Learners converse about personal experiences with partners, and instructors teach topics outside of the realm of traditional grammar to promote language skills in all types of situations.
Furthermore, the approach is a non-methodical system that does not use a textbook series to teach the target language but works on developing sound oral and verbal skills prior to reading and writing.
However, those assumptions were challenged by adult learners, who were busy with work, and by schoolchildren who were less academically gifted and so could not devote years to learning before they could use the language.
American educator Clifford Prator published a paper in 1965 calling for teachers to turn from an emphasis on manipulation (drills) towards communication where learners were free to choose their own words.
Also, in 1966, American psychologist Jerome Bruner wrote that learners construct their own understanding of the world based on their experiences and prior knowledge, and teachers should provide scaffolding to promote this.
[9] Bruner appears to have been influenced by Lev Vygotsky, a Russian psychologist whose zone of proximal development is a similar concept.
Chomsky had shown that the structural theories of language then prevalent could not explain the variety that is found in real communication.
[11] In addition, applied linguists like Christopher Candlin and Henry Widdowson observed that the current model of language learning was ineffective in classrooms.
They saw a need for students to develop communicative skill and functional competence in addition to mastering language structures.
[11] In 1966, the linguist and anthropologist Dell Hymes developed the concept of communicative competence, which redefined what it meant to "know" a language.
[2] Hymes did not make a concrete formulation of communicative competence, but subsequent authors, notably Michael Canale, have tied the concept to language teaching.
Education was a high priority for the Council of Europe, which set out to provide a syllabus that would meet the needs of European immigrants.
The new syllabus reinforced the idea that language could not be adequately explained by grammar and syntax but instead relied on real interaction.
As such, the aim of the Dogme approach to language teaching is to focus on real conversations about practical subjects in which communication is the engine of learning.
That approach is the antithesis of situational language teaching, which emphasizes learning by text and prioritizes grammar over communication.
[14] CLT teachers choose classroom activities based on what they believe will be most effective for students developing communicative abilities in the target language (TL).
[4] Role-play is an oral activity usually done in pairs, whose main goal is to develop students' communicative abilities in a certain setting.
[16] Opinion sharing is a content-based activity, whose purpose is to engage students' conversational skills, while talking about something they care about.
If certain vocabulary should be used in students' conversations, or a certain grammar is necessary to complete the activity, then instructors should incorporate that into the scavenger hunt.
That criticism largely has to do with the fact that CLT is often highly praised and is popular though it may not necessarily be the best method of language teaching.
Some critics of CLT suggest that the method does not put enough emphasis on the teaching of grammar and instead allows students to produce utterances, despite being grammatically incorrect, as long as the interlocutor can get some meaning from them.