ESL teaching in the technical institutions of Tamil Nadu and elsewhere in the Indian sub- continent has two predominant purposes. The first one is to teach the language to engineering students to prepare them to receive the instructions pertaining to their core subjects so as to enable them to be competent professionals in the global market. The second one is to prepare them to acquaint with the basic interpersonal communication to interact with their peers and teachers in the multi- lingual atmosphere within the university campus and outside the campus where cultural, ethnic and lingual diversity of Indian context adopted English as a link language. When they get employed in multi- national corporates they may have multiple ways of interacting in the corporate set- up. All these activities are pivoted on the students’ oral communication skills. This article deliberates on the basic principles of ‘Communicative Language Teaching’ which is the teaching approach for ESL in the institutes of higher learning now-a days and the significance of role plays among the different oral fluency activities under CLT.ESL teaching in the technical institutions of Tamil Nadu and elsewhere in the Indian sub- continent has two predominant purposes. The first one is to teach the language to engineering students to prepare them to receive the instructions pertaining to their core subjects so as to enable them to be competent professionals in the global market. The second one is to prepare them to acquaint with the basic interpersonal communication to interact with their peers and teachers in the multi- lingual atmosphere within the university campus and outside the campus where cultural, ethnic and lingual diversity of Indian context adopted English as a link language. When they get employed in multi- national corporates they may have multiple ways of interacting in the corporate set- up. All these activities are pivoted on the students’ oral communication skills. This article deliberates on the basic principles of ‘Communicative Language Teaching’ which is the teaching approach for ESL in the institutes of higher learning now-a days and the significance of role plays among the different oral fluency activities under CLT.
KEY WORDS: interpersonal communication, Communicative Language Teaching, oral fluency, role plays
