A Brief Analysis on the Communicative Approach1.doc

对交互性教学法的简要分析a brief analysis on thecommunicative approachcontentsabstract.1key words.1i. introduction2ii. literature review.2 1. the origin of communicative approach.22. what is communicative approach?. 3 1) definition.32) the characteristics of communicative approach.43) various manners and requirements while implementing the communicative approach.5iii. the experience of communicative approach from both abroad and domestic.61. the experience and revelation of communicative approach from abroad.72. the application of communicative approach in china.8iv. problems and solutions on the communicative approach during teaching process10v. conclusion.11references.12a brief analysis on the communicative approacha brief analysis on the communicative approachabstract: with the development of the globalization of the whole world, the communications between countries are becoming more and more often. of course, foreign language learning seems to be the most important factor, especially for the english learning. in china, the widespread of english learning started from the 1960s. at the very beginning, the grammar-oriented teaching method dominated the whole foreign language teaching. since the opening policy of china, our country became connecting more with others countries among the world. therefore, the communicative ability seemed to be a most important factor during the real communication, but our educators found our learners were really lack of such ability. then the new teaching approach should be brought into the foreign language field: communicative approach. its really of great help in improving the learners communicative ability, and has so many advantages while we should also pay attention to its shortcomings and then make it more perfect.key words: communicative approach; english learning; communicative ability; teaching method 摘 要: 随着世界全球化的发展，国与国之间的交流也变得越来越频繁。当然，外语学习成为这其中最重要的因素，尤其是对英语的学习。在中国，英语的普及学习始于20实际60年代。最开始的时候，以语法为中心的教学方法占据主导地位。从改革开放以来，我国与其他各国的联系也变得越来越多，因此，交际能力便成为实际交流中最重要的体现，然而教育者发现我们的学生恰恰缺乏这种真正的交际能力，进而在外语教学领域引进一种新的教学方法，即交互性教学法。交互性教学法有诸多优点，尤其是在提高学生的交际能力方面，与此同时，我们也应该注意到它的缺点和不足，这样才能更好的完善和发展交互性教学法。关键词：交互性教学法；英语学习；交际能力；教学方法i introduction nowadays, with the rapid development of the informatization of the social life and the globalization of the economic, communications between countries become more and more often. that requires the foreign language learning in the real communication. english, as the most important information carrier, has been used widely in all kinds of fields. therefore, english learning is becoming more and more popular, most of the countries has put it into one of the most important parts in citizens quality education.in china, the widespread of english learning started from the 1960s. at the very beginning, the grammar-oriented teaching method dominated the whole teaching field. that is to say, the grammar is the most important factor in english learning, and should be the criterion to measure the mastery of the language. of course, we should admit the importance of the grammar in learning english, while we also should notice that grammar is not the only important factor, nowadays we found the most useful benefit of learning a language is to communicate. therefore, in order to improve the learners communicative ability, we should bring the communicative approach into our foreign language teaching field.as everything has a difficult start, at the very beginning, most of our teachers and students cant adapt it. it did meet difficulties at first, and it was first taken into practice by the college teachers, while without expected results. but later in the 1990s, with the deep cognition of the communicative approach(ca), china began to apply the ca widely.it has been more than 30 years since the appearance of the ca, and we have found the successful experience of its application, as well as some failure. we have discovered the shortcomings that exist in it, though its really a effective method in teaching english. there is still so many problems in the teaching process for some chinese has not formed the thinking pattern of ca. meanwhile, for some other factors, most of our educators havent really mastered the ca method. lets first see the appearance of ca and then analyze it. iiliterature review 1. the origin of communicative approach communicative approach began in britain in the 1960s as a replacement to the earlier structural method, called situational language teaching. with the decline of situational language teaching, interdependence of european countries, the need for greater efforts to teach adults the major language of the european common market, there came what to be referred to as the communicative approach.this was partly in response to chomskys criticisms of structural theories of language and partly based on the theories of british functional linguists, such as firth and halliday, as well as american socio-linguists, such as hymes, gumperz and labov and the writings of austin and searle on speech acts.communicative approach in language teaching starts from a theory of language as communication. the goal of language teaching is to develop what hymes referred to as “communicative competence”, which means the students should know how to communicate with others and how to communicate in different occasions.psychologically, communicative approach followed behaviorism and cognitive theory. to fulfill the objectives, classroom activities are often designed to focus on completing tasks that are mediated through language or involve negotiation of information and information sharing. then littlewood distinguished between “functional communication activities” and “social interaction activities” as major activity types in communicative approach.howatt distinguished between a “strong” and a “weak” version of communicative language teaching. in his works, the former could be described as “learning to use english” and the latter entails “using english to learn it.” communicative approach is described as “learning by doing” or “the experienced approach”. this notion of rather than delayed practice of communicative acts is central to most communicative language teaching(clt) interpretations. another frequently cited dimension of clt, its learner-centered and experience- based view of second language teaching, also has antecedents outside the language teaching tradition.2. what is communicative approach? 1) definition communicative approach, also can be called as communicative language teaching or notional approach, functional approach or even notional functional approach, was spoken as the second language or the foreign language teaching method, and was put forward by the england linguistics in 1970s. the basic conception of it are: notion function and communication. here, notion refers to the minds and ideas that used to express space, time, places and so on; function refers to the language process that express the minds; and communication refers to the courses and results of the language using. with the widely learning of the foreign language since the 1960s, great pressure has been produced in teaching methods. recognition of inadequacy of traditional grammar/translation methods and also of structural methods with emphasis on meaningless pattern drills and repetition, ca, which focuses on improving the communicative ability during the real social life has been given more and more regard. communicative approach (ca) is not a highly structured teaching method any more, but rather a broad assembly of ideas from a rang of sources which is accepted by many contemporary teachers as good practice. the communicative approach focus on language as medium of communication, and recognize that all communication has a social purpose: learners has something to say or find out.2) the characteristics of communicative approach as a contemporary teaching method, there are so many characteristics as following. the most important of them is ca makes great efforts on improving the foreign language learners communicative competence.as we know, communication embraces a whole spectrum of functions: e.g. seeking information, apologizing, expressing likes and dislikes, etc; and also the notions: e.g. apologizing for being late or asking for the road to the cinema, etc. so ca requires the new syllabuses based on communicative method that offer some communicative ability from the early stage, so it encourages instructors to use target language as a normal medium for classroom management and instruction-try to build a natural environments just as the first language acquisition. and in this way, somehow, ca seems to be a much more pupil-orientated process for its dictated by pupils needs and interests. and such method seems more popular and interesting in the pupil and often receive a better result in the primary school.for its special characteristics and its teaching aim, ca emphasizes more on active modes of learning which include pair work and group-work and also the brainstorm between students, while still most of the times these are not well developed by teachers for being afraid of too noisy class nowadays. of course, ca also emphasizes on the importance of the oral work for it involves the speaking and listening skill during the communication. not just hearing the teacher but having personal contact with language, practicing sounds themselves, permeating sentence patterns and getting chance to make mistakes and learn from doing so. meanwhile, ca is not just limited to the oral skills. meanwhile, reading and writing skills need to be developed to promote learners confidence in all four skills. by using elements encountered in variety of ways and manners such as reading, summarizing, translating, discussion, debates and so on it makes language more fluid and learners manipulation of language more fluent.ca seeks to personalize and localize language and adapt it to interests of the learners. meaningful language is always more easily retrained and absorbed by learners.3) various manners and requirements while implementing the communicative approachin order to make clear about the communicative approach(ca),first we should make a comparison between the traditional method and the ca. the traditional teaching method in foreign language learning aims to pass the exams rather than the communication, so it put much energy on the grammar and the language forms so that learners can get good marks in examinations; while ca aims to improve the communicative ability in the real social life, for the real use of learning a foreign in the modern life is to communicate, so ca makes great efforts on class teaching forms and so on, in order to help learners improve their communicative ability.during the ca teaching process, classroom activities should maximize the opportunities for learners to use target language in a communicative way. such class activities emphasis on the real situation rather than the grammar on the text book; emphasis on the meaning (messages they are creating or tasks theyre going to finish) rather than form (the standard grammar and sentence patterns and the correctness of language)-as in the first language acquisition. so in ca class, what the teachers try their best to do is to encourage students to speak out, to express themselves. that is to say, for better implementing of the ca, classroom should provide more opportunities for rehearsal of real-life situations and provide opportunities for real communication. emphasis on creative role-plays/simulations/surveys/projects-all produce spontaneity and improvisation- but not just repetition and drills.since the language learning is for communication, the text books and the materials should be the latest ones and should related to the learners life, only if the learners are interested in the materials then can they learn it quickly and effectively. nowadays, if you want to improve your communicative ability through reading the masterpiece of william shakespeare, that seems to be impossible. so ca requires teachers not be too restricted by the text book. the opinion that text book must be used from cover to cover should be changed. first the teacher should free themselves from the book, and they should rely more on his own command of languages and his professional expertise as to what linguistic items, idioms, phrases, words, need to be drilled, exploited, or extended. ca seeks to use the authentic resources for they are more interesting and motivating. in foreign language learning classroom, authentic texts serve as partial substitute for community of native speaker. newspapers, magazines, poems, recipes news bulletins, discussion programmers-all can be exploited to be use in the ca class in variety of ways. ca also encourages instructors to use the visual resources. this method are effective especially for the pupils, for it can be exploited at whatever level one wishes-help to motivate and focus pupils attention.we should recognize that while learning a foreign language, errors are a natural part during the learning process. all of the learners who try their best to use the language creatively and spontaneously are bound to make errors. constant correction is unnecessary and even counter-productive. teachers should focus on their expressing but not the correct forms of the language at the very beginning, for if that, the learners can be brave enough to speak out. if you always point out the false of the language forms, learners would be tired of it and they would not be brave enough to speak any more, then the ca cant be implemented any more and we never be able to improve the communicative ability of the learners.of course, while implementing the ca, also the grammar should be taught to make the sentence meaningful, but should be less systematically. traditional approach always made the innovative approaches alongside, but it should be noticed that communication depends on grammar. if we omitted all the grammatical forms, the communication would be breakdown by the wrong sentences. for some of the learners, language analysis and grammar explanation may be of great help for them, but extensive experience of the target language helps everyone. learners need to hear plenty talking about the topics in the foreign language at regular and recurrent intervals, so they are exposed to the topic and can assimilate it, not mere passive acquisition of certain lexical items.iii. the experience of communicative approach from both abroad and domestic1. the experience and revelation of ca from abroadin sep.1971, the logisticians who masters at the english application theory, came from 15 countries of the european union, got together and make out the european modern language syllabus. the syllabus pointed out that the learning content and method should accord to the aim of language learning, that is to communicate. in 1972, the famous britain logisticians d.wilkins put out the comparison among the grammar syllabus, the notion syllabus and the situational syllabus. then in 1976, he gave out his opinion that language learning should not according to the form but the expressing of notion and function, he also emphasized that learning is for using, meanwhile, should quicken the learning speed. at the end of 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, with the publishment of the communicative approach to language teaching and the teaching languages communication, people began to study the various forms of communicative approach, more and deeper.there are so many various forms of communicative approach, and the most basic and famous two are: the strong version of communication and the weak version of communication. the prior one insists on that the aim of learning language is to communicate and the mastery of a language is the result of communication. during the 1979-1984, n.s.prabhu hosted a series of strong experiments of “strong version of communication” in south indian. its a typical practice of w.littlewoods “natural learning”, in such experiment, theres no arrangements of grammar learning, while the learner got the comprehensive ability of language in fluency and accuracy. the “weak version of communication” insists on that the aim of learning language is to master the language and the language knowledge is useful. the mainly various forms are from the “weak” one, for it doesnt deny all the knowledge and skills of the traditional teaching method. w.littlewood called the weak version of communication teaching as “skill learning model”. in such pattern, the structure of the target language can be divided into several parts of micro skills, such as sentence pattern, idiom, pronunciation, and intonation etc. all these micro skills should be learned one by one and then combined together, so that they can be applied in the real communication.widdoson thought that as far as the language teaching is concerned, we should spend lots of time and energy on the text. c.n. candlin also suggested learning the real communicative language to meet the need of communication. he mentioned that in learning a language, the learners should master the following three systems: conception & meaning system, linguistic knowledge system and the pragmatics system. while w.m.rivers emphasized learners should first get the skills and then take them into the real communication. acquiring the knowledge includes the two p