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The Communicative Approach to Language Teaching

What is an approach?

Your approach as a language teacher is a set of principles about learning and teaching on which you depend to form the way you operate as a teacher. It is not a permanent state, indeed, the good teacher knows that there is no perfect set of principles and that one’s approach can change drastically over the course of a career.

Do you already have your own approach? To find out, consider these options, using your own assumptions about teaching:

1. Language classes should focus on:

a)    meaning

b)    grammar

1. Students learn best by using plenty of:

a)    analysis

b)    intuition

1. It is better for a student to:

a)    think directly in the L2

b)    use translation from the L1

1. Language learners need:

a)    immediate rewards

b)    long-term awards

1. With new language learners, teachers need to be:

a)    tough and demanding

b)    gentle and empathetic

1. A teacher’s feedback to the student should be given:

a)    frequently

b)    infrequently (to develop student autonomy)

1. A communicative class should give special attention to:

a)    accuracy

b)    fluency

Your choices above constitute an approach. Can you say that you have always felt this way about these options?

The communicative approach

Language teaching is hundreds of years old, and the communicative approach is a very recent phenomenon. In fact, the communicative approach did not emerge as the most widely accepted form of language instruction until the late 1980s and early 1990s.

So, what is the Communicative Approach? Here are a set of defining characteristics:

1. Classroom goals combine the organizational aspects of language with the pragmatic.
2. Classroom techniques are designed to engage learners in the pragmatic, authentic, functional use of language for meaningful purposes. Teaching grammar enables only the learner to accomplish those purposes.
3. Fluency and accuracy work together and are seen as equal in value.
4. Students are expected to have to use the language fully in unrehearsed situations outside the classroom.
5. Students are encouraged to explore and exploit their own learning styles.
6. The teacher is a guide, not a sage.

Question: Do you think some of these principles make it more difficult for the teacher who is not a native speaker? Why or why not?

Activity

How is this approach different from the more “traditional” approaches used in Turkmenistan? Work with a partner to draw up a list of differences between them. Think about the way you were taught English and the way you teach English now.

Things to keep in mind before adopting this approach as your own

1. Beware of claiming to love the approach without actually examining your methods to make sure they fit. It is of supreme importance to make your classroom techniques are in harmony with your intellectual principles.
2. Avoid overdoing it by excising completely from your lessons any helpful inauthentic tasks such as drills and grammar exercises. These can be worthwhile, especially for adult learners who come to our classes with pre-established academic learning skills.
3. Remember that it is a big term. Most people who claim to believe in it have very different approaches than one another. There are many different ways to interpret the approach.

A summary of different aspects of the communicative approach:

1. Learner-centered instruction: As opposed to teacher centered, it assumes the student is the most importance person in the class. Thus it assumes:

a)    learner needs, styles and goals must be considered

b)    students need some control over the lesson (group- or pair-work)

c)    course design is not pre-set, but takes the learners into consideration

Question: How do you feel about giving your students so much power in the classroom?

1. Cooperative and collaborative learning: This is opposed to a competitive classroom, where students work against each other to achieve a goal.

a)    To cooperate, students work together to share their ideas and experiences in order to further each other’s and their own language skills

b)    With collaboration, students work with a more capable assistant (the teacher, for example) to achieve a goal.

Question: How are cooperative and collaborative learning used differently in the classroom? Can you think of specific examples of each?

1. Interactive learning: Because communication is interactive, so then must be language instruction. This means that we both listen and speak when we communicate, and that both affect each other. Thus, we should prepare our students to be able to engage in negotiation of meaning with another person in a series of gives and takes in the real world. In interactive lessons:

a)    There is a good deal of pair- and group-work

b)    Language input is in a real-world context

c)    Language production is intended to have genuine meaning

d)    Classroom tasks are intended to prepare the student for communication in the real world

e)    Activities encourage spontaneous give-and-take situations

f)    Writing is designed for a specific audience

Question: What do you think will happen in a classroom that is not used to interactive learning when their teacher decides to use an interactive approach? After one day? After one week? After one year?

1. Whole language education: An overused term, this basically assumes that language instruction should focus on all aspects of language use in the real word, from reading and writing to listening and speaking, with a unifying theme that language is social. Important to remember about this is:

a)    Research has shown that learners acquire sentences, intonation patterns and emotions in a language before they learn the individual parts. Thus, a language cannot be the sum of its individual parts. Teachers must approach it from the top down, not only from the bottom up.

b)    Because we use language to construct meaning and to define reality, language as a whole is a tool to help people to understand the society in which they live. With this, they have more power over their place in society and can better control their destiny.

Question: Which came first in human history, meaning or language? Can one exist without the other? If so, which one?

1. Content-based instruction: This is the study of content at the same time as the study of language. For example, students can learn about a topic that is important to them while they develop their language skills. This is beneficial because:

a)    It allows the students intrinsic motivation to learn something meaningful in the L2.

b)    It removes the traditional wall that has been built between the learning of a language and the learning of useful information.

c)    Students can look beyond grades and tests and focus their language learning on the acquisition of knowledge.

Question: Can you provide examples of content-based instruction that you can apply in your own classroom? How would we go about choosing content for our students?

1. Task-based instruction: This is a method of instruction that provides for students to problem-solve, write and perform role-plays or come to an agreed conclusion alone, in groups or pairs with the goal always being meaningful communication. They are:

a)    based on real-world problems and issues

b)    contribute to overall communicative goals

c)    designed to meet specific pre-set goals by the teacher

Question: Can you think of a communicative task that is used in a reading or writing lesson? Another way or describing task is as an activity with a meaningful problem to solve or an important question to answer.

**Many of the activities and definitions from this week’s workshop came from or were inspired by sections of the following texts:

Brown, H.D. (2001). Teaching by principles: An interactive approach to language pedagogy. White Plains, NY: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc.

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