Communicative approach

Proponents of communicative approach to syllabus design maintain that a grammatical syllabus is neither necessary nor effective in language learning. The shortcoming of the model is that language form as such takes precedence over meaning, that it emphasises linguistic competence over communicative competence. It offers language samples outside their social and cultural contexts, making transfer of learning from the classroom to the real world rather difficult. And a further drawback is its effect on learning motivation. While some learners might see value in long-term grammar study for the benefice of future performance, many students want an immediate return for their effort spent on the language learning.

Until recently the well-established procedure for teaching a new pattern has been available: 1) presentation; 2) controlled practice; 3) free practice (or production).

With the communicative approach, the teaching policy changes at each of these stages.

1) At the presentationstage the teacher is firmly in control and doing most (if not all) the talking. There is no possibility of error because the student is not invited to speak.

2) At the controlled practicestage the teacher remains in control. The possibility of errors has been reduced to a minimum, but, when they occur, the teacher corrects them until the class produces the forms correctly, meaningfully and consistently. At this stage student talking time (STT)is equal to or greater than teacher talking time (TTT).

3) At the free practicestage the teacher relaxes control. Mistakes will occur, but students will correct each other or themselves when challenged. STT will be much greater than TTT and the teacher will only intervene if serious problems arise.

In reality there is no abrupt turn from one stage to another. There may be a change of the context for practice when shifting from the controlled to free practice stage. Although a good teacher makes smooth this transition by providing some thematic coherence in the form of a link in subject matter between the two stages. Alternatively, the free practice stage may occur in a later lesson altogether: there is no law which dictates that all three stages should occur in the same lesson. As to the shift from presentation to controlled practice, any experienced teacher will agree that it is practically impossible not to follow these stages: one will flow inevitably into the other. In practice, the three stages are moulded together into a pattern which represents a smooth transition fromtotal teacher control to nil teacher control; the process is a continuum rather than three stages linked together.

The suggestion as to when communicative language practice should be fitted into the described above teaching process seems rather obvious. The communicative language practice would be added after the free practice stage. Once students have been encouraged to produce the new pattern freely and meaningfully, it would be reasonable to introduce a practice activity, which gives students a motive and provides them with an opportunity to use their newly acquired language for a purpose.

The whole teaching process described so far can be summarised by means of the following diagram:

If communicative teaching is teaching language for a purpose, then the sense of purpose needs to play a prominent part in the process of presentation and practice. Instead of teaching forms with their meanings and then going on to practise their uses, we might begin with the use and proceed to teach examples of the forms our students require. This type of procedure might be termed communication presentation and practice.

To take a simple example, let’s consider a concept rather than a function. Suppose the teacher is required to teach patterns like:

It is made of wood.

They are made of plastic, etc.

First, instead of going through presentation, controlled and free practice, the teacher points at every wooden object in the classroom: the board, desk, chairs, pencils, etc. He invites students to say something about these objects. They volunteer statements such as:

It’s a blackboard. They are chairs. That’s a pencil.

Then the teacher points out to the class that all these objects are the same in some way and asks what this is. Soon they will hit on the fact that they are all wooden and demand the lexical item ‘ wood ’. The teacher produces a piece of wood and teaches them this word. He then invites them again to describe the feature the various objects share in common. He may get a number of erroneous statements like:

They are wood. They are from wood. Etc.

He allows students to continue their unsuccessful attempts until a slight sense of tension or frustration is built up. He then gives the students the pattern: They are made of wood. It is made of wood. Etc.

The main advantage of this technique over the conventional one is where or when the teacher begins supplying the new language. By employing such strategies, the teacher has built up a sense of need in the student for the new language item. When the item is supplied, the student feels a sense of relief. The meaning and use of the item is firmly conveyed and the form is strongly imprinted. The teacher then can go on to practise the pattern in the normal way.

The same type of procedure can be applied most effectively to the teaching of language functions. The procedure to be followed here would be like this:

1) The teacher sets up a communicative activity to express the function(s) to be taught. At this stage the teacher does not supply the language forms which the students require for expression of this function. Instead, the students have to cope with whatever language resources they have available. In performing this task they will inevitably proceed errors, mistakes and much inappropriate language.

2) The teacher introduces the required language form(s) and does sufficient drilling reasonable for fluency. Since a model interaction might be the best way to introduce these forms, a suitable way to do this would be to play a taped dialogue illustrating use of the forms and functions to be presented.

3) The teacher gives students a fresh communication task so as to provide them with an opportunity and motive to use the language forms they have learnt. If serious errors occur, the teacher goes back to the drilling stage again.

This procedure can be summarised as follows:

Communicative Presentation Communicative

task 1 and drilling task 2

if necessary

The practising teacher should be familiar with the underlying principles of communicative or functional-notional courses. Even if a prescribed textbook is clearly structural, he may be called upon one day to teach from a different type of textbook; and in any case he should be aware of recent trends in TEFL course design.