Communicative Approach as a language-teaching framework grounded in language as interaction in context¶

Theory · All theories
Evidence · 2 claims (2 mixed) · 1 study (1 theoretical), q1 · 0 of 1 report an effect size · 2 claims rest on one study

Description¶

The Communicative Approach treats language as "it is interpersonal activity and has a clear relationship with society", so language study must examine the use of language in both linguistic and social context. The article describes how lessons replace the presentation-practice-perform model with communicative tasks monitored by the teacher, followed by feedback and post-activity error correction, with tasks repeated for greater linguistic accuracy. It emerged in 1970s Britain from dissatisfaction with audio-lingual and grammar-translation methods.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Teachers must set up real-life situations students are likely to encounter, such as going shopping or meeting and greeting people
• Teachers act as facilitators and monitors during communicative activities, providing feedback on the success of communication

Constraints¶

• The article reports the approach's advantages cannot be reflected perfectly in the Chinese educational system
• Some learners find the approach engaging at first but later become discontented with the teaching model

Target Learners¶

• primary and middle school EFL students in China

Target Learning Objectives¶

• communicative language use in real-life situations
• understanding the culture of the target language

Claims¶

• Most teachers in China's middle schools used traditional grammar-focused methods in the late 1980s [~W]
• Communicative Approach introduced to China in the 1990s was initially not very communicative [~W]

Related Theories¶

Examples¶

• Combine communicative and traditional teaching methods rather than adopting either exclusively

Key Sources¶

• Yang Xu. (2010). Theories Analyzing Communicative Approach in China's EFL Classes. English Language Teaching, 3(1). https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1081496