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INTRODUCTION
In his whole life man achieves nothing so great
and so wonderful as what he
achieves when he
learns to talk.
(Danish philosopher)
The aim of the present paper is to attempt to answer the following
questions: How can students learn better to talk in a foreign language?
and How can the teacher help them in studying English more efficiently?
Many methodologies and approaches tried to give perfect solutions to the
problems of teaching and learning, but we consider that the
Communicative Approach satisfies all needs of both learners and
teachers. It can be applied to students of all levels, starting with
basic level and ending with advanced learning.
In the first chapter we present the historical evolution of the theories
linked to teaching a foreign language, how and why the Communicative
Approach became so widely used by teachers from Eastern and Western
schools. We argument its advantages over these methods practised on
parallel in many of the USA schools. The Communicative Approach is
closely connected to what is going on in the class, i.e. between
students and teacher. The main principles and features include all
matters of students’ background, culture, native language, materials
used to develop their knowledge and problems of classroom interaction.
In other words it studies every detail that is part of the teaching and
learning processes.
In the second chapter we apply the principles of the Communicative
Approach to a certain pattern of classroom interaction. We chose the
groupwork because it implies more participants in a lesson where they
all take an active part in solving the tasks. It seemed to us more
dynamic and efficient than other interaction patterns. Of course, the
ideal situation is to have a combination of them not to bore the
students. But if to take separately, groupwork implies more cooperation
among the students than individual work, or full class interaction.
Groupwork is considered to be a part of cooperative learning.
Cooperative learning helps students to reach higher academic achievement
levels. Through participatory learning activities students learn to
discuss the assigned topics, justify their positions and come to a
consensus. These interactions give students opportunities to express
themselves and understand others’ opinions. As they question and
challenge one another, students develop their critical thinking skills.
Because of the higher level of participation inspired by group
discussions, co-operative learning increases individual retention of the
assigned content.
Cooperative learning appears as an option in the demand for change: it
responds to a need of our society without however excluding competitive
and individualistic learning situations. In the current Romanian context
in which the reform marks the pressure for change in all fields of
activity, education plays an important role and must especially reflect
the change within school system. The school system has to produce
students capable of the higher-level thinking skills, communicative
skills and social skills necessary for participation in our increasingly
complex, interdependent society and work place.
Because we face a changing and unpredictable future social and economic
world, students should be prepared to be flexible so they can recognize
and adapt to cooperative, competitive and individualistic social
interaction situations. We need flexible and rational individuals who
have experienced the full range of social situations and who are
prepared to work and interact productively in them all. Still, we
consider that groupwork as a cooperative learning should be paid
attention to, because this approach hasn’t been known, nor practiced
in Moldavia before the 1990s and our students lack a lot of important
skills which are mainly developed by it, such as thinking skills,
communication skills and social skills. For teachers of foreign
languages who have always been in the avant-garde of ideas, it has
become a responsibility to share ideas with their students, because the
Communicative Approach to teaching offers the opportunity to develop
such skills. This need is mostly responded to social skills, whose
results are supposed to appear in the development of students’
personality, behaviour and interpersonal relations. Groupwork offers
opportunities for the development of all three.
Social skill development can especially be acquired during the learning
process of English: as the students interact in their cooperative
groups, they become skillful in listening, paraphrasing, taking the role
of the other, managing group processes and dealing with dominant, shy,
hostile, or withdrawn group members. They acquire skills and do not just
learn about them. There is hardly a job that does not involve working
with others. As we move into a greater technological complexity in the
work place, interdependence and teams become the norm, and success
increasingly depends on social skills.
In the last chapter of the paper we discuss the activities that may be
attributed to groupwork. These activities are discussed in details;
being stressed all the ways in which they help the students in their
learning process, their strong and weak parts and what skills are
developed with these activities. Teachers’ and students’ roles are
also taken into account, because every class of activities requires
different participation on the part of the teacher and students. There
is shown the difference between parwork and groupwork as well, as they
both are co-operative and both imply the participation of more than one
student and the teacher. The quality of the lesson depends much on
whether students work in pairs or in groups. The purpose is to
demonstrate the efficiency and the accuracy of groupwork activities,
their benefits and positive effects on motivation and learning of
English language students.
HISTORY
No one knows exactly how people learn languages although a great deal of
research has been done into the subject. Certain theories have, however,
had a profound effect upon the practice of language teaching (and
continue to do so) despite the fact that they often originated in
studies of how people learn their first language. According to Diane
Larsen-Freeman (1986), Jeremy Harmer (1991), Luke Prodromou (1992) and
Penny Ur (1998), it is only comparatively recently that the study of
second language acquisition has achieved the importance that it now has.
Attitudes towards the use of the mother tongue in the foreign language
classroom have changed a great deal since the nineteenth century when
Grammar/Translation was the dominant approach to language teaching.
Grammar/Translation Method
It is a method of teaching foreign languages that was originally applied
to the teaching of Latin and Greek. The main teaching aids are the
grammar book, dictionary and reader. The procedure for learning would
involve: translating a text from the reader orally; conjugating verbs;
declining nouns; learning rules and exceptions to rules; doing
dictations; the use of literary texts generally. The foreign language is
hardly used in class except in order to complete text-based
comprehension questions. Oral communication is minimal and the main
focus is on translating written texts. Although this method is still
practiced sporadically, its only value to the mixed ability class is the
acceptance of the mother tongue, which has a certain part to play in
helping weaker learners to participate in the lesson.
Direct Method
This method,dating from the nineteenth century, was characterized by the
avoidance of the mother tongue and an emphasis on the spoken language-in
contrast to the grammar/ translation approach, to which it was a
reaction. It is based on how children learn their mother tongue, and
uses context (pointing to objects, performing actions) to make meaning
clear. As phonetics became prominent at around the time, this was
reflected in the direct method’s emphasis on pronunciation.
Behaviourism
In a book called Verbal Behaviour (1957), the psychologist Skinner
applied the theory of operant conditioning to the way humans acquire
their first language. Language, he suggested, is a form of behaviour.
(It is because we are concerned with a form of behaviour that this
theory is called behaviourism.) It is based on stimulus-response
reinforcement. Skinner affirmed that the same model of stimulus-response
reinforcement accounts for how a baby learns a language. An internal
stimulus such as hunger prompts crying as a response, and this crying is
reinforced by the milk that is subsequently made available to the baby.
Our performance as language learners is largely the result of such
positive (or negative) reinforcement. According to Skinner, there is no
complex internal process going on, there is only what is objectively
observable: a stimulus (for example, a command that someone do
something); a response (the performance of the action); and
reinforcement (a reward of some kind).
There may still be a place for this approach to learning whenever the
task is basically mechanical-for example, in learning the sounds of the
language. It is not adequate, on the whole, as a response to the varied
and unpredictable problems of the large mixed ability class.
Audio-lingual method
Behaviourism, which was after all a psychological theory, was adopted
for some time by language teaching methodologists, particularly in
America, and the result was the audio-lingual method still used in many
parts of the world. This method held sway in the 1950s and 1960s.Based
on the principle that learning is largely a process of habit-formation;
it stresses the importance of controlled oral practice, mainly in the
form of drills and substitution tables. This method made constant
drilling of the students followed by positive or negative reinforcement
a major focus of the classroom activity. Of course the approach wasn’t
exclusively devoted to repetition, but the
stimulus-response-reinforcement model formed the basis of the
methodology. The language ‘habit’ was formed by constant repetition
and the reinforcement of the teacher. Mistakes were immediately
criticized, and correct utterances were immediately praised. The theory
of language underlying this approach emphasizes the difference between
languages. Thus, the mother tongue is seen as a source of interference,
which can hinder the acquisition of a new language Contrastive analysis
would perform the role of identifying these differences, and selecting
and grading structures accordingly. Structures are embedded in short
dialogues, which are often learnt automatically. Meaning is second in
importance to structural patterns.
Although communicative methodology has largely replaced audio-lingual
methodology, it would seem common-sense in a mixed ability class, often
with as many as 45 students in the room, to include aspects of
audio-lingualism in one’s teaching. The lock-step approach associated
with audio-lingual methodology, whereby all students are locked into the
same rhythm under the dominant orchestration of the teacher at the front
of the class, suggests the essential unsuitability of this approach in
mixed ability situations. It should be said that audio-lingualism was
thought to be highly successful in some contexts-particularly in the
foreign-language training of military personnel.
Cognitivism
In 1959 Chomsky published a strong attack on Skinner’s Verbal
Behaviour where Chomsky maintained that language is not a form of
behaviour. On the contrary, it is an intricate rule-based system and a
large part of language acquisition is the learning of the system. The
idea that language is not a set of habits-that what matters is for
learners to internalize a rule and that this will allow for creative
performance-has informed many teaching techniques and methodologies.
Thus students are often encouraged to use rules to create sentences of
their own. The objective is to create new sentences.
Acquisition and Learning
More recent investigations of how people become language users have
centered on the distinction between acquisition and learning. In
particular Stephen Krashen (1982) characterized the former as a
subconscious process which results in the knowledge of a language
whereas the latter results only in ‘knowing about’ the language.
Acquiring a language is more successful and longer lasting than
learning. Krashen saw successful acquisition as being very bound up with
the nature of the language input, which the students receive. Input is a
term used to mean the language that the students hear or read. This
input should contain language that the students already ‘know’ as
well as language that they have not previously seen: i.e. the input
should be at a slightly higher level than the students are capable of
using, but at a level that they are capable of understanding. Krashen
called the use of such language to students ‘rough tuning’ and
compared it to the way adults talk to children. Perhaps if language
students constantly receive input that is roughly tuned, that is,
slightly above their level, they will acquire those items of language
that they did not previously know without making a conscious effort to
do so. To his opinion consciously learned language is only available in
highly restricted circumstances as a monitor. Learning does not directly
help acquisition.
A problem about acquisition is that it takes a lot of time. In fact,
time is a crucial issue. The vast majority of students in the world
study languages for about two and a half hours a week, for about thirty
weeks a year, which is not much time when compared to the time taken by
children to acquire their first languages.
Humanistic approaches
Another perspective, which has gained increasing prominence in language
teaching, is that of the student as a ‘whole person’. In other
words, language teaching is not just about teaching a language, it is
also helping students to develop themselves as people.
These beliefs have led to a number of teaching methodologies and
techniques, which have stressed the humanistic aspect of learning. In
such methodologies the experience of the student is what counts and the
development of their personality and the encouragement of positive
feelings are seen to be as important as their learning of a language.
Community language learning was developed by C. Curran, attempting to
give students only the language they need. Ideally students sit in a
circle outside of which is a ‘knower’ who will help them with the
language they want to use. When they have decided what they want to say
they do it in their language and the knower translates it for them so
they can use the target language instead. It is based on both counseling
psychology and the social dynamics of the group. A collaborative effort
is encouraged, and reflective sessions are held to think about the
learning process and discuss the class’s goals and expectations. This
method attempts to reduce the learner’s anxiety by encouraging them to
develop their inner criteria for evaluating what is learnt and for
activating their emotional resources.
In this model, a secure environment for learning is established. But the
concept of security in this kind of learning also generates problems.
First, although the intent is for steadily decreasing reliance on the
teacher-counselor and increasing student independence, this situation is
difficult to achieve in practice. If it were truly achieved, the teacher
may feel threatened by the students’ self-reliance and suffer from an
“empty classroom syndrome†just as a mother might experience the
“empty nestâ€Â. Secondly, the concept of security contained in
Community Learning is a matter of maturity; a person’s maturity
depends on many influences in addition to those found in the classroom.
Suggestopaedia is a methodology developed by Lozanov (1978) in which
students must be comfortably relaxed. This frequently means comfortable
furniture and music. Baroque music is selected because of its steady,
predictable rhythm and soothing continuo accompaniment. In this setting
students are given new names and listen to extended dialogues. The
contention is that the general ease of the situation, the adoption of a
new identity and the dependence on listening to the dialogues will help
the students to acquire the language. This method is intensive and
designed for three- or four-hour session five to six days a week,
ideally with a group of six males and six females. Despite the success
of Suggestopaedia, the method may find only restricted classroom
application. The intensive time structure makes its adoption within the
traditional one-hour, five-days-a-week instructional setting impossible.
The silent way, developed by Caleb Gattegno is marked by the fact that
the teacher gives a very limited amount of input, modeling the language
to be learnt once only and then indicating what the students should do
through pointing and other silent means. The teacher will not criticize
or praise but simply keeps indicating that the students should try again
until success is achieved. However, it would seem necessary for a
teacher to gain a
_________________________________________
Brumfit, C. (1984) Communicative Methodology in Language Teaching
(Cambridge) p.30.
good deal of training and skill in order to apply the Silent Way to the
teaching of a total grammar in all its complexity, if such a broad
application is, in fact, possible. Another fact is that only advanced
learners can really participate and be active during the activity. They
need to know language very well in order to correct and to help each
other without teacher’s intervention.
Total physical response, developed by James Asher, is a method which
finds favor with Krashen’s view of roughly-tuned input. In TPR the
teacher gives students instructions. The students don’t have to speak,
they simply have to carry out the teacher’s commands. When they are
ready for it they can give commands to other students. The students thus
learn language through a physical response rather through drills.
Despite the controlling role of the teacher in many of these
methodologies, they have all been called humanistic in some circles.
Certainly Community Language Learning and Suggestopaedia concentrate
heavily on the students and their state of mind, seeing in their wants
and their relaxation the key to successful learning. TPR allows a
pre-speaking phase where students are not forced to speak until they
feel confident to do so. The Silent Way forces students to rely on their
own resources even when under the teacher’s direction.
The Communicative Approach
The late 1960s saw a shift from the Audio-Lingual Method and its
prototypes to Communicative language teaching. It was caused by the
large movements of population. In Western Europe the economic boom of
the 60s and 70s enticed migrant laborers from Southern Europe and
Northern America to leave their homes in search for work. Very often
these workers had to learn a language-not to pass an examination, but to
live and work in their new surrounding. Their needs revolutionized
language teaching for adults and these revolutionary changes affected
the way languages were taught in schools.
As a result of this, the Council of Europe carried out some studies.
These studies sought to evaluate how language itself is used: how native
speakers of a language express themselves in various situations. The
studies had a major impact on teaching English as a foreign language.
Teachers and curriculum designers began to look at content, at the kind
of language needed when greeting or shopping. The emphasis on form, on
explicitly learning grammar rules or practicing grammatical patterns,
was downplayed in favour of an approach designed to meet learners’
needs when using the language in daily interaction: The Communicative
Approach.
GENERAL PRESENTATION
Recent writings in second language acquisition and classroom methodology
(Bejarano, Y. ‘A Cooperative Small Group Methodology in the Language
Classroom’ 1987,Brumfit, C. ‘Communicative Methodology in Language
Teaching’ 1984, Celce-Murcia, M. ‘Teaching English as a Second or
Foreign Language’ 1991,etc.) have raised important questions about
language learning and teaching. The observation that many students fail
to acquire communicative competence in the target language despite years
of language instruction has promoted researchers, theoreticians and
teachers to question the effectiveness of the current approaches:
traditional, grammar-based instruction has been widely criticized as
being ineffective. One of the most frequently repeated suggestions in
the current literature on language learning and teaching is that, for
most learners, acquisition of a second language will take place only to
the extent that those learners are exposed to and engaged in
contextually rich, genuine, meaningful communication in that language.
An examination of the relevant literature reveals two major arguments to
support this claim:
First, findings from research in second language acquisition indicate
that most learners cannot utilize their intellectual understanding of
the grammar of the language in real communication. (Krashen, S. 1977,
1979; Johnson, K. 1978) and others have argued that communicative
competence can only be achieved by subconsciously acquiring the language
through active participation in real communication that is of interest
to most learners.
The second argument in favor of providing students with real
communicative experience in the target language is supported by
investigations into communicative curriculum design. It has been argued
that the ability to be grammatical and formally correct is important but
formal correctness is only part of communicative competence (Johnson, K.
1981; Brumfit, C. 1981). If teachers expect their students to learn how
to use language to fulfill real communicative functions, the students
must have the opportunities to do so in a full range of real situations
and social settings.
In sum, then, it appears that second language acquisition depends upon
the extent to which learners are exposed to and involved in genuine
communication in the target language. Recent explorations into
communication based language teaching have begun to identify some of the
features of real communication which have direct applicability to the
development of a communicative methodology:
Morrow, K. (1981) has pointed out that in order to engage in real
communication participants must be able to deal with stretches of
spontaneous language above the sentence level. Since the ability to
manipulate the formal features of language in isolation does not
necessarily imply the larger ability to be communicatively competent,
the Communicative Teaching Approach will need to provide students with
the opportunity to engage in extended discourse in a real context.
Johnson (1978) and Morrow (1981) have proposed that one of the major
purposes of communication is to bridge an information gap. If the
speaker and hearer are both in possession of the same information prior
to beginning their communication, communication cannot, technically, be
said to take place. Therefore, a communicative methodology will need to
create situations in which students share information not previously
known by all participants in the communication.
Morrow (1981) has observed that real communication always allows
speakers choices to decide not only what they will say but also how they
will say it. In similar fashion, since there is always uncertainty about
what a speaker will say, the hearer remains in doubt and must maintain a
state of readiness. The Communicative Approach, therefore, will need to
provide learners with opportunities to engage in unrehearsed
communication and hereby experience doubt and uncertainty, and learn to
make appropriate content and linguistic choices accordingly.
Morrow (1981) has noted that most participants in real communication
keep a goal in mind while they are speaking. That goal is usually the
successful completion of some kind of real task. What speakers decide to
say to each other and how they evaluate what is said to them are both
determined by that goal. That is, what one speaker says to a second
speaker is shaped not only by what the second speaker has just said, but
also by what the first speaker wants to get out of the conversation. The
Communicative Approach will need to provide learners with opportunities
to negotiate conversations on topics which are goal-oriented and in
which the learners have a vested interest.
Johnson (1978) has suggested that real communication requires that both
the speaker and the hearer attend to many factors quickly and at the
same time. The Communicative Approach, therefore, will need to provide
students with opportunities to engage in extended discourse topics,
using real language and most importantly, in real time.
Such teaching approach requires “an environment where doing things is
possible†(Morrow, 1981)
MAIN PRINCIPLES OF THE COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH
Every methodology and/or approach concerned with teaching has at its
basis some fundamental principles that allow its use and function in the
Teaching-Learning Process. The principles help the method ‘work’ if
accurately applied. When talking about Communicative Approach, Diane
Larsen-Freeman (1986) considers that one should take into account the
account the following principles:
Background
Distinctive Features
Language View
Culture View
Error Correction
Teachers’ and Students’ Role
BACKGROUND
The approach was called COMMUNICATIVE because of the focus on
communicative activities and the concentration on language. This is
because its aims are overtly communicative and great emphasis is placed
on training students to use language for communication. The goal is to
have one’s students become communicatively competent. While this has
been the stated goal of the other methods, in the Communicative Approach
the notion of what it takes to be communicatively competent is much
expanded.
In the modern Communicative Approach teacher’s main objective is to
get their students using language in ways which reflect the purposes to
which it is put outside the classroom. There are no hard and fast rules
concerning the use of the first language here; flexibility and the
importance of realistic targets are two of the guiding principles. At
various stages writers have also included the teaching of language
functions, task-based learning and humanistic approaches under this
umbrella term, making them-apparently-integral parts of the approach.
When we communicate, we use the language to accomplish some function,
such is arguing, persuading, or promising. Moreover, we carry out these
functions within a social context (communicative competence involves
being able to use the language appropriate to a given social context).
To do this students need knowledge of the linguistic forms, meanings and
functions. A speaker will choose a particular way to express his/her
argument not only based on his/her level of emotion, but also on whom
he/she is addressing and what the relationship with that person is. The
students must be able to choose the most appropriate form, a given
social context and roles of the interlocutors. For example, they may be
more direct in arguing with a friend than with the principle of their
school.
Furthermore, since communication is a process, it is insufficient for
students to simply have knowledge of target language forms, meanings and
functions. It is through the interaction between the speaker and the
listener that the meaning becomes clear. The listener gives the speaker
feedback as to whether or not he-she understands what the speaker has
said. Both the speaker and the listener (students) must be able to
manage the process of negotiating meaning with their interlocutors.
DISTINCTIVE FEATURES
The most important characteristic of this approach is that everything is
done with a communicative purpose. Students use the language through
communicative activities such as language games ,role-plays and problem
solving tasks.
Language games are used very frequently. The students find them
enjoyable and if they are properly designed, they give students valuable
communicative practice.
Role-plays are very important because they give the opportunity to
practise communicating in different social roles and in different social
ccontexts. Students also receive feedback on whether or not they have
effectively communicated.
Problem solving tasks like picture strip stories or scrambled sentences
work well because they usually include three features of communicaton:
information gap, choice and feedback.
But let’s look more closely at what is meant by the term
“communicative activityâ€Â. We can think of a communicative activity
as a piece of work which involves students in using language in order to
get something done. An overall framework for communicative activities
would be that students are called upon to:
Gather information in English
Exchange information in English and work together in order to
Produce information in English.
For all communicative activities there will be :
A desire to communicate
A communicative purpose
Variety of language
No teacher intervention
No materials control
The content that matters, not the form
Thus for non-communicative activities there will be:
No communicative desire
No communicative purpose
Teacher intervention
Materials control
One language item
The emphasis on the form of the language
Information gap
The information gap is one of the main features of Communicative
Methodology. The basic idea is that some students possess information
that the others do not; the latter are, thus obliged to use the language
they know to acquire this information-to fill the gap. If two people
know that today is Tuesday and one asks the other: ’’ What is today?
’’ and the latter answers: “ Tuesday â€Â, their exchange isn’t
really communicative. Normally speakers have a communicative purpose and
listeners are interested in discovering what that purpose is. However,
even if listeners have some idea about the purpose, they must listen in
order to be sure. Thus, the information gap is a device for encouraging
a purposeful use of the language in the classroom.
Choice
In communication the speaker has the opportunity to choose what he/she
will say and how he/she will say it. If the exercise is tightly
controlled so that students can only say something in one way, the
speaker has no choice and the exchange is not communicative. In a drill,
where the student must answer the neighbor’s question in the same
manner as his neighbor replied to someone else’s question, then he/she
has no choice of form and content, and real communication does not
occur.
Feedback
True communication is purposeful. A speaker can evaluate whether or not
his/her purpose has been achieved, based upon the information he/she
receives from the listener. If the listener doesn’t provide the
speaker with such feedback, then the exchange is not really
communicative. The most common feedback from the part of the teacher
involves pointing out to students in one way or another how close their
attempt at English is to some form of standard English. Organizing
feedback occurs when students have performed some kind of task and their
intention of this kind of assessment is for them to see the extent of
their success or failure. But, sometimes, giving this type of feedback
can discourage learning. This means that the teacher has to be sensitive
to when a mistake is made and to what kind of a mistake it is, before
deciding whether to correct, when to correct, or how to correct.
These distinctions are very important. If a student says: â€ÂPavarotti
is the singer I like him the best†the important question for the
teacher is not simply whether this is Standard English or not. The
question is what kind of response from the teacher will be the most
helpful for the student’s continuing learning? Julian Edge, an English
teacher trainer (1993), offers three possible situations which lead to
different answers:
1. During a controlled exercise or drill to practice relative clauses:
the focus is on accuracy and the teacher will want to give immediate
feedback. A useful approach is:
To give a chance for self- correction. The teacher might:
- pull a face to show that there was a mistake, or
- repeat the sentence up to the mistake and stop: â€ÂPavarotti is the
singer I … like…?†to show where the mistake is or
- repeat the mistake in such a way as to highlight it: â€Âhim??â€Â
To move from self-correction, if unsuccessful, to peer correction. The
teacher might:
ask if anyone else in the class can help and when they can,
go back to the original student version.
This technique is useful for holding class attention, for informing the
teacher about the class’ general level and for encouraging the idea
that students can learn from each other.
To give the standard from him/herself as a last resort. If it comes to
this, the teacher should know that no one in the class was capable of
producing the standard form, so the first student did not really make a
mistake in something that had been learnt. That student was attempting
to say something that the other students are not yet able to structure.
The idea of correction is therefore not really appropriate- what is
needed is more teaching.
2. If the teacher heard this mistake during a group activity designed to
give an opportunity for communicative use of the language, the focus is
on fluency and the teacher wouldn’t want to correct immediately. If,
however, he/she still wants to correct, such correction will be a
‘gentle’ one. Gentle correction involves showing students that a
mistake has been made but not making a big fuss about it. He/she could
use three techniques:
To collect such mistakes as he/she walk round the class and later put
them on the board for discussion without saying who made them.
To write the sentences on a slip of paper and later give it to the
students as something to think about, perhaps ask about, and learn from.
To assign to one group member the task of listening for possible
mistakes and raising them for discussion at the end of the task.
We must make a distinction between two different kinds of feedback:
Content feedback concerns an assessment of how well the students
performed the activity as an activity rather than as a language
exercise. Thus, when students have a role-play the teacher first
discusses with students the reasons for their decisions in their
simulation. In other words, where students are asked to perform a task
(including writing tasks) it is their ability to perform that task which
should be the focus of the first feedback session. If the teacher merely
concentrates on the correctness of the students’ language then they
will conclude that the task itself was unimportant.
Form feedback, on the other hand, does tell the students how well they
have performed linguistically, how accurate they have been.
3. During an informal exchange before, during or after the lesson. The
focus is on normal, human conversation in the English-using community
which the teacher and students share. In conversation, we very rarely
focus on the form of how people say things, we just respond to what they
say. Julian Edge considers that what might be appropriate here is to
respond naturally and perhaps slip the correct form in without comment
later. So, I might well say: “Yes, he has a wonderful voice. Placido
Domingo is the singer I like best.â€Â
Teachers need to encourage students to communicate in the shared
knowledge that this must include making mistakes if the language is to
develop. The Communicative Approach aims to give appropriate feedback at
the appropriate time, so as to encourage language development, while
also helping students learn from their mistakes.
Two final points need to be made. Firstly it is important to stress
again that feedback does not just include correcting language mistakes.
It also means reacting to the subject and the content of the creativity.
Secondly the feedback also means telling students what ‘went right’.
Authentic Materials
Another characteristic of the Communicative Approach is the use of
authentic materials. The word authentic is used in different ways in
English Language Teaching, but the most common use of the expression
authentic materials is to refer to examples of language that were not
originally produced for language learning purposes but which are now
being used in that way. Authentic materials are most usually texts,
sometimes listening texts. There are two reasons why authentic materials
are so important:
Language –Authentic materials represent the actual goal of language
learning, including the difficulties that learning materials avoid. All
learners must have practice in meeting these real challenges. Even at
early stages students should learn how to respond to language which they
do not fully understand.
Motivation –Authentic materials bring the means of learning and the
purpose of learning close together, and this establishes once again a
direct link with the world outside the classroom.
One aspect of reading and listening that concerns many teachers and
methodologists is the difference between authentic and non-authentic
texts. The former are said to be those which are designed for native
speakers: they are ‘real’ texts designed not for language students,
but for the speakers of the language in question. Thus, English-language
newspapers are composed of what we could call authentic English, and so
are radio programmes for English speakers. A British advertisement is an
example of authentic English, so is a chapter from a novel written for
an English-speaking audience.
A non-authentic text in language teaching terms is one that has been
written especially for language students. Such texts sometimes
concentrate on the language they wish to teach and we end up with
examples like this:
John: How long have you been collecting butterflies?
Mary: I’ve been collecting them since I entered secondary school.
John: How many butterflies have you collected?
Mary: I’ve collected about four hundred foreign ones.
John: Are there any rare ones?
Mary: Yes, there are some. I got them in Thailand.
John: My hobby is playing football.
Mary: How long have you been playing it?
John: I’ve been playing it since last year. I can play it pretty well
now.
There are a number of clues which indicate at once to us that this
language is artificial. In the first place, both speakers use perfectly
formed sentences all the time. But the conversation between people is
not like that! Especially noticeable is the fact that when one speaker
asks a question using a particular grammatical structure he gets a full
answer using the same structure. Another clue to this text’s
inauthenticity is the fact that the language is extremely unvaried.
Other clues are John’s sudden change of subject and the repetition of
the word ‘play’. The conversation just doesn’t ‘sound right’.
All over the world language teaching materials use such device. Their
aim is to isolate bits of language so that students can concentrate on
it. Such materials should not be used, however, to help students become
better listeners or readers. The obviously artificial nature of the
language makes it very unlike anything that they are likely to encounter
in real life. Whilst some may claim that it is useful for teaching
structures, it cannot be used to teach reading or listening skills.
There are three reasons for giving students reading and listening
material:
Being better readers, being better listeners.
Clearly the most obvious reason for giving students reading and
listening material is to encourage them to be better listeners and
readers. The more listening and reading material they get, the better
they will become at reading and listening.
Acquiring language.
Students who read and listen a lot seem to acquire English better than
those who do not. In other words, the main advantage of reading and
listening for students is that it improves their general English level.
Success.
A frequent diet of successful reading makes students more confident when
they read in English: successful listening classes make students better
able to cope with listening to English.
Texts-whether authentic or not-must be realistic models of written or
spoken English. It is considered desirable to give students an
opportunity to develop strategies for understanding language as it is
actually used by native speakers.
There are two obvious ways in which a degree of content of authentic
materials can be exercised:
Firstly, they can be graded in terms of accessibility. One would want to
take into account the absolute length of the passage, the density of new
information and the presence of supportive graphic features. In addition
it is not difficult to establish a cline of accessibility depending upon
the sophistication of the information content, although caution needs to
be exercised in accepting the relative simplicity of the popularized
account, for example, which is frequently achieved at the expense of
introducing an unrepresentative register of discourse.
Secondly, it is possible to remove the forms of control from materials
themselves to the task complexity demanded of the student and for which
the material acts as a stimulus. It does not always follow that because
an authentic written text is being exploited that the objective of all
lessons is necessarily reading comprehension. Indeed, it must be
accepted that total comprehension has often to be abandoned as a lesson
aim. Moreover, the traditional classroom approach aimed at predicting
the language the student needs to learn and allowing him the smallest
possible margin of error in its acquisition is unlikely to hold good
when using authentic materials, which, for the student, represent very
much of a confrontation with the language. Consequently the
Communicative Approach, which accepts the inevitability of error and
aims at its progressive elimination as successively more accurate
hypothesis are tested out the evidence of the materials seems to be more
appropriate.
_________________________________________
Brumfit, C. (1984) Communicative Methodology in Language Teaching
(Cambridge) p.30.
ERROR CORRECTION
One of the most important aspects of learner training is that of
encouraging the right attitude to error. As opposed to ‘slips’ or
‘mistakes’, errors occur regularly or systematically. It is
essential to create an atmosphere in which errors can be accepted as a
necessary step in the learning process. They typify an individual’s or
a group’s learning strategies and are therefore an important-and
positive-aspect of learning a foreign language. Errors can, for
instance, actually raise awareness and reinforce a rule in a way that
answers that are luckily correct cannot. They should not be allowed to
become a source of anxiety for ‘weak’ learners.
Many teachers, however, seem obsessed with eliminating mistakes and
correct their students constantly. They perhaps feel safe doing this
because it is an area in which they have authority and the students are
vulnerable. This is probably particularly true of the large mixed
ability class, where teachers often feel insecure about discipline and
control. However, while correcting error is undoubtedly an important
part of language teaching, there is an appropriate time and place for
it, and while there are ways of correcting which encourage learners,
there are also ways which discourage them. In a mixed ability class this
distinction is particularly important, as students are often tongue-tied
mot because they have nothing to say but because they are afraid of
being made to look foolish in front of other students by a teacher who
pounces on their every mistake. An obsession with accuracy (error
phobia) will thus often develop at the expense of fluency. Both accuracy
and fluency are, of course, important, but a balance between them is
vital.
Errors are tolerated and are seen as natural outcome of the development
of the communicative skills. Students can have limited linguistic
knowledge and still be successful communicators. It is a bad habit of
some teachers to ask some pupils to notice mistakes when their
classmates are called to speak. Firstly, students’ attention is drawn
not to what he says, but to how he says it, i. e. not to the content but
to the form. When pupils’ attention is centered on errors, they often
do not grasp what their classmate says and that’s why they cannot ask
questions or continue the story he has told them. This is the reason why
in the content of Communicative Approach the form is placed on a
secondary plane.
LANGUAGE VIEW
Communication is at the heart of modern English Language Teaching (ELT),
it is the goal of ELT. The language used in the classroom is for
communication. Linguistic competence, the knowledge of forms and
meanings is just one part of communicative competence. Another aspect of
communication competence is knowledge of the functions language is used
for. A speaker can make a prediction by saying “Perhaps it will
rain†or “It may rainâ€Â. Thus, the same form of the language can be
used for a variety of functions.
Language functions are emphasized over forms. Typically, a functional
syllabus is used. A variety of forms are introduced for each function.
At first, only simpler forms would be presented, but later, as students
get more proficient in the target language, some complex forms are
introduced. Thus, for example, in learning to make a request, firstly
students will learn “Would you…? Could you…?†Later on such
construction as: â€ÂI wonder if you would mind…?†or “Could you be
so kind as to…?â€Â
Students work with language at the textual or discourse level. They
learn about cohesion and coherence. Coherence is a tight connection
between the parts or elements of a whole. In Communicative Approach
students will develop the ability of making coherent texts or
discourses. During different activities when students are given mixed
sentences or pictures, they should recognize the lack of coherence and
should put the texts or pictures in order as to be coherent.
Cohesion is a textual realization of coherence. It is a device
expressed through such phrases as: â€ÂFirst…†at the beginning, then
“finallyâ€Â. It makes the text sound coherent. It also helps students
to arrange the sentences in a text in a coherent way.
Students work on all four skills from the beginning. Just as oral
communication is seen to take place through negotiation between speaker
and listener, so too, is meaning thought to be derived from the written
word through an interaction between the reader and the writer. The
writer is not present to receive immediate feedback from the reader but
the reader tries to understand the writer’s intentions and the writer
writes with the reader’s perspective of mind. Thus, meaning is
explicit in the text, but rather arises through negotiation between the
reader and the writer.
The students’ native language has no particular role in the
Communicative Approach. The target language should be used not only
during communicative activities, but also in explaining the activities
to the students or in assigning homework. The students achieve knowledge
from these classroom management exchanges and realize that the target
language is a vehicle for communication, not just an object to be
studied.
CULTURE VIEW
British trade, followed by colonial and imperial expansion, spread
English round the world. Since then the military and economic dominance
of the United States of America has confirmed English as the
international language of the present historical period. As a
consequence, English serves for many people as a bride into the worlds
of higher education, science, international trade, politics, tourism or
any other venture which interests them. At the same time, English serves
for many people as a barrier between themselves and fields of interests.
Many people in their own countries will not be able to become doctors,
for example, if they cannot learn enough English. That’s why the
teachers should not contrast the ELT classroom with the real world. The
English teacher should help students to learn the language by taking
into consideration their culture and their world.
Culture is everyday lifestyle of people who use the language natively.
As in Communicative Approach classroom materials and activities are
authentic in order to reflect real-life situations and demands; they
should correspond to the culture the students come from. In fact, the
target language is also taught, as learning is first of all informative.
Language itself is a part of the culture and it already carries certain
information about the country it is spoken in. Foreign language teaching
should promote pupil’s general educational and cultural growth by
increasing their knowledge about foreign countries and by acquainting
them with customs and traditions of the people whose language they
study.
The fact that the English language and culture are unknown quantities
for many students may make them seem ignorant or lacking in linguistic
aptitude. Yet in their own language and culture, those same students are
often voluble and witty. This is a truth universally acknowledged and
yet very seldom acted upon. The students’ own language and culture
provide a vast reservoir of material for the teacher and a source of
confidence for the learner. In the past, English as a foreign language
has generally been presented through imaginary situations based on the
everyday life of a native-speaker family living in Britain or the USA.
The people and events described were often banal and bore little
relation to the students’ own world. Nothing much of interest or
importance seemed to happen to them, and therefore the educational
content of language lessons seemed ultimately trivial.
However, the flourishing of English as an international language and the
recognition of the links between the world of the language classroom and
the ‘real’ world outside have brought about significant developments
in methodology and materials design. The range of cultural reference to
be drawn on has widened considerably and can be summarized by three
basic types of context:
1.The first one of these is the native-speaker culture (usually
referring to the British or North American cultures), which constitutes
an important dimension to language teaching as, according to research, a
knowledgeable but critical attitude to the target culture may promote
learning.
2. Then there is the learners’ own cultural experience (the ideas,
beliefs, values and institutions of the society to which they belong.
3. Finally, there is the international perspective and context, in which
English operates significantly as a medium of communication. Its role
here makes it an ideal educational vehicle for increasing the
learners’ understanding of a wide variety of other cultures, often
very different from their own.
In a mixed ability class, it is vitally important to offer a ‘way
in’ to the lesson by drawing on the board range of relevant topics,
rather than sticking religiously to what is covered by the course-books.
When a class is given the opportunity to work around subjects that
genuinely interest them, the teacher may achieve a dual purpose: those
students who are struggling with aspects of the language will be
encouraged to persist in their efforts because the content of the lesson
appeals to them, while those students who are linguistically able will
be more patient of a slow pace at time, because they are not intensely
bored. It is for this reason of considerable value to ask the students
what material they find more interesting and then work with that in
mind, as for example:
Facts (science and technology)
The English language
Social problems
British culture
Political problems
Local culture
Films
Love and friendship
Beliefs
Education, etc.
Real communication involves the participation of students and teacher
in a class in order to acquire an efficient teaching and learning. The
next chapter will point out the particularly important role of classroom
interaction in the Communicative Approach and will describe the ways
which make the teachers’ and students’ roles improve the
students-teachers interaction.
CHAPTER II
GROUPWORK: THEORETICAL ASPECTS
INTRODUCTION
Until recently, a great deal of thought in language teaching circles had
gone into methods, syllabus design and materials, but very little
attention had ever been paid to what actually went on inside foreign
language classrooms. Early investigations showed that many of the
best-intentioned changes in language teaching were not teaching students
because the new ideas were being short-circuited by various features of
teacher-student interaction. It turned out that there was often a great
difference between what was supposed to happen and what actually
happened, and also between what teachers thought they were doing and
what they were actually doing. These differences were documented in
detailed studies of classroom processes, especially of classroom
conversation among students at work in small groups.
Many approaches to the problem of the mixed-ability class, though
useful, are difficult to implement. This may be because they take too
long to prepare, or require equipment and premises that are simply not
available. There is, however, the difficulty that conventional responses
to mixed-ability problems, such as the provision of remedial exercises
for weak students, may prove divisive and split the class into factions,
as they involve the students working alone or in separate groups rather
than as a unified whole. It is, in fact not the existence of groupwork
as such that will help to solve the problems of mixed-ability classes,
but what goes on in the groups. That is, to say, groupwork may help
bring students of different abilities together to help and support each
other, sharing diverse backgrounds and experience, or it may merely
reinforce the differences in the class, functioning as a strategy for
separating and keeping apart students of different linguistic abilities.
Little will happen towards coming to grips with this problem unless the
teacher is prepared to re-examine and extend his or her role and unless
students are trained in such a way as to overcome any built-in
prejudices towards different working methods and to improve their
initiative and self-motivation.
This chapter has the purpose to examine grouopwork in mixed-ability
classes, its evolution, its structure, advantages, problems,
disadvantages and the roles the teachers and students acquire by
applicating the Communicative Approach whose aim is to solve the
problems linked to classroom interaction and to neutralize the ability
differences among the students. The Communicative Approach is concerned
with what is going on inside the groups and offers practical solutions
to all types of difficulties connected to groupwork. In this chapter is
presented the theoretical application of the Communicative Approach put
into practice in the third chapter where theory is compared to practical
results in order to conclude whether all types of a lesson can be
efficiently organized in groupwork.
SOCIAL GROUPS
Life must be lived as play, playing certain games, making sacrifices,
singing and dancing, and then a man will be able to propitiate the gods,
and defend himself against his enemies, and win the contest.
-Plato, Laws, 803-4
Social group work began as "group work" with its own unique history and
heroes. It was not part of the mainstream of social work, which in the
early days was synonymous with casework. Social group work s ideological
roots were in the self-help and informal recreational organizations,
such as the YMCA, the YWCA, settlements, scouting, and Jewish Centers,
and also in progressive education. The major thrust of the early
group-serving agencies was toward the normal, rather than the
maladjusted, person who would seek service primarily during his
"leisure" hours. He came for recreation, education, enjoyment, and the
development of special skills and interests.
In the Mid-Thirties Grace Coyle distinguished group work from the rest
of social work by its focus on the more nearly normally adjusted
individual as well as by the fact that it was used by people of all
strata of society rather than the lower economic classes alone. If the
groupwork were at all problem-focused, then clearly the problem was of
society s, and not of the individual s, making. Small group was viewed
as an ideal laboratory where individuals could learn the skills of
getting along with each other and with the rest of the world. The
origins of the various group-serving agencies reveal the intention of
helping certain groups of people learn to cope with the particular
problems of their situation.
For example, the settlements were concerned with the various immigrant
groups who arrived in the "land of opportunity" and most frequently
found themselves huddled together in the least desirable sections of the
big cities. They needed to learn the ways of America. The settlements
services covered the gamut of the concrete needs that all individuals
have-English classes, health clinics, legal and housing counseling,
nurseries, credit unions, recreation, vacations and the like.
By The Twenties and Thirties the settlements modified their drive
toward strict Americanization by deliberately adding programs to
preserve the various ethnic identities of their members. The Jewish
Centers were similarly set up to help the immigrant find his way, but
from their inception also stressed the center as an institution for
perpetuating Jewish identity among its members. These organizations
stressed the development of character that accompanies the mastery of
skills and the experience of playing with others under adult leadership.
They were also concerned that city children have the opportunity to get
back to nature and learn firsthand the lessons of life that come from
direct experience with the natural environment.
That group work should be equally affected by and bound up with the
reforms in education that were termed ‘progressive education’ was
historically inevitable. The leaders of this movement-John Dewey,
William H Kilpatrick and others were concerned with the rights of
children and how they can effectively learn skills for living. Dewey s
efforts were aimed toward socializing the school systems, toward
combating the ill effects of the school as a rigid institution. Again,
the small group was stressed, self-determined and self-motivated
learning-learning by doing-was stressed. Kilpatrick saw groupwork as a
method to he used to advantage within the field of education.
Perhaps the most significant contribution of the progressive education
school of thought was to point its finger toward the teacher and cause
him to look self-consciously at his teaching method. The old-line
autocrat was held in disrepute. Instead, a more benign, encouraging
teacher who looked harder at his group, as a group, was sponsored.
Democracy was seen as starting within a classroom situation where
children were encouraged to interact with each other, learn from each
other, and discover solutions.
Thus in the 1930 s a similar concern for the effective use of the group
toward democratic ends characterized groupwork in the fields of informal
education, recreation, and education. The group was seen as possessing
deep educational potential: individuals would learn to cooperate and get
along with others socially; individuals would enrich themselves through
new knowledge, skills, and interests; and society itself would be
bettered through the group s programs of responsible involvement in
community problems. In these early days group work was not geared toward
individuals with particular problems. All group members were helped
toward normal growth needs and toward desirable social adjustment
through experiences that were essentially educative. The person with
severe emotional, social, or other problems who appeared in the group
was incorporated as much as possible along with his peers or, when this
was impossible, was referred for individual attention to a casework
agency or psychiatric clinic. Most of the leadership of these groups was
in the hands of teachers or of adult volunteers.
By 1935 Grace Coyle began more pointedly to separate groupwork from
recreation and lodge it within the field of social work. By 1936 the
American Association for the Study of Groupwork was established, and
distributed study outlines for groups in various cities to explore
further what was meant by "groupwork."
Considering the close early identification of group work with the fields
of education, recreation, and camping, the stress on the content of the
group experience was marked. In fact, the activities of the group were
the most visible, identifiable entity of the group. They were easy for
those possessing an interest in working with groups to latch on to. The
components of relationship, democratic functioning, and interaction, for
example, were more elusive to the untrained eye than the interests,
hobbies, talents, and skills in activities that brought people together.
In their self-conscious fear that the group might be seen as
activity-centered rather than person-centered, groupworkers tended to
play down the importance of the activity. It was, in addition, the least
familiar aspect of groupwork to the rest of social work and so it was
least appreciated and understood.
A swing of reaction to conservatism came after World War II, followed
by the general alarm of the 1950 s, when computers, mass media,
automation in industry transformed the culture of the day. Since that
time, there has been a scurry toward toward enlisting the help of
university teachers-leaders in the forefront of advanced thinking in the
sciences, mathematics, and the humanities-to find ways to introduce and
make teachable new knowledge to the young. There is still broad concern
for "the whole child" and for the importance of a concern about
motivating him creatively, despite a renewed curriculum content emphasis
imagination and style of the particular teacher.
___________________
