英语本科毕业论文-The Strategies of Fostering Students’ Ability of Communication.doc

第21页the strategies of fostering studentsability of communicationi. introduction1.1 definition in modern society, communication becomes one of the important parts of peoples life, whether it is daily communication or intercultural communication. in 1966, hymes coined the expression “communicative competence”, which includes four sectors: what is possible (grammatical), feasible, appropriate, and done. from then on, this expression has been extended and new meanings have been added to it by many linguists. the theories on communicative competence have given great insights into language teaching.many linguists such as widdowson, canale and swain have extended it and added new meanings to its content. in 1978 widdowson made a distinction between usage and use, which is based on the notion of “effectiveness for communication”. in 1983 widdowson made a further clarification by distinguishing between competence and capacity. in introducing the term “capacity”, widdowson wants to bring in a users perspective, for he regards hymess concept of communicative competence as too analytic. from 1980 to 1983, canale and swain proposed a theoretical framework of four components by which to describe communicative competence:(1) grammatical competence; (2) sociolinguistic competence; (3) discourse competence; (4) strategic competence. in 1983 savignon put forward her interactional approach. according to savignon, the development of learners communicative competence is defined as “expression, interpretation, and negotiation of meaning involving interaction between two or more persons or between one person and a written or oral text” (savignon, 1983:8). she holds that communicative competence is a dynamic concept. it depends on the negotiation of meaning between two or more persons who share to some degree the same symbolic system. in this sense, communicative competence is an interpersonal rather than an intrapersonal concept. now in a broad sense, communicative competence 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. it is the ability of various aspects including the ability to use the language correctly, the ability to pass and get information and the ability to succeed in socio-cultural communication, etc. it includes both verbal and non-verbal communication and involves language, rhetorical, socio-cultural and psychological factors. it lays emphasis on both spoken language and written language. the theories on communicative competence have been of great importance to language teaching. before the introduction of communicative competence, traditional approaches such as translation approach, audio-lingual approach and situational approach were dominant in the efl classroom in china. 1.2 the current situation and the trend although english teaching in china has made unparalleled progress in the past years, there are still some problems existing in language teaching practice, one of which is that after several years of hard work at english, many college students are still unable to communicate effectively in english. it is no doubt that this phenomenon is closely related to the traditional teacher-centered teaching practice. clt seems more feasible in spoken language teaching and it has been widely accepted that only through students constantly practicing and communicating in the target language in the process of learning can english be mastered. improving students communicative competence has been acknowledged to be the major goal of current english instruction. the crucial part in spoken language teaching in the communicative classroom is designing communicative activities based on the information-gap principle and task-dependency principle.traditional approaches lay more emphasis on grammatical rules and sentence structures. for many years linguists have put forward various theories and approaches to language teaching which emphasize language use and communicative competence. these theories and approaches shift the focus of attention from the grammatical to the communicative properties of language, so that students can know how the language system is used to express scientific facts and concepts.ii. the teaching method of fostering communicative competence 2.1 communicative approach2.1.1 definition as the field of second language pedagogy has developed and matured over the past decades, english teachers and researchers in china have experienced a number of reactions and counteractions in methods and approaches to language teaching. they have been seeking for the better and more effective methods and approaches in chinese classrooms. for so many years english has been taught through traditional method. in the late 1970s the idea of communicative approach came into china. in the early 1990s communicative language teaching has been held by a majority of english teachers of different levels, all intending to change the awkward situation of lame-duck english products? students who can not communicate orally with foreigners after years of english study, which is an outcome of applying the traditional teaching methods.the origins of communicative approach are to be found in the changes in the british language teaching tradition dating from the late 1960s. the goal of language teaching is to develop what hymes (1972) referred to as “communicative competence.” according to hymes, the communicative competence consists of not only the linguistic ability, but also the language performance, that is, the knowledge, the forms, and the skills as well as the practical use of these things in actual situations. this approach takes the view that language is a means of communication. because learning to communicate is a socialization process, language teaching should involve not only a set of grammatical rules and lexical items, but also a set of social conventions governing language form and behavior in a communicative group. therefore, it advocates a notional-functional syllabus in which form and meaning interact with each other closely.it stresses the importance of communicative activity, arguing that language can only be learnt through using it. communicative approach advocates fluency other than accuracy. mistakes are inevitable and students should be encouraged to approach accuracy through frequent commitment of mistakes. the teacher in a communicative approach class should be a helper of the students learning and a manager of the class activities. he/she should be responsible for creating the proper situation to promote communication. sometimes he /she is an advisor and a co-communicator. students are, above all, communicators who learn to communicate in english by communicating in this foreign language. in one word, the class of communicative approach is a student-centered one2.1.2 the use of communicative language teaching in the present world, obviously english is an international language. it has become more and more important to master the communicative skills of this language. with china joining wto and rapid economic development, graduate students communicative ability is required in every field of commerce and government activities. however our current teaching methodology focuses too much on students linguistic ability rather than communicative ability. the intensive reading course is seen as a foundation course in which almost everything the teacher wants to teach is taught through a written text. the teacher is the centre and the dominator of the class. they provide knowledge, give authoritative answers to all the questions. it seems to believe students communicative ability can naturally come out after they grasp the details the teachers teach. in this lockstep, spoon-feeding teaching situation, students have no opportunities to engage in meaningful communication. so students feel very sad to leave school without mastering communicative skills. in answer to students disappointment and embarrassment, we need to change our teaching methods. communicative language teaching is considered to be the best way. communicative language teaching has its strong theoretical foundations. johnson, littlewood, widdowson, finocchiaro and brumfit all gave their own opinions about clt. it is a very popular method and has been widely accepted. the acquisition of “communicative competence” has been regarded as the ultimate goal of clt. about communicative competence, both chomsky and hymes gave their own definitions. chomskys theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-listener, in a completely homogeneous speech community. he placed too much emphasis on grammatical knowledge. hymes developed his theory by recognising the importance of social, cultural and impersonal dimensions as well as the grammatical aspect. however, his notion is mainly concerned with the intuitive ability possessed by native speakers foreign language learner is not a concern of his article. in 1980 canale and swain proposed a new notion of communicative competence that is grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence and strategic competence, which has been widely accepted as an authoritative theory. communicative language teaching is also based on second-language acquisition theory. krashens monitor model theory is a sla theory most compatible with clt. in his theory he proposed five hypotheses which govern all language learning. they are (1) the acquisition-learning hypothesis; (2) the natural order hypothesis; (3) the monitor hypothesis; (4) the input hypothesis; (5) the affective filter hypothesis. the key point in the theory is that the learners development of communicative competence is obtained through active use of the language in the interactive language activities which supports the goal of clt.based on these theories,. firstly, teaching about the target culture and language is suggested because cultural knowledge is known to form an important part of communicative competence. the aim of it is to give the students not only information about the target culture but also to encourage them to acquire different points of view and to develop sensitivity towards other cultures in order to promote a “cross-cultural understanding and cross-cultural communication”. it can also provide students with underlying information about language use and behaviour and to increase students integrative motivation. cultural teaching is necessary for a learner to acquire “the skills to conduct himself in socioculturally appropriate ways”, which might be called etiquette or manners. course in culture also seek to cultivate sociolinguistic competence. through the acquisition of this knowledge, the learners can broaden their perspectives and deepen their understanding not only of the target culture, but also of their own. two ways are suggested for teaching culture. one is using specific-course book, through systematic understanding of the target culture and the people by the study of history, geography, institutions of the country and the achievements in arts, music, drama, sports and so on. the other is through communication, emphasising on the way-of-life in daily situations of a community. so the content topics are usually about places, individual person and way of life, people and society, history, institutions, art and religion. secondly, teaching the skills about sociolinguistic, discourse and strategic competence is proposed. as for sociolinguistic and discourse competence, if you want to engage in english conversation successfully, it is not sufficient to produce grammatical sentences. it requires the ability to understand the intended meaning of a speaker, to produce appropriate forms and functions in the context and to behave according to the rules or conventions of the target language or culture. under the present educational system in china, the acquisition of this competence seems the most difficult aspect of communicative competence, especially considering how few opportunities there are for engaging in actual conversation with native speakers of english, and how few lessons are allotted for this purpose. these restrictions have two implications for the pursuit of the acquisition of this competence in the present system. two approaches are suggested for this competence. one is to provide underlying theories to interpret the conditions for successful communication and to provide explicit directions as to how to achieve this goal through instruction regarding english conventions or norms in communication, for example turn-taking, adjacency pairs and achieving appropriateness. these are rather preliminary basic requirements for learners to take part in communicative activities in english. considering the restrictions imposed by circumstances and the teaching syllabus in the present foreign language situations in china, explicit instruction in these aspects in the target language use would be of great help and lead to the development of appropriateness in communication. the other is to provide as many opportunities as possible for students to be exposed to natural and situational conversation in class. as far as strategic competence is concerned, when there is any breakdown during the conversation because of the problem with either grammatical competence or sociolinguistic competence, chinese learners are likely to give up talking. to overcome this problem, students need to acquire some communication strategies such as circumlocution, approximation, literal translation, mime and message abandonment. for chinese students, fostering strategic competence may also be more difficult than esl countries. this ability entails both behavioural and linguistic resources, which are so distinctive and unfamiliar to the chinese learners with little knowledge of communication procedures and experience of talking to foreigners in english. one remedy is to teach relevant set phrases or provide the information for certain situations. when students have trouble describing something, either because of forgetting the english expression or as a result of not possessing the suitable expressions, it would be useful if they are aware of expressions or skills such as those used in circumlocution or approximation in advance and provided with the opportunities to practice these in the classroom. another is, to make the most of this strategy, the aspect of creativity not dependent on formulaic expressions should also be exphasised. by deliberately describing or explaining the difficulties, learners are confronted with asking for support or help from the interlocutors, the speaker may attain necessary skills or ability by coping with these situations. thirdly, some class models such as adopting teaching materials instead of textbook and some classroom activities are recommended. in our present teaching we follow one fixed course book for each subject slavishly. the teacher always goes over the text sentence by sentence, while singling out the grammatical or lexical items for detailed study. this course is text-centred, teacher-centred and knowledge-centred. the learning objectives are the textbooks and there is little room for improvisation and students feel boring. a single course book cant provide the far wider range of linguistic experience at the clt level. we need to use some materials which are up to date and close to daily life, such as newspapers, magazines or short stories etc according to students ability, interest and situation. these materials can help fire the students enthusiasm and inspiration and encourage the flow of communication. students communicative ability can not come from teachers lectures or instructions. it comes from practice. just as a soldier needs battle drill, a driver needs practical operation of the car, students need to participate in real conversation. but in china we dont have native english speaking background, we need to create a “natural situation” for students. so in the classroom, only foreign language is used even in classroom management. organizing learning groups, pair work or communicative games are good ways for students to get opportunities to speak in class. as for learning groups, small groups provide greater intensity of interaction and involvement, so that the quality of language practice is increased, and the opportunities for feedback and monitoring are also increased. pair work can give students face-to-face interaction and encourage students cooperation and equal contribution. it gets students used to working on their own at their pace. so the students have more opportunities for intensive listening and concentrated oral practice in a genuine setting. in the communicative games, the students tension is greatly reduced and students motivation is provided by the challenge of reaching a goal or performing some interesting talk. it gives them the opportunity to choose their language, manipulate it and generate the alternatives they regard as necessary in fulfilling the game objective. also the success in performing the game can result in a build-up of self-confidence and self-esteem. under these classroom activities, students are no longer just receivers. they are active producers. the most important characteristic of clt is that the students should learn to use the foreign language for communicative purpose, and the learning occurs through processes inside the learner. so the teachers role should change from parent, instructor, director, manager, judge, leader, evaluator, controller and doctor to facilitator, helper, guide, consultant, adviser, coordinator, idea person, diagnostician and co-communicator. and students will become the centre of the class and get more