CommunicativeApproach
An Introduction of Communicative Approach
1. The Communicative Approach is an approach to foreign or second LT which emphasizes
that the goal of language teaching is communication competence. The Communication Approach is also called Communication Language Teaching.
2. The Communication Approach has been developed particularly by British applied
linguists as a reaction away from grammar-based approaches such as the Audio-lingual Method.
3. Teaching materials used with a Communication Approach often teach the language
needed to express and understand different kinds of functions, such as requesting, describing, expressing likes and dislikes.
4. The Communication Approach follow a Notional Syllabus or some other
communicatively organized syllabus and emphasizes the processes of communication, such as using l
anguage appropriately in different kinds of tasks,
e. g, to solve puzzles, to get information, and using language for social
interaction with other people.
Background of the Communication Approach
1. Towards the end of the 1960s there went on a growing dissatisfaction among FL
teachers and applied linguists with the dominating LT method of the time.
①First, the criticism was that this kind of teaching produced structurally
competent students who were often
communicatively incompetent.
②Another reason for this dissatisfaction was undoubtedly for international
communication, professional
cooperation and travel.
③Meanwhile, some theoretical linguists had become conscious of the fact that
in linguistic research
meaning and context were neglected.
By the late 1960s, people began to consider semantics to be basic to any theoretical model of language. Meaning was seen to depend to a large degree on the sociocultural contexts in which speech acts occurred. Sociocultural aspects of language in use had been particularly stressed by the functionalists, who considered the purposes language serves in normal interaction to be basic to the determination of syntactic functions.
2. All this was reflected in some proposals to reconstruct the language syllabus
so that learning communicative conventions would become as important as learning grammatical conventions.
3. D.A. Wilkins was the main figure in setting out the fundamental considerations
for a “functional-notional “approach to syllabus design based on communicative criteria.
4. The distinguishing characteristics of the Notional-Functional Syllabus (NFS)
were its attention to function as the organizing elements of English language curriculum, and its contrast with a structural syllabus in which sequenced grammatical structures served as the organizers. Reacting to methods that attended too strongly to grammatical forms, the NFS sought to focus on the pragmatic purposes to which we put language.
5. Wilkin’s book Notional Syllabuses had a significant impact on the development
of Communicative Language Teaching. Courses for different languages were then developed based on his semantic / communicative analysis. The NFS did not necessarily develop communicative competence in learners. First of all, it is not a method. It was a syllabus. However, by attending to the functional purposes of language, and by providing contextual (notional) settings for the realization of those purposes, it provides a link between a dynasty of methods that was now perishing and a new era of language teaching------Communicative Language Teaching.
6. The Communicative Approach is essentially a manifestation of the 1970sm, in the
sense that this was the decade when the most explicit debate took place, especially in the U.K. The subsequent period has been characterized by explorations of other, related possibilities for the design of materials and methods. More importantly, teachers in many parts of the world are finding that they need to come to terms with changes in their role, as communicative principles in language teaching become central goals of their educational systems. These educational perspectives evolved alongside, and to some extent were derived from, significant developments in linguistics, sociolinguistics and psychology.JS1983
7. What are the two categories of meaning of language proposed by Wilkins? What is
the distinction between the two terms?
The two categories of meaning proposed by Wilkins are “notions” and “functions”. “Notions” are domains in
which we use language to express thought and feeling. They are both general and specific. General notions
are abstract concepts such as existence, space, time, quantity and quality. Within the general notion of space
and time, for example, are the concepts of location, motion, dimension, speed and length of time, and
frequency. Specific notions correspond more closely to what we have become accustomed to calling
“contexts” or “situations”. Personal identification, for example, is a specific notion under which name,
address, phone numbers, and other personal information is subsumed. “Functions”
refer to the purposes for
which utterances or units of language are used. In language learning, language functions are often described
as categories of behavior; e.g. requests, apologies, complaints, offers, and compliments.
8. According to Wilkins, language has two categories of meaning :structural meaning
and functional meaning.
9. Wilkins analyzed the communicative meaning that a language learner needs to
understand and express, and he insists that the structural component cannot be ignored.
Theories of language underlying the Communicative Approach
1. The Communicative Approach in language teaching starts from a theory of language
as communication. When we communicate, we use the language to accomplish some functions, such as arguing, persuading, or promising. Moreover, we carry out these functions within a social context.
2. The Communicative Approach has a theory of language rooted in the functional
school. Functional linguistics is concerned with language as an instrument of social interaction rather than a system that is viewed in isolation. In addition to talking about language function and language form, there are other dimensions of communication to be considered if we are to be offered a more complete picture.
They are, at least, topics (e.g. health, transport ); context and setting ( both physical and social ); and roles of people involved .
3. According to Halliday, a British linguist, social context of language use can
be analyzed in terms of three factors:
①he field of discourse: what is happening, including what is being talked about;
②he tenor of discourse: the participants who are taking part in this exchange of meaning, who they are and what kind of relationship they have to each other;
③he mode of discourse: what part the language is playing in this particular situation, for example, in what way the language is organized to convey the meaning, and what channel is used---written or spoken or a combination of the two.
4. This analysis leads to a new branch, discourse analysis, the study of how sentences
in spoken and written language form larger meaningful units such as paragraphs, conversations, and interviews. Therefore, discourse analysis becomes an indispensable part of Communicative Language Teaching.
5. Closely related to Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) is pragmatics, the study
of the use of language in communication. Pragmatics is particularly interested in the relationships between sentences and the contexts and situations in which they are used.
6. How do you understand the relationship between the grammatical forms of a language
and their communicative functions?
The relationship between the grammatical forms of a language and their communicative functions is not a one-to-one correspondence. Whereas the sentence structure is stable and straightforward, its communicative function is variable and depends on specific situational and social factors. The fact is that a single linguistic form can express a number of functions, so also can a single communicative function be expressed by a number of linguistic forms. In a communicative perspective, this relationship is explored more carefully, and as a result our views on the properties of language have seen expanded and enriched.
7. In talking about CLT, on cannot avoid talking about “ communicative competence”,
a term coined by Hymes (1972) in order to contrast a communicative view of
language with Chomsky’s (1965) theory of competence.
8. How do your teaching materials handle the relationship between grammar and
聚四氟乙
communicative function? For instance, is a “function” taught together with several grammatical forms, or just one? Alternatively, is a “function” just used as an example where the main focus is on teaching grammar?
Do this point according to what your teaching materials are used. You may refer to the key to No. 2 point above, and analyze the factors using a communicative perspective.
9. Chomsky claimed that every normal human being was born with a language acquisition
device (LAD). The LAD is a sort of mechanism or device which contains the capacity to acquire one’s first language. The LAD includes basic knowledge about the nature and structure of human language. For Chomsky, the focus of linguistic theory was to characterize the abstract abilities speakers possess that enable them to produce grammatically correct sentences in a language.
10. In Hymes’s view, “ communicative competence” (proposed by Hymes) refers to
the ability not only to apply the grammatical rules of a language in order to form grammatically correct sentences but also to know when and where to use these sentences and to whom. Hymes’s emphasis on the importance of context in determining appropriate patterns of behavior, both linguisti
辛亥革命110周年大会c and extralinguistic, appealed to teachers who found an overemphasis on accurate use of language structures to be confining and unrealistic.
11. Another linguistic theory of communication favored in CLT is Halliday’s
functional account of language use. Halliday (1975) described seven basic functions that language performs for children learning their first language:
凤阳县卫生局①Language can be used to get things;
②to control the behavior of others;
③to create interaction with others;
④to express personal feelings;
⑤to learn and to discover;
⑥to create a world of the imagination;
⑦to communicate information.
羊吃了毒蜘蛛怎么办
12. Another source of a communicative view of language can be found in Henry Widdowson,
(1978) who presented a view of the relationship between linguistic system and their communicative values in text and discourse.
13. Henry Widdowson focused on the communicative acts underlying the ability to use
language for different purposes. His distinction between appropriacy and accuracy, communicative competence and grammatical competence, use and usage threw much light on CLT.
14. According to Canale and Swain (1980), communicative competence entails four
dimensions: grammatical competence; sociolinguistic competence; discourse competence and strategic competence.
①rammatical competence refers to what Chomsky calls “linguistic
competence.”
②Sociolinguistics competence refers to an understanding of the social context
in which communication takes place, including role relationships, the shared
information of the participants, and the communicative purpose for the
interaction.
③Discourse competence refers to the interpretation of individual message
elements in terms of their interconnectedness and of how meaning is
represented in relationship to the entire discourse or text.
④Strategic competence refers to the coping strategies that communicators
employ to start, end, keep, repair and redirect communication.
15. A communicative view of language has the following four characteristics by
Richards and Rodgers:
①Language is a system for the expression of meaning;
②The primary function of language is for interaction and communication is one
of the Communicative
Approach characteristics;
③According to the Communicative Approach, the structure of language reflects
its functional andjava2.0
communicative uses;
④The primary units of language are not merely its grammatical and structural
features, but categories of
functional and communicative meaning as exemplified in discourse.
豫公网安备41160202000603
站长QQ:729038198
关于我们
投诉建议