Task 2 – Communicative Approach
The communicative approach is the theory that language is comunnication. The final aim is communicative competence.
Principles of Communicative Approach
- Fluency is an important dimension of communication.
- Learning is a process of creative construction and involves trial and error.
- Communication involves the integration of different language skills.
- Authentic and meaningful communication should be the goal of classroom activities.
- Learners learn throught using it to communicate.
The teacher has to facilitate the communication process in the classroom, to act as an independent participant within the learning teaching group. The teacher is also expected to act as a resource an organiser of resources, a motivator, a counsellor, a guide, an analyst and a researcher.
There are many other minor roles of a teacher, some of these would include being an actor and an entertainer. After all, a good lesson must be interesting or the students will ‘switch off’ and learn nothing.
Since communicative competence is our aim, it is essential that students be given every opportunity to practise communicating. In the communicative classroom teacher talking time (TTT) must be kept to a minimum. This is not to say that the teacher shouldn’t speak at all, but TTT should be controlled and appropriate.
The classroom should be learner centred.
The teacher’s role is to facilitate student communication which is done through careful selection of materials and activities relevant to the aims of the lesson in which they are used.
The interaction should usually be the student to student and should include the teacher only where necessary. During most classroom activities the teacher will monitor and intervene only where necessary.
The lesson extract follows a method called Presentation-Practice-Production or PPP for short.
This was the standard method until a few years ago. Now there are a number of possibilities open to the teacher.
We should now understand that the teacher’s job is to get their students to communicate using real language by providing them with instruction, practice, and above all opportunities to produce English in activities which encourage acquisition and fluency.
