COMMUNICATIVE
APPROACH
“The
communicative approach emphasizes on helping students to use the target
language in a variety of contexts and give importance to learning the functions
of the language. Its main aim is to help students create meaningful phrases
rather than helping them to build a perfect and correct grammar or a perfect
pronunciation” The importance of the communicative competence is that the
students try to use their knowledge of the language trying to communicate in an
appropriate way.
First of
all, It is important to know what real communication is. There are three
principles that are essential and we should never forget when working this
skill:
- • “Information gap: Can be observed when one person knows something the other person does not. For instance, for warm-ups students can ask each other what they do for fun after school or over the weekend.
- • Choice: The speaker has the choice of what she will say and how she will say it.
- • Feedback : For communicative activities to be effective, a speaker should receive feedback from his listener to evaluate whether or not his purpose has been achieved” (Dilbarhon Hasanova, 2007, 71)
Communicative
Language Teaching is most often defined as a list of general
principles or features. One of the most recognized of these lists is David
Nunan's five features of Communicative Language Teaching:
- “An emphasis on learning to communicate through interaction in the target language,
- · The introduction of authentic texts into the learning situation.
- · The provision of opportunities for learners to focus, not only on language but also on the learning management process.
- · An enhancement of the learner's own personal experiences as important contributing elements to classroom learning.
- · An attempt to link classroom language learning with language activities outside the classroom.” (Thomas Conolly and Mark Stansfield, 2008, 96)
Why should we as teachers promote communication
in class?
I guess
to answer this question, the first thing we should ask ourselves is: How come people that have been studying English
more than 10 years at school, can´t communicate in English? Well maybe this comes because there
are many things teachers are not doing correctly. Probably the main one is not
actually achieving the real aim (Students being capable of defending themselves in the
language). We, as English teachers decide that we are going to teach our
students year after year what the “Present Simple” and the “Present Continuos”
is. I guess because it is the easiest way to teach a language, but is that the way to achieve our aim? Children know grammar by heart, but they
are not capable of defending themselves in English, they are not able to have a
conversation. That is why we should have in mind that we don´t need the
students to have a wonderful grammar, what we really need is for them to be
able to defend themselves in the language. If they go to an English speaking country,
no one is going to ask them the present simple. We want them to be able to
communicate with people, to be able to understand and ask for things, to
actually be able to have a conversation. To achieve this we need to work
communication and leave grammar a little bit to one side.
Maybe
teachers have clear their aim but they don´t really know how to work this skill
in class. It is not easy to work communication, and the problem is that many
teachers don´t work it because they don´t know how. One of the first things a
teacher will have to have clear to success in this skill is that they have to
forget of so much TTT (Teacher talking time) and encourage much more STT
(Student talking time). After that, they should know what type of communicative
activities can be done, such as role plays… Here I have found some interesting
communicative activities to get an idea:
ASSEMBLING
AN OBJECT
The
students look at a photograph of an object. One of the students gives the other
one step by step directions who will attempt to assemble an object. The student
can ask questions to make sure he understands the directions.
IDENTIFYING
DIFFERENCES
An image
has been slightly altered. Students describe the different versions of the
image. The goal is that the students pay attention to detail and describe
accurately so they are able to locate the differences in versions.
DRAWING
A student
has an image that the partner can´t see. The partner draws it, then they
compare the drawings. Students then switch roles.
Within
the communicative method we can consider other methods, including: task-based
learning, content -based learning and CLIL. In task-based learning, students
analyze the language consciously doing activities, including: "explore
meanings and effects of alternative choices, explore word collocations and
classified according to their pronunciation ... etc.. " . This is
important since students through this method "can perform tasks that are
specific to the subjects with the aim of learning a specific content and to
obtain an input of grammar and vocabulary
in different oral or written formats " .
Bibliography:
Conolly, T.
Stansfield, M. (2008). 2 nd
European conference on games based learning. Scotland: Academic Publishing
Limited Reading Hasanova,
D. (2007). Functional allocations of English in Post-Soviet
Uzbekistan: Pedagogical implications for English language teachers. Soviet “The essentials of
language teaching” recuperado el día 12 de Noviembre 2013 de: http://www.nclrc.org/essentials/goalsmethods/goal.htm “Communicative language teaching” recuperado el día 12
de noviembre 2013 de: http://www.uvvg.ro/revad/files/nr8/9.%20Banciu.pdf “Foreing language teaching methods” recuperado el día
13 de noviembre 2013 de: http://coerll.utexas.edu/methods/modules/speaking/06/ “Colegio Jose Hierro” recuperado el día 13 de
noviembre 2013 de: http://www.educa.madrid.org/web/cp.josehierro.parla/bilingue.htm