Доля В.В.

ГВУЗ «УАБД Национального банка Украины»

The Communicative Approach

People often associate language with something boring, difficult and a lot of hard work. Write, read and translate, books, dictionaries, more books. Language is a living organism, which has a skeleton - grammar, muscles - words and skin - expressions and idioms. To make sure this organism continues living and developing, we must constantly feed it. The food it loves best is communication, constant speaking practice. If the food stops coming - the organism dies. The communicative approach makes sure the "food" keeps coming all the time!

Communicative language teaching (CLT) is an approach to the teaching of languages that emphasizes interaction as both the means and the ultimate goal of learning a language.

The communicative approach represents a clear improvement on earlier methods of language learning, in particular the audio-lingual and grammar-translation methods which were once used almost exclusively for the teaching of foreign languages.

This approach was developed from the 1930s to the 1960s by British applied linguists such as Harold Palmer and A.S. Hornsby. They were familiar with the Direct method as well as the work of 19th century applied linguists such as Otto Jesperson and Daniel Jones but attempted to develop a scientifically-founded approach to teaching English than was evidence by the Direct Method.

A number of large-scale investigations about language learning and the increased emphasis on reading skills in the 1920s led to the notion of "vocabulary control". It was discovered that languages have a core basic vocabulary of about 2,000 words that occurred frequently in written texts, and it was assumed that mastery of these would greatly aid reading comprehension. Parallel to this was the notion of "grammar control", emphasizing the sentence patterns most-commonly found in spoken conversation. Such patterns were incorporated into dictionaries and handbooks for students. The principle difference between the oral approach and the direct method was that methods devise under this approach would have theoretical principles guiding the selection of content, gradation of difficulty of exercises and the presentation of such material and exercises. The main proposed benefit was that such theoretically-based organization of content would result in a less-confusing sequence of learning events with better contextualization of the vocabulary and grammatical patterns presented. Last but not least, all language points were to be presented in "situations". Emphasis on this point led to the approach's second name. Such learning in situation would lead to students' acquiring good habits to be repeated in their corresponding situations. Teaching methods stress PPP (presentation (introduction of new material in context), practice (a controlled practice phase) and production (activities designed for less-controlled practice)).

Many of the structural elements of this approach were called into question in the 1960s, causing modifications of this method that lead to Communicative language teaching. However, its emphasis on oral practice, grammar and sentence patterns still finds widespread support among language teachers and remains popular in countries where foreign language syllabuses are still heavily based on grammar.

Grammar-translation sought to teach the target language by directly translating everything into the learner’s own language. The emphasis on finding equivalent words, expressions and grammatical forms was by definition unrealistic, and placed little or no importance on speaking the target language appropriately or even competently.

Audio-lingual teaching is familiar to anyone who has used a “language lab” – listening and repeating is the basic method here, with a consequent de-emphasis on grammar and real-life interaction.

By the 1960`s, it was felt that students were not learning enough realistic, situational language using these methods, and that they consequently did not know how to communicate in real-life situations. An increase in travel around this time probably helped to highlight these deficiencies.

Since the widespread introduction of the communicative approach in the 1970`s, it has become a more or less standard method for teaching foreign languages, with many countries adopting the approach at primary or secondary levels of education.

Communicative language teaching makes use of real-life or simulated real-life situations in order to promote effective language use. The teacher sets up a situation that is likely to occur in real life and encourages the students to perform a task. Appropriate language is pre-taught using a variety of techniques, and practiced in context.

Explanation and demonstration take the place of translation for new vocabulary items. The target language is used for all classroom interaction, the classroom itself being a real-life situation in which effective communication takes place. Students are encouraged to ask questions, interact with each other and take control of activities to reach their own outcomes.

Learning is seen as the responsibility of the learner, and the teachers find themselves talking less and listening more than in a traditional classroom. The teacher sets up an activity and then allows the learners to perform – the performance of the activity is the immediate goal, with feedback and further input from the teacher coming later.

With the communicative approach, language is seen as a tool for interaction - it is not simply a subject for academic study and analysis. Students look at the use of language both from a linguistic point of view (grammar, lexis, collocation, etc) and from a social or situational point of view (who is speaking, why they are speaking, what is appropriate in this context, etc).

Because of the increased encouragement to participate fully, students gain confidence through direct experience in what they can achieve, motivating them to use the language more frequently and allowing them to learn more quickly.

Литература:

1. Guidelines for a language and culture learning program, by Carol J. Orwig is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 3.5, published on CD-ROM by SIL International. – 1999.

2. Бим И.Л. Всегда ли инновации в области терминологии – следствие развития научного знания? // Иностранные языки в школе. – 2004. – №3. – С. 30 – 33.

3. Savignon S.J. (1998). Communicative Competence: Theory and Classroom Practice. – New York: McGraw-Hill. – 2-nd edition.