I plan to teach how  to reply to requests, how to compliment, and any other variation of language that is different from their own. Obviously, the mannerism of the United States are not the same to those of other countries. For example, just simply giving a compliment may be acceptable here, but it may not be so in other countries. It is important for the students to know not only how to use the language grammatically, but it is even more important for the students to know how to use the grammar socially and communicatively.

Yes, they can learn the cookie-cutter "Hello" "Hi" "How are you" "I am fine". But is this going to be the  how the conversation goes every single time that they run into someone in the target language? No. The students need to learn the variety of greetings they can hear in a variety of contexts: "What's up" "Yo" "Hey" etc. can be some more useful greetings for the students to learn, although they should also be learning when it is appropriate and when it's not appropriate to use them. Nevertheless it is important that they learn them and the context in which they are used communicatively.