The Role of Communicative Language Teaching

It is necessary to understand what “communicative classroom” means in the current context. A communicative classroom (Brown, 2003; Nation, 1993) is one in which the student has a chance to learn authentic language. Authentic language is that which is actually used in the real world to negotiate meaning and to accomplish tasks. It also means students are able to learn how to extend the language beyond the classroom and to enjoy opportunities to practice the language. The classroom environment places emphasis on interaction, conversation, and language use, rather than on learning about the language. There is a focus on learning to communicate through interaction in the target language. Authentic texts are introduced (Nunan, 1991). Communicative classes focus on communication rather than on grammar, although grammar is an essential element in the communicative classroom. The functional use of language in different social situations or contexts is emphasized and classroom activities relate language form and function as well as meaning (Larsen-Freeman, 2003).

Typical activities in less communicative classrooms tend to focus on accuracy and reflect classroom use of the language. Such activities focus on how to form correct examples of language, have students practice the language out of context, practice using small samples of the language, and often control the choice of the language to be used. These types of activities are grammar-based and do not focus on the functional use of the language in real situations. Some examples of such traditional accuracy-based activities include completing a drill in small groups, writing several sentences using the pattern just completed and having students read them to a partner or to the class, and doing substitution drills. These are the kinds of activities often used in classrooms because they are thought to allow repeated practice in the use of a pattern. Through such repetition, it is believed that students retain and “learn” the language. One major issue with these kinds of activities is that they are often created without any context and most certainly without a relevant context for students. Often tasks are a series of isolated sentences where the student has to fill in the correct form of the verb, the correct article, or the correct pronoun. Vocabulary in such sentences may be unfamiliar to the students. Further, these kinds of drills or activities provide little opportunity for the creativity and inventiveness of students (or even for teachers). While they are easy to grade, it keeps the focus of the class on the teacher, on the presentation of the materials, and on the completion of relatively rote tasks. More communicative classrooms involve more fluency-oriented activities, which reflect the natural use of language, focus on achieving communication, require the use of communication strategies, link language to context, and use or produce unpredictable language(cf. Richards, 2004). One example of such proficiency-oriented activities includes student-created role-plays where it is necessary to resolve a problem (e.g. describing an accident or making a purchase at a department store). Another is creating a map of a neighborhood or city and giving directions to a specific place. Other ideas include information gap activities or jigsaw activities where students must communicate to solve a task. In the student-centered classroom the teacher is a facilitator who guides students in their language acquisition (Brown, 2003). The role of the student is to perform, describe, and relate. The role of the teacher is to guide, facilitate, assist, and evaluate. Such classes focus on the needs and abilities of the students and center on topics that are relevant to the students’ lives, needs, and interests (Richards, 2004). Student-centered classrooms generally take some kind of communicative approach to language learning. This means shifting the focus from grammar-based competence to more communicative competencies. The focus of learning is to make real communication; to provide opportunities to experiment and try to use the language; to provide opportunities to develop both accuracy and fluency; and to link the different skills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking).

Creating student-centered classrooms we improve learning on the part of the students. There are some instructions to create student-centered classrooms:

1. Having an explicit learning goal for each and every class and telling the students what that goal is so that they know what they are doing and why they are doing it. This means that teachers need to focus each day on a small and manageable chunk of language. Too often we have one grammar issue, one functional objective, some vocabulary, and even more-all to be accomplished in a single day’s lesson. We should try to remember that 45 minutes is not a long time and we must be sure that each objective fits within the time frame that we have. It is simply the things that we want the students to be able to do at the end of the lesson. These may include language goals such as “talk about rules and obligations.” This language function could be discussed in a variety of contexts including, for example, whether or not it is appropriate to bring a cell phone to class. Other examples of language goals might include asking for and giving information about someone or stating likes and dislikes.

Goals could also be grammar-based, such as “using the simple present tense to express daily routines” or “simple future versus simple present tense.” However, in the case of these, make sure that they are specific enough to be attainable objectives in a single lesson. Making goals that are too general will lead to a loss of focus. It is difficult to assess the success or failure of such lessons if there is no specific task or ability to be judged. Good learning objectives express a specific target. It is possible to determine whether or not students have met that objective by witnessing their performance. Examples of good objectives would be such things as “being able to order a meal at a restaurant”, “describing what one did last weekend”, or “being able to identify 10 types of foods.” These are good because students know exactly what they have to be able to do at the end of the class. At the end of the class, it is possible to determine whether or not the student is able to do these tasks. Further, these are small enough chunks of language that they will not overwhelm the student.

2. Moving away from practice activities that focus on accuracy (i.e. grammar-based mechanical lessons; Richards, 2004). Such lessons might be those found in student workbooks which require students to select the correct verb form or article and fill the blank to complete the sentence. Rather, use activities that focus on fluency. In this case, what we mean is that we require the students to use the language accurately in more authentic situations. We need to shift to activities that measure grammatical proficiency by the ability to apply the grammar in the student’s own speech or writing. This will lead to a higher probability that students will be able to function in the language outside the classroom.

3. Being  sure that the aims of the activity are clear to the students we tell or show them how such activities will help them to meet the stated objectives of the day. If students understand why they are doing a given task and if they understand how it helps to meet the day’s objectives, it may lead to enhanced learning.

4. Making explanations and instructions clear is probably best to model the activity with a student. Showing is always better than explaining, especially in classes with beginning level students. Students will not perform well if they do not know what they are supposed to do or how they are supposed to do it.

5. Including a variety of activities like mixing such things as fill-in-the-blank, dictation, find the differences, talk to a partner, describe something and so on. Too much of a single type of activity diminishes classroom effectiveness for several reasons. First, not all students are good at a single type of task. By varying your tasks, you meet the needs of learners with a variety of learning styles as well as provide a chance for all students to do well (Reid, 1995). Second, boredom can set in when students do the same thing repeatedly. Boredom diminishes motivation and learning (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). Third, practicing in a variety of contexts allows the students to extend their range of skills to a variety of situations (Joe, 1998).

6. Linking new material with old experiences using the student’s background knowledge and linking it to the current material taught is also effective. Strategies include brainstorming, quick reviews, discussions (class or group), and using Venn Diagrams to show students where the overlap is.

Suppose that the objective of the day is to express future plans with “be going to.” Instead of opening a text and having students look at the vocabulary, it is preferable to read the pattern, to listen to an explanation of the grammar point, and then to fill in the blanks, a better approach might be to link it to the student’s actual lives. Here, the language is personalized and the student has more reason to learn. A good strategy would be to ask students what kinds of things they like to do during vacations or on the weekends. Then you could use this as a base for expressing specific plans that the students are going to do. Notice that they are not being asked to use a pattern they have not yet learned. We are simply asking the students to brainstorm a list of things they like to do or typically do on weekends or in the summer or for a holiday. This type of brainstorming allows all students to participate in the class. It also allows students to be able to use a variety of vocabulary they already have in English. If students do not know the English vocabulary, it is fine to allow them to express it in Spanish (or their native language) and you can teach that vocabulary later. This is vocabulary that they are more likely to remember because it is relevant to them and to their lives. You can then use these ideas generated by the students to teach the objective.

7. Using production activities can be like this: a common activity for students where student A has one picture and student B has another. Students are asked to work in groups to find as many differences as they can. A potentially more effective version of this task would be to put students in pairs or groups and ask them to describe their rooms or homes to their partners. They then work to determine the number of similarities (e.g. we each have a bed) and the differences (e.g. my room is red but yours is blue). The results can be reported to the class. In this way, students are talking about things they know, about things in their real lives, and about things that matter to them. Further, the language is more likely to be produced rather than read because the nature of the task requires some unpredictable use of the language.

8. Using the students as a resource means to provide them examples and illustrations. This accomplishes several objectives. First, the examples come from the students’ interests and, therefore, activate student background knowledge. Such examples are likely to be more relevant, understandable, and useful than randomly-generated materials that may have little, if any, relationship to the students. It also makes the students participants in the creation of their own learning. Rather than giving them all of the information and examples they can use, they must create their own while being scaffolded by the teacher. This makes it more likely that students will remember. Additionally, we have the advantage that the higher-order thinking skills will be activated because in order to provide a relevant example, students must understand and apply the principles.

 

 

  Chapter II. Learner-centered activities in teaching English.

 

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