Abstract: The Communicative approach emphasizes the ability to communicate the message in terms of its meaning, instead of concentrating exclusively on grammatical perfection or phonetics. Therefore, the understanding of the second language is evaluated in terms of how much the learners have developed their communicative abilities and competencies.
Аннотация: Коммуникативный подход подчеркивает умение донести информацию с точки зрения ее смысла, вместо того, чтобы сосредоточиться исключительно на грамматическом совершенстве или фонетике. Таким образом, понимание второго языка оценивается с точки зрения того, насколько учащиеся развили свои коммуникативные способности и компетенции.
Keywords: notion, language competence, spontaneous situations, retention, deductive teaching method, concept, inductive teaching method, interpersonal activity.
Ключевые слова: мнение, языковая компетенция, самопроизвольное состояние, удерживание, дедуктивный метод обучение, концепция, индуктивный метод обучение, межличностная деятельность.
What is communication? Сcommunication is first of all exchanging opinions, information, notions of social, cultural, political and other aspects of everyday life. The world around us is the world of communication in various spheres. And only at language lessons the only means of communication are textbooks and the lecturing teacher. In the classroom, the teacher is the source of information. And this communication is under control rather than free. In this case, the purpose of a teacher is to transform the communication with students to a pleasant, attractive and emotional lesson.
Real communication is always informative, unpredictable and unexpected. If the teacher is always informative, interesting and unexpected, then even before the beginning if the lesson students will be disposed for a good lesson. But if the previous lesson is just the same as the next one, students will be bored with it before the lesson start. Even the most trivial dialogue can be transformed to a communicative one if no one knows a word of what will be said about. If the dialogue starts:
A: - How are you?
B: - And you?
Then it all can be boring, definite and predictable. This dialogue is not informative, and rather similar to those which the students must learn by heart in terms of a prepared situation recipe. By contrast, the dialogue below is unpredictable, interesting and informative:
A: -How are you?
B: -Is it true, that you... or
A: -What is the result of the match?
B: - Tell me, where I can get repaired my Japanese TV set? It broke down in the middle of the match[1].
The answer is unexpected and related to the questions only associatively. During a language lesson, such dialogues can reflect spontaneous situations. Those unexpected dialogues are really communicative and built according to the scheme "stimulus - response". This principle stimulates active thinking process, intuitive thought and use of language in the frame of fixed communicative habits.
Communicative language teaching makes use of real-life situations that necessitate communication. The teacher sets up a situation that students are likely to encounter in real life. Unlike the audio-lingual method of language teaching, which relies on repetition and drills, the communicative approach can leave students in suspense as to the outcome of a class exercise, which will vary according to their reactions and responses. The real-life simulations change from day to day. Students' motivation to learn comes from their desire to communicate in meaningful ways about meaningful topics. The communicative approach could be said to be the product of educators and linguists who had grown dissatisfied with the audio-lingual and grammar-translation methods of foreign language instruction.
They felt that students were not learning enough realistic, whole language. They did not know how to communicate using appropriate social language, gestures, or expressions; in brief, they were at a loss to communicate in the culture of the language studied. Interest in and development of communicative-style teaching mushroomed in the 1970s; authentic language use and classroom exchanges where students engaged in real communication with one another became quite popular. In the intervening years, the communicative approach has been adapted to the elementary, middle, secondary, and post-secondary levels, and the underlying philosophy has spawned different teaching methods known under a variety of names, including notional-functional, teaching for proficiency, proficiency-based instruction, and communicative language teaching. Margie S. Berns,an expert in the field of communicative language teaching, writes in explaining Firth's view that "language is interaction; it is interpersonal activity and has a clear relationship with society. In this light, language study has to look at the use (function) of language in context, both its linguistic context (what is uttered before and after a given piece of discourse) and its social, or situational, context (who is speaking, what their social roles are, why they have come together to speak) [2]. In communicative language teaching when teachers deal to grammar function they try to use more the inductive method of teaching grammar involves presenting several examples that illustrate a specific concept and expecting students to notice how the concept works from these examples. No explanation of the concept is given beforehand, and the expectation is that students learn to recognize the rules of grammar in a more natural way during their own reading and writing. Discovering grammar and visualizing how these rules work in a sentence allow for easier retention of the concept than if the students were given an explanation that was disconnected from examples of the concept. The main goal of the inductive teaching method is the retention of grammar concepts, with teachers using techniques that are known to work cognitively and make an impression on students’ contextual memory unlike deductive method of teaching grammar which is an approach that focuses on instruction before practice. A teacher gives students an in-depth explanation of a grammatical concept before they encounter the same grammatical concept in their own writing. Deductive teaching methods drive many students away from writing because of the tediousness of rote learning and teacher-centered approaches. Each teaching method is based on a particular vision of understanding the language or the learning process, often using specific techniques and materials used in a set sequence.
The main methodologies are listed below in the chronological order of their development:
Grammar Translation – the classical method
Direct Method – discovering the importance of speaking
Audio-lingualism – the first modern methodology
Humanistic Approaches – a range of holistic methods applied to language learning
Communicative Language Teaching – the modern standard method
Principled Eclecticism – fitting the method to the learner, not the learner to the method.
References:
- Linas Semistriatis “Peculiarities of the Communicative Approach in Teaching English”EESE 4/2003 http://webdoc.sub.gwdg.de/edoc/ia/eese/artic26/linas/3_2006.html
- Savignon, Sandra J. & Berns, Margie S. (1984). “ Initiatives in communicative language teaching”. Reading, Massachusetts. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc.1984, p5.
- Bayram. Pekoz “Integrating Grammar for Communicative Language Teaching” Grime American University, 2008.
- Meena Singhal.The Internet and Foreign Language Education: Benefits and Challenges.The University of Arizona, USA.
5. http://blog.tjtaylor.net/method-communicative/
