Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching ans testing (Canale and Swain)

1. Background
1.1 Grammatical and communicative approaches
 Differences between grammatical approaches and communicatives approaches. Third approach: Situational Syllabus.
1.2 Competenca and performance
Analysis of the concepts of competence and performance. Competence: knowledge/ Performance: use. Components of communicative competence and different views.

2. Some theories of communicative competence
Different theories of communicative competence.
2.1 Theories of basic communication skills
Different views of communicative approaches and principles underlying those approaches.
Communicative approaches are effective in developing grammatical and communicative competence.
2.2 Sociolinguistic perspectives on communicative competence
Assuptions and components.
Hymes: sociocultural competence and constitutive components of speech.
Halliday: sociosemantic aspects of language.
2.3 Integrative theories of communicative competence
Different theories and models f communicative competence.
Munby's model of communicative competence.
Communicative syllabuses overemphasize communicative functions.
2.4 General comments
Comments and criticizm to the three theories of communicative competence.
     - Comments on Theories of basic communication skills
     - Comments on Sociolinguistic perspectives of communicative competence
     - Comments on Integrative theories of communicative competence.

3. Toward and adequate theory of communicative competence
3.1 Guiding principles for a communicative approach
Five principles for a communicative approach:
     1- Minimal compononents of communicative competence
     2- Respond to learner's needs
     3- Meaningful interaction
     4- Early stages
     5- Main objective: information, practice and experience.
3.2 A proposed theoretical framework for communicative competence
Theoretical foundations for communicative competence.
General assumptions.
Components of communicative competence: - Grammatical competence
                                                                   - Sociolinguistic competence
                                                                   - Strategic competence.
3.3 Implications for a communicative approach to teaching
Implications on: - Syllabus design
                        - Teaching methodologies
                        - Teacher training
                        - Material development.
3.4 Implications for a communicative testing programme
Two important general implications:
     1- Testing the learner's ability to demonstrate what he knows (performance)
     2- Test types: Integrative tests and discrete points tests.

4. Directions for research
Points for further research. 9 points for further research.
Five issues considering the strenghts of adopting a communicative approach.

Your Approach Indicator: An Informal Questionnaire

                The first point from the questionnaire that I will analyze is Point 1. I think that a language class should focus more on meaning than on grammar. In my case, my students are very young. They are in Kinder and they are just learning the basic words in English. So they are able to communicate and express their ideas, but they are not very accurate with regard to grammar. If I wanted them to speak English using a perfectly correct grammar, I would be correcting them all the time and that would be very discouraging for them. My main objective for my class is for them to speak English as much as they can and for that I have to encourage them to speak, no matter if they speak grammatically correctly or not.

                The second point to analyze is point 4, which I think is strongly related to point 5. Language learners need a long-term reward, which is what is going to get them to be intrinsically motivated. The long term reward should be that fact that they are learning and that they are becoming able to communicate in the target language. They should be motivated and think that their greatest reward is the fact that they are going to be able to speak another language. Therefore, as teachers we should always encourage intrinsic motivation. But, at least with smaller kids, to get to intrinsic motivation and to make them appreciate the value of long-term rewards, first you have to use immediate rewards and extrinsic motivation. So I think that one things leads to the other. Immediate rewards and extrinsic motivation come first and then come long-term rewards and intrinsic motivation.

                Point 6 is also one of the points that I want to analyze. I think that the teacher definitely needs to be gentle and empathetic with her students. This does not mean that she is not going to demand anything to the students. I think that being demanding with our students and asking them to achieve higher goals every time is a very important part of being a good and caring teacher. A good teacher needs to be demanding but in a gentle and empathetic way.

                The last point to analyze is the one about mistakes, point 12. I think that a good teacher should always take advantage of her students’ mistakes and turn them into a learning opportunity. Mistakes are informative for the students and for the teacher. Students can learn from their mistakes as long as the teacher makes them realize their mistakes in the correct way and not making them feel ridiculous for them. And the teacher can also learn from the students’ mistakes. Mistakes need to be seen by the teacher as a chance to redirect the teaching-learning process in order to take the best out of our students.  

Some approaches to ELE

Audio Lingual Method:

                It is based on the linguistic and psychological tradition. It was founded in conditioning theories and habit formation. This method has a great deal of oral practice, grammar drills and conversation. There have been many adaptations of this method.

Community Language Learning:

                This method is based on the affective and social nature of language learning. The group has a great importance in the learning process, the interaction among its members makes learning easier and more supportive as a process. This diminishes the learning context anxiety. The distribution of the group is seated in a circle and the role of the teacher is to supervise the conversation, support the learners and if necessary to direct and teach some language rules. At some point the learner becomes independent and able to talk without the correction and guidance of the teacher.

Suggestopedia:

                In this method, comfortable situations and relaxed environments are fundamental. The learners are encouraged to act as children, to be relaxed and not to take authority too seriously.

The Silent Way:

                It is more based on the cognitive aspects than on the affective ones. The foundation of this approach to learning is problem solving. The learner is encouraged to discover learning rather than memorize things and repeat. Physical objects have a fundamental role in this approach; specifically rods of different lengths and colors.

Total Physical Response:

                This approach gives a great deal of importance to the listening stage as a previous stage for speaking, in the language learning process. The learners are asked to respond physically to what they listen, so they have to act out different commands. By listening and performing different actions, students will begin to feel comfortable with language and will start to produce verbal responses.

The Natural Approach:

                This approach proposes that speech has to emerge naturally, when the learner feels prepared to speak. The amount and quality of input are very important to language acquisition. The teacher has to provide her students with lots of comprehensible input so students become comfortable with the language and hopefully start speaking it at some point, whenever he feels prepared to do it. Three stages are identified in the language learning process: the pre-production stage (listening), the early production stage and the extending production stage.