Abstract
In the field of second and foreign language teaching and learning, numerous approaches and methodologies have been adopted by language teachers to develop English language learners’ (ELLs’) communicative competence and speaking skills, one of which is the communicative language teaching approach (CLT). Research has shown that ELLs in the Saudi context have low oral communication skills. To address this issue, a three-step CLT pedagogical model was developed composed of explicit instruction (teaching the features of oral communication), noticing (providing opportunities for noticing the features of communication), and practice (learners participate in a range of communicative activities with the integration of selfassessment and peer-assessment). With a specific focus on speaking skills, the proposed threestep CLT model was empirically tested on ELLs at King Abdulaziz University (KAU). Learners’ pre-test and post-test role-play performance was measured through the use of the enhanced ‘Communicative Competence for Speaking Skills’ framework. The findings showed development of various features of learners’ communicative competence and speaking skills, as well as an increase in their speech rate. The results suggest that three-step CLT model can be used as a guide for stakeholders to implement CLT in different contexts making the link between theory and practice, to overcome challenges in implementing CLT in language classrooms, and to help language learners develop their speaking skills.