Language Learning Theories and Communicative Approaches
Level 1 Theory of Language:
- Four dimensions: grammatical, sociolinguistic, discourse, and strategic competence.
- Chomsky calls this linguistic competence.
- Understanding the social context in which communication takes place: relationships, communicative purpose, etc.
- Interpretation of individual message elements in terms of their interconnectedness and how meaning is represented in relation to the entire discourse or text.
- Coping strategies that communicators employ to initiate, terminate, maintain, repair, and redirect communication.
At this level:
- Language is a system for the expression of meaning.
- The primary function of language is to allow interaction and communication.
- The structure of language reflects its functional and communicative uses.
- The primary units of language are not merely its grammatical and structural features, but categories of functional and communicative meaning as exemplified in discourse.
Theory of Learning
- Activities that involve real communication promote learning.
- Task Principle: Activities in which language is used for carrying out meaningful tasks promote learning.
- Meaningfulness Principle: Language that is meaningful to the learner supports the learning process. Learning activities are consequently selected according to how well they engage the learner in meaningful and authentic language use.
Syllabus Design
First syllabus models specified semantic-grammatical categories: frequency, motion, location, and categories of communicative functions learners need to express. The Council of Europe developed this and included descriptions of the objectives of foreign language courses for adults, situations they typically need (travel, business), and the topics they need to talk about (personal identification, education, shopping, describing, requesting, expressing agreement and disagreement).
Learning and Teaching Activities
Types of exercises enable learners to attain the communicative objectives, engage learners in communication, sharing, negotiation of meaning, and interaction. Classroom activities include completing tasks mediated through language or information sharing.
Learner and Teacher Roles
Learner Roles: Interaction with the role of joint negotiator within the group and within the classroom. The learner should contribute as much as they gain.
Teacher Roles:
- Facilitate the communicative process between participants in the class, and between these participants and various activities and texts.
- Act as an independent participant within the learning-teaching group.
- Researcher and learner, contributing knowledge and abilities.
- Counselor: The teacher is expected to exemplify an effective communicator seeking the meshing of speaker intention through paraphrase, confirmation feedback, etc.
- Group process manager: The teacher is responsible for organizing the classroom.
Instructional Materials
Text-based materials: Textbooks, pair work, task analysis for thematic development, asking for information, taking notes, comprehension questions, paraphrase exercises.
Task-based materials: Games, role plays, simulations, exercise handbooks, cue cards, activity cards, pair communication (sometimes the information is complementary), interviews, etc.
Realia: Signs, magazines, advertisements, newspapers, graphics, visual sources, communicative exercises, maps, pictures, etc.
Procedure
- Dialogues or mini-dialogues of learners’ probable community experiences and a discussion.
- Oral practice of the dialogues: entire class repetition, half class, individual, etc.
- Questions and answers based on the dialogues.
- Questions and answers related to students’ personal experiences.
- Study of the dialogue: vocabulary, using pictures, dramatization to understand the expressions.
- Learners discover the functional expressions or structure: formal, informal, grammatical functions, etc.
- Oral recognition, interpretative activities.
- Oral production activities.
- Copying of the dialogues or mini-dialogues or modules if they aren’t in the class text.
- Sampling of the written homework assignment if given.
- Evaluation for learning, asking questions, for example.