Developing learners’ speaking skills in the language classroom is one of the most demanding tasks that foreign language teachers are confronted with. The difficulty results mainly from the fact that the target language functions here as both the medium and the goal of teaching. Research shows that active involvement in communication in the learning process helps in improving language skills. The article discusses the role of classroom communication in learning both the first and the foreign language in the light of selected literature and offers a number of teaching guidelines for effective classroom practice.