Critiquing a Theory on Communicative Language Teaching
Out of 1100 words, 250 words will be the summary of the journal article in your own words, 250 words will be the positive points, strength, and advantages of the journal article, and 600 words will be allocated to the shortcoming, pitfalls, weaknesses and disadvantages of the journal article. To get a good mark, three references (maximum) in your assignment are recommended.
You must apply all the four criteria for critiquing a theory:
1- Descriptive power: a theory should describe ‘what’ the process of language learning is.
2- Explanatory power: a theory should explain ‘why’ language learning happens in a certain way.
3- External validity: there must not be any conflict between a language learning theory and external reality.
4- Internal validity: there must not be any conflict between different parts of a language learning theory.
Please keep in mind though that you are supposed to critique the way the researchers/authors of the article have applied the theory to their research, not the theory as such, that is you are supposed not to criticize Communicative Language Teaching as such, but how the researchers have applied it here.
Your critique is only supposed to be 1100 words long. Therefore your writing style needs to be concise and to the point. You are supposed to use references, but three is the maximum – otherwise they would eat up too much of your word count, and we would not be able to read what YOU think.
In case you use references please clearly indicate the PAGE number with the author name and year of publication.
Please use simple words that can be understood by non-native English speakers.