The Communicative Approach

Teaching Draft

Objectives of the communicative

approach
The objective of the communicative approach can be summarized as to develop communicative competence and develop procedures for the teaching of the four language skills that acknowledge the interdependence of language and communication. According to Canale and Swain (1980), there are four dimension of the communicative competence:

Objectives of the communicative approach

grammatical competence (linguistic competence according to Chomsky); sociolinguistic competenceto understand the social context in which communication takes place, including role relationships, the shared information of the participants, and the communicative purpose of their interaction;

Objectives of the communicative approach

discourse competencethe interpretation of individual message elements in terms of their interconnectedness and of how meaning is represented in relationship to the entire discourse or text; strategic competencethe coping strategies that communicators employ to initiate, terminate, maintain, repair, and redirect communication.

Principles of the communicative approach

As far as learning theory is concerned, neither Brumfit and Johnson nor Littlewood, for example, offers any discussion. However, several principles can be generalized as follows: the communicative principle: Activities that involve real communication promote learning. the task principle: Activities in which language is used for carrying out meaningful tasks promote learning (Johnson 1982). the meaningfulness principle: Language that is meaningful to the learner supports the learning process.

Strong and weak version of communicative

language teaching
Weak version: The weak version of communicative approach stresses the importance of providing learners with opportunities to use their English for communicative purposes and characteristically attempt to integrate such activities into a wider program of language teaching. In the weak version, one learns to use English.

Strong and weak version of communicative language teaching

Strong version: The strong version of communicative approach advances the claim that language is acquired through communication, so that it is merely a question of activating an existing but inert knowledge of the language, but of stimulating the development of the language system itself. Within this version, one uses English to learn it.

Communicative approach Activities

There are mainly two types of activities applicable in communicative lessons. One is functional communicative activities and social interaction activities:

Communicative approach Activities

Functional communicative activities 1) sharing information with restricted cooperation pair-work, group work, discovering pictures, discovering identical pairs, discovering sequences or locations, discovering missing information, discovering missing features, discovering secrets The focus of activities is on meanings to be communicated not on linguistic forms to be learnt. 2) Sharing information with unrestricted cooperation Communicating patterns and pictures, communicating models, discovering difference, following directions

Communicative approach Activities

Functional communicative activities 3) Sharing and processing information Jigsaw, reconstructing story sequences, pooling information to solve a problem for example to complete a table, a map, to decide on a route of travel or to decide on a criminal 4) Processing information Deciding on food for a picnic, comment on different characters in a story, react to disagreeable treat etc.

Communicative approach Activities

Social interaction activities four approaches: 1) using the foreign language for classroom management 2) using the foreign language as a teaching medium 3) conversation and discussion sessions 4) basing dialogues and role-plays on school experience

The following demonstrates the sequence of activities in a communicative lesson:

Pre-communicative activities

Structural activities Quasi-communicative

activities
Communicative activities Functional communication activities Social interaction

activities

Learner and teacher roles

Learner roles
The emphasis in communicative approach on the process of communication rather than mastery of language forms, leads to different roles from those found in more traditional second language classrooms. In a communicative lesson, the learner is mainly a negotiator, one between the self, the learning process and the object of learning. In such a lesson, the learner is requested to contribute as much as he gains, and thereby learn in an interdependent way.

Learner and teacher roles

Teacher roles
In the communicative approach, the teacher has two main roles. The first is to facilitate communication process between all participants in the classroom, and between these participants and the various activities and texts. The second role is to act as an independent participant within the learningteaching group. These roles may imply a set of secondary roles for the teacher:

Learner and teacher roles

Teacher roles
1) as an organizer of resources and as a resource himself; 2) as a guide within the classroom procedures and activities 3) as a researcher and learner, with much to contribute in terms of appropriate knowledge and abilities, actual and observed experience of the nature of learning and organizational capacities. Other roles assumed for a communicative teacher includes needs analyst, counselor, and group process manager.

Materials
Text-based materials Communicative text-based materials usually provide a theme ( e.g. relaying information), a task analysis for thematic development (e.g. understanding the message, asking questions to obtain clarification, asking for more information, taking notes, ordering and presenting information), a practice situation ( e.g. A caller asks to see your manager. He does not have an appointment. Gather the necessary information from him and relay the message to your manager), a stimulus presentation (in the preceding case, the beginning of an office conversation scripted and on tape), comprehension questions (e.g. Why is the caller in the office?), and paraphrase exercises.

Materials
Task-based materials Task-based materials provide games, role plays, simulations, and task-based communication activities for communicative classroom teaching. Actually such materials will pose some linguistic problems. It is very difficult to grade the materials, which will cause much trouble for instruction. Realia Many proponents of communicative language teaching have advocated the use of authentic real-life materials in the classroom.

Procedures
In a communicative lesson, the teacher should include:
presentation of the topic; motivation of the students to participation in classroom activities; Discussion of situations and functions; Study, analysis and application of typical structures; Activities related to both the topic and students experiences; Evaluation of tasks