COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING

Communicative language teaching (CLT), or the communicative approach, is an approach to language teaching which makes emphasis on interaction as both the means and the ultimate goal of study.  Classroom activities used in such method include role-plays, interviews, information gap, games, language exchanges, surveys, pair-work, learning by teaching.  Nevertheless, not all English courses that utilize the Communicative Language approach will restrict their activities completely to these.  In fact, some courses will have the students take grammar quizzes every once in a while.

Frequently, the communicative approach is considered a success if the teacher understands the student.  If the teacher is from the same country or region as the student, the teacher will understand errors resulting from an influence from their mother tongue, but native speakers of the target language may have difficulty understanding them.  

http://www.lmp.ucla.edu/k-12/lessons.aspx