Abstract:
The research focuses on fostering speaking skills through Communicative Language Teaching, which has been attempted to be adopted in ESL classrooms in schools in Sri Lanka by the government since the late 1980s. (National Institute of Education, 1999). In this perspective this study was conducted at Mn/Vaddakkandal G.T.M School, Manthai West division of Madhu Education Zone, Mannar, where most of the students are unable to communicate spontaneously in English. The research problem of this study was to investigate how Communicative Language Teaching contributes to improve speaking skills of the grade ten students and how to overcome their speaking difficulties. Therefore, this research aims at investigating the use of the Communicative Language Teaching approach to overcome the students problems in speaking. In conducting the research, both quantitative and qualitative methods were adopted to collect and analyse the data for the study. A questionnaire was administered for the students to identify their attitudes about the speaking skill. The findings of the questionnaire clearly express the positive attitudes on implementing the CLT in the ESL classroom. Furthermore, pre-tests and post-tests were conducted in the study, and while comparing and analysing the means of pre-test (38.3) and post-test (52.16), this study found the effectiveness in implementing the approach to develop students' speaking skills. Therefore, the findings of the research demonstrate that communicative language teaching is an effective method to develop students speaking skills. It encourages students participation, promotes confidence, and prepares students for real-life communication. Besides, it gives an opportunity to the students to use the target language freely. Moreover, it allows students to make decisions about how to express and to achieve the goal of developing their speaking skills.
