The Communicative Approach
Developments in linguistic studies affected current language teaching. One of the major
developments in current linguistic is the notion of communicative competence proposed by
Hymes (1971). Communicative competence is language knowledge (such as the sound system
and grammar) and the social context of language use. Knowing language rules is not enough
to help one communicate with others in various situations. One must also know the context of
situation, the participants in the interaction, place of interaction, and time of interaction.
The communicative approach to EFL was developed on the basis of this theory.
Does Communicative Approach provide a better environment for learning?
The communicative approach, an application of communicative competence, in language
teaching emphasizes interaction and group learning. Research showed that complex problem solving
tasks were completed successfully by subjects who interacted with others about what
they were doing as they went along. Many EFL researchers believe that learners understand
problem-solving tasks better when they think about these tasks and discuss their actions with
others. Communication ( interaction and negotiation with others) promotes learning.
To sum up, communicative tasks provide opportunity for meaningful interaction, thus
creating a suitable situation for learning.
Syllabus and Teaching Materials
What is the learning goal of the Communicative Approach? It mainly aims at
enabling foreign language learners to communicate effectively in the foreign language. In
other words, the learner has to be able to understand what other people say and write, and has
to be able to express himself fluently when speaking and writing to others in different
situations. Communicative Approach emphasizes all language skills - listening, speaking,
reading and writing.
What does a syllabus based on communicative approach consist of? Here are
examples of the items of teaching in these textbooks.
Functions:
Greeting Giving information Starting Describing
Suggesting Talking about yourself Conversation Places
Introducing Taking about your Making a date Agreeing
people feelings Describing people Refusing
to one another Comparing
Requesting Telling a story
As can be seen, the teaching items are functions (what o do with language,), not language
items.
What are the types of tasks used in such syllabuses? A communicative syllabus should
include communicative tasks. These tasks should be presented in the form of problems calling
for solutions. The range of exercises and materials presented to the learners should make it
necessary to engage in communication; e.g. information sharing and negotiation of meaning.
Here are a few examples of the types of tasks used in one of the communicative syllabuses -
the ‘Bangalore Project” used in some schools in South India (Prabhu (1987: 138-143). The
tasks are graded in terms of difficulty.
Examples:
1. Diagrams and formations
a. Naming parts of a diagram with numbers and letters of the alphabet, as instructed.
b. Placing numbers and letters of the alphabet in relation to one another, as instructed,
to arrive at particular formations.
c. Placing numbers and letters of the alphabet in given crossword formats;
constructing/completing such formats, as instructed.
2. Drawing
a. Drawing geometrical figures/formations from sets of verbal instructions.
b. Formulating verbal instructions for drawing/completing such figures.
c. Comparing given figures to identify similarities and differences.
The teaching materials in a typical communicative syllabus are authentic dialogues,
texts and writing exercises with the use of visual aids such as pictures, charts, maps,
diagrams, etc.
3. The Roles of Teachers and Learners
What is the role of the learner in a communicative class? The Communicative
Approach adopts classroom activities that encourage group work and cooperation
among the members of the class. This implies a different role for the learner from the
traditional role of just repeating or doing some sentence-based exercises. The learner
in this approach is seen as a cooperative element cooperating with the other members
of his group to do the communicative exercises supplied by the teacher. In addition,
the learner is also given the role of being a negotiator within the group when
discussing how to solve a problem. Moreover, the learner is also seen as a listener,
speaker, a reader and a writer. These roles are given to him when practicing the four language skills inside the classroom.
What is the role of the teacher in a communicative class? The teacher plays a minimum
role in the process of presenting materials. The teacher in the Communicative Approach has
the following roles:
1. Organizer: the teacher is seen as an organizer of resources in order to facilitate the
communicative process inside the classroom whether such a communication process
takes place between the learners themselves or between the learners and the tasks
they deal with. This role also implies the role of the teacher as an evaluator trying to
evaluate the outcome of his learners.
2. Instructor: The teacher passes some information to his/her pupils/learners.
3. Participant: the teacher is involved in the interaction that takes place inside the
classroom as a co-participant; he/she must be able to disassociate himself from the
interaction in order to monitor it.
4. Guide and helper: the teacher guides and helps his/her pupils/learners to
accomplish the tasks without giving them the correct solution in order to make them
work by themselves.
5. Friend: the teacher must create a friendly atmosphere in the classroom in order to
motivate his/her pupils/learners and to help them build confidence in themselves. A
good rapport will help learners fell relaxed.
Classroom Practice
As mentioned before, the main goal of the Communicative Approach is to enable the learners
to communicate effectively using the foreign language. We also mentioned that this aim
demands alternative types of teaching and learning activities other than the traditional
situation of the teacher facing his learners addressing them on matters that may not be
communicatively genuine to them. Such alternative activities require the learner to view
learning as social activities that imply pair work or group work in order for the learner to
interact and communicate. The language teacher usually follows the three stages of tasks
stated and explained in the section on task-based instruction. Read the following example.
Drawin2
Task: Comparing given figures to identify similarities and differences.
1. Pre-task stage
The teacher asks the learners to do this task in pairs. Then he gives each pair two pictures of
towns that are identical except for a number of details such as color, and size. Next, the teacher asks the learners to compare the pictures and identify the similarities and differences.
(2. Task stage
The learners in this stage work in pairs discussing the pictures in order to discover the
different features in the two pictures, while the teacher goes around trying to help
when help is needed.
3. Post4ask stage
The teacher in this stage asks the learners to compare their answers with other learners
in the class. Then, he/she checks the outcome.
The Natural Approach
The natural approach is based on Krashen’s theory of second language learning. Stephen
Krashen’s theory has a great influence on EFL/ESL research and pedagogy. His theories were
proposed 20 years ago but they are still debated and widely discussed. His theory (with Tracy
Terrell) was published in 1983 in The Natural Approach, which includes a comprehensive
second language acquisition theory with a curriculum for language classrooms. The influence
of the Natural Approach can be seen in current EFL/ESL textbooks and teacher development
books such as The Lexical Approach. Some teacher assessment tests define the pedagogical
factors affecting first and second language development in exactly the same terms used in
Krashen’s Monitor Model (California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, 1998).
Krashen’s Five Hypotheses
The theory is based on comparing first and second language acquisition and learning. It
comprises five hypotheses: The natural order hypothesis, The Acquisition/ Learning
Hypothesis, the Monitor Hypothesis, the Input Hypothesis, and Affective Filter Hypothesis.
These hypotheses can be simply explained as follows:
a. The natural order hypothesis means that the rules of a second language are acquired in a
predictable manner in a way thatis similar to first language acquisition. This is not new. It
appeared in the work of many other people. These researchers found striking similarities in
the order in which children acquired certain grammatical morphemes. Krashen cites a series
of studies by Dulay and Burt that show that a group of Spanish speaking and a group of
Chinese speaking children learning English as a second language also exhibited a “natural”
order for grammatical morphemes that did not differ between the two groups.
b. The Acquisition/Learning Hypothesis: Krashen proposes a dichotomy of two distinct
processes for developing ability and skill in a second language. Adults can develop
competences in second languages by acquisition, that is by using language for real
communication, and by learning “knowing about” language (Krashen & Terrell 1983).
Acquisition is the natural process of developing linguistic competence through input. It is
subconscious and implicit as it takes place in an informal setting. When a person uses the
competence gained through this way, he/she uses his/her intuition and grammatical “feel”.
Learning, on the other hand, is explicit and formal. It involves conscious rules. A person uses
grammatical knowledge when he uses competences gained through this process. Both ways —
acquisition and learning — can improve different aspects of second language competence.
However, the picture is not as simple as it seems. McLaughlin (1987) pointed out that
Krashen never adequately defines “acquisition”, “learning”, “conscious” and “subconscious”,
and that without such clarification, it is very difficult to independently determine whether
subjects are “learning” or acquiring” language. This is perhaps the first area that needs to be
explained in attempting to utilize the Natural Approach. If the classroom does not help the learners to attain proficiency, then it is probably best not to start. Any attempt to recreate
an environment suitable for “acquisition” is bound to be problematic.
Krashen (2002) defended his acquisition-learning distinction by giving some evidence. First,
he pointed out that many studies showed that adult learners in classes with more
comprehensible input do better than those in classes with less. Second, adult second language
competence, like child language competence, emerges in a predictable order that cannot be
changed by instruction (a “natural order”). Finally, adults acquire many complex rules they
never learned.
c. The Monitor Hypothesis: Krashen stated that conscious learning can only be used as a
Monitor or an editor’ (Krashen & Terrell 1983). He suggests that this conscious linguistic
knowledge acts as a ‘monitor’ that changes the output of the acquired system when time and
conditions permit. Therefore, when a student is asked to use his/her linguistic knowledge
(implicit rules), he/she will use his/her conscious linguistic knowledge as a monitor if given
enough time. One of the studies confirms that the subjects made hardly any errors when they
were able to monitor their production, yet in casual speech they made many errors.
d. The Input Hypothesis: This hypothesis states that humans acquire language in only one
way - by understanding messages or by receiving “comprehensible input” Here Krashen
claims that successful “acquisition” occurs by simply understanding input that is a little
beyond the learner’s present ‘level” — he defined that present “level” as i and the ideal level of
input as i +1. In the development of oral fluency, new words and grammar are unconsciously
worked out through the use of context, rather than through direct instruction. One strong
proof that Krashen drew to support is the caretaker speech that parents use when talking to
children. He claimed that this special speech is essential in first language acquisition (p.34).
This hypothesis is also supported by the fact that the first second language utterances of adult
learners are very similar to those of infants in their first language. However, it is the results of
methods such as Asher’s Total Physical Response that provide the most convincing evidence.
This method was shown to be far superior to audio lingual, grammar-translation or other
approaches, producing what Krashen calls ‘nearly five times the [normal] acquisition rate.”
e. The Affective Filter Hypothesis: ‘a mental block caused by affective factors that prevents
input from reaching the language acquisition device’ (Krashen, 1985, p.100). Krashen states
that “attitudinal variables relate directly to language acquisition but not language learning.”
He cites several studies that examine the link between motivation and self-image, arguing that
an “integrative” motivation (the learner wants to “be like” the native speakers of a language)
is necessary. He postulates an “affective filter” that acts before the Language Acquisition
Device and restricts the desire to seek input if the learner does not have such motivation.
Krashen also says that at puberty, this filter increases dramatically in strength.
Teachers may like this hypothesis because of the evident influence of self-confidence and
motivation on achievement. However, Krashen seems to imply that teaching children, who don’t have this filter, is somehow easier, since ‘given
sufficient exposure, most children reach native-like levels of competence in second
languages” (p.47). This obviously completely ignores the demanding situations that
face language minority children in the U.S. every day. A simplification into a one
page “hypothesis” gives teachers the idea that these problems are easily solved and
fluency is just a matter of following this path. As Gregg and McLaughlin point out,
however, when trying to put these ideas into practice, one quickly runs into problems.
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