-
The Communicative Approach
Abstract
Language is a means of communication.
Although it is not the only form of
communication among human beings, it is
certainly the most important.
English
teaching is to teach the students how to
communicate with each other,
to train
the students’ good and complete language ability
------- to express their
ideas correctly and to easily adjust
themselves to every kind of social situation.
English teaching is a case in point.
This paper is to discuss some problems of
present English teaching approach, to
state the principles and advantages of
communicative approach, and to give
some advice on how to make the
English
class more communicative and improve the students’
ability of
listening and speaking.
The Communicative Approach is an
approach to foreign or second language
teaching which emphasizes that the goal
of language learning is
communicative
competence. Teaching materials used with the
Communicative
approach often teach the
language needed to express and understand
different kinds of functions. The
approach follows a National syllabus and
emphasizes the processes of
communication to get information, and using
language for social interaction with
other people. This paper presents an
analytical study of the the
communicative approach at many levels.
Key
words
：
background. Features ,
objectives, procedures ,technique, theory,
Introduction
The
origins of the Communicative Language Teaching are
to be found in
the changes in the
British language teaching tradition dating from
the late
1960s. In the late sixties,
the current situational approach was questioned.
British applied linguistics began to
emphasize the fundamental dimension of
language teaching at that time- the
functional and communicative potential of
language. Scholars like Christopher
Candlin and Henry Widdowson drew on
the
work of British functional linguistics such as
John Firth, and Halliday,
American work
in socioliguiticis like Dell Hymes as well as work
in philosophy
1
and argue for focus in language
teaching on communicative proficiency rather
than on mere mastery of structures.
The impact from the
European Common Market constituted another
impetus for communicative approach. The
increasing independence of
European
countries appealed for greater efforts to teach
adults the major
languages of the
community. The council of Europe sponsored
international
conferences on language
teaching, published monographs and books about
language teaching, and was active in
promoting the formation of International
Association of Applied Linguistics.
In 1971, a group of experts began to
investigate the possibility of
developing language courses on a unit-
credit system. At that time, Wilkins, a
British linguist proposed a functional
or communicative syllabus for language
teaching. He attempted to demonstrate
the systems of meaning that lay behind
the communicative uses of language. He
described two types of meanings, the
notional categories and categories of
communicative functions. He had his
ideas published in Notional Syllabus
(Wilkins 1976).
The work of
the Council of Europe; the writings of Wilkins,
Widdowson,
Candlin, Chrisopher Brumfit,
Keith Johnson; the rapid application of these
ideas by textbook writers; and the
equally rapid acceptance of these new
principles by British language teaching
specialists, curriculum development
centers, and even governments gave
prominence nationally and
internationally to what came to be
referred to as the Communicative Approach,
or simply Communicative Language
Teaching.
1. Features of the
Communicative Approach
⑴
Five points to characterize
the Communicative Approach:
①
Emphasis on learning to
communicate in the target language
②
The introduction of
authentic texts into learning situations
③
Focus not only
on language but also on the learning process
itself
④
maki
ng use of
learner’s own personal experiences
⑤
Creating real communication
situations in the classroom; linking classroom
language learning with language
activation outside the classroom The most
obvious characteristics of the
Communicative Approach is that almost
everything that is done with a
communicative intent. The teacher is
concerned with the learners themselves,
their feelings and ideas. The
classroom
activities are learner-centered because learning
is more effective
when the learners are
actively involved in the learning process.
⑵
The role of the
teacher:
①
a
facilitator of students’ learning
2
②
a
manager of classroom activities
③
an advisor of students’
questions
④
a co-
communicator in the communicative activity In a
communicative
classroom, the teacher is
a facilitator of her studen
ts’
learning. As such, she
has many roles
to fulfill. She is a manger of classroom
activities. During the
activities , she
acts as an advisor, answering students’ questions
and
monitoring their performance. At
other times she might be a “co
-
communicator”—
engaging in
the communicative activity along with the
students.
⑶
The
role of the learner:
①
a negotiator
②
a communicator
③
a contributor
④
an independent learner
The learner’s role is that
of a negotiator between the self, the role of
joint-negotiator with the group and
within the classroom procedures and
activities which group undertakes.
Learners are , above all, communicators.
They are actively engaged in
negotiating meaning
—
in
trying to make
themselves
understood
—
even when their
knowledge of the target language is
incomplete. They learn to communicate
by communicating. Students are seen
as
more responsible contributors or mangers of their
own learning, and they
are independent
learners.
⑷
Features of communicative
activities:
①
information gap
②
choice of form
and content
③
feedback of any communicative
information
⑸
Classroom
environment:
①
cooperation and empathy
②
learner-
centered
③
tolerance of errors
④
working in small groups
2. Principles of the
communicative approach
3
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
1. the communicative principle:
Activities that involve real communication
promote learning.
2. the task principle: Activities in
which language is used for carrying out
meaningful tasks promote learning
(Johnson 1982).
3. the meaningfulness
principle: Language that is meaningful to the
learner
supports the learning process.
3. 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, namely grammatical
competence (linguistic competence
according to Chomsky); sociolinguistic
competence
—
to
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; discourse
competence
—
the
interpretation of individual message elements in
terms of
their interconnectedness and
of how meaning is represented in relationship to
the entire discourse or text; and
strategic competence
—
the
coping strategies
that communicators
employ to initiate, terminate, maintain, repair,
and redirect
communication.
Piepho
(1981) discusses the
following levels of objectives in a communicative
approach:
1. an
integrative and content level (language as a means
of expression);
2. a
linguistic and instrumental level (language as a
semiotic system and an
object of
learning);
3. an affective level of
interpersonal relationships and conduct (language
as a
means of expressing values and
judgments about oneself and others);
4.
a level of individual learning needs (remedial
learning based on error
analysis);
5. a general educational level of
extra-linguistic goals (language learning within
the school curriculum)
In Hyme’s view, a person who acquires
communicative competence acquires
both
knowledge and ability for language use with
respect to
4
1.
whether (and to what degree) something is formally
possible;
2. whether (and to what
degree) something is feasible in virtue of means
of
implementation available;
3. whether (and to what degree)
something is appropriate (adequate, happy,
successful) in relation to a context in
which it is used and evaluated;
4.
whether (and to what degree) something is in fact
done, actually performed
and what its
doing entails.
4. Analysis
strong and weak version of communicative language
teaching
1.
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 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.
2.
5. Analysis activities within
communicative approach
There are mainly two types of
activities applicable in communicative lessons.
One is functional communicative
activities and social interaction activities.
Tasks such as learners comparing sets
of pictures and noting similarities and
differences, working out a likely
sequence of events in a set of pictures,
discovering missing features in a map
or picture, one learner communicating
behind a screen to another learner and
giving instructions on how to draw a
picture or shape, or how to complete a
map; following directions and solving
problems from shared clues all fall
into the former category, while conversation
and discussion sessions, dialogues and
role plays, simulations, skit,
improvisations, and debates belong to
the second type.
1. 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
5
Communicating patterns and pictures,
communicating models, discovering
difference, following directions
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
2.
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
A communicative
lesson does not consist of only communicative
activities.
For communicative
activities to take place, the teacher needs to
start from
controlled structural
activities to social problem solving activities.
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
To make activities communicative,
first, necessity must be created to let the
students feel that they need, they must
and they want to communicate; second,
unpredictability must be maintained, to
ensure the communication of new
information; third, appropriateness
should be achieved. For effective
communication, proper language should
be used, that language should be
relevant to the situation, to the
status of the speaker.
6. Learner and
teacher roles
1
）
. 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
6
requested to
contribute as much as he gains, and thereby learn
in an
interdependent way.
2
）
. 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 learning-teaching
group. These roles may imply a set of
secondary roles for the teacher:
A) as
an organizer of resources and as a resource
himself;
B) as a guide within the
classroom procedures and activities
C)
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.
7. Materials
1.
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.
2. 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.
3. Realia
Many proponents of communicative
language teaching have advocated the
use of “authentic”
“real
-
life” materials in the
classroom. These might include
language
based realia, such as signs, magazines,
advertisements, and
newspapers, or
graphic and visual sources around which
communicative
activities can be built,
such as maps, pictures, symbols, graphs, and
charts.
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of language
⑴
Language is for
communication. The Communicative Approach is
language
teaching starts from a theory
of language as communication. When we
communicate, we use the language to
accomplish some functions, such as
arguing, persuading, or promising.
⑵
Language is
used in topics, context and setting. The
Communicative
Approach has a theory of
language rooted in the functional school.
Functional
linguistics is concerned
with language as an instrument of social
interaction
rather than as a system
that is viewed in isolation. In addition to
talking about
language function and
language form, there are other dimensions of
communication to be considered if we
are be offered a more complete picture.
They are, at least, topics, content and
setting; and roles of people involved. So,
we carry out the communicative
functions within a social context.
⑶
The relationship between
form and meaning is not a one-to-one
correspondence. Whereas the sentence
structure is stable and straightforward,
its communicative function is variable
and depends on specific situational and
social factors. The relationship
between the grammatical forms and their
communicative functions is not a one-
to-one correspondence. In a
communicative perspective, this
relationship is explored more carefully, and as
a result our views on the properties of
language have expanded and enriched.
⑷
Discourse analysis studies
language above sentence level. Discourse
analysis studies how sentences in
spoken and written language form larger
meaningful units such as paragraphs,
conversations, and interviews. These
reflect how language is used in real
communication and what rules of use must
be observed. Therefore, discourse
analysis becomes an indispensable part of
Communicative Language Teaching.
⑸
Pragmatics studies how
language is
used in communication.
Closely related to Communicative Language
teaching(CLT) is pragmatics, the study
of the use of language in
communication. Pragmatics is
particularly interested in the relationships
between sentences and the contexts and
situations in which they are used. It
includes the study of how the
interpretation and use of utterances depends on
knowledge of the world, how speakers
use and understand speech acts, and
how
the structure of sentences is influenced by the
relationship between the
8