Since the teacher's role is less dominant than in a teacher-centered method, (DM, A-LM, CC-LT, etc.) students are seen as more responsible managers of their own learning.
The most obvious characteristics of the communicative method is that almost everything that is done is done with a communicative purpose. Students use the language a great deal through communicative activities such as games, role-plays, and problem-solving tasks.
Activities are truly communicative according to Johnson K. and Marrow K., they cover three features; information gap, choice, and feedback. Another characteristic feature of CM is the use of authentic materials. It is considered desirable to give students an opportunity to develop
strategies for understanding language as it is actually used by native speakers.
Finally, such activities are carried out by students in small groups. Small numbers of students interacting are favored in order to maximize the time allotted to each student for learning to negotiate meaning.
The teacher is the initiator of the activities, but he does not always interact with the students. Sometimes he is a co-communicator, but oftener he establishes real-life situations that prompt communication between andamong the students. The students interact a great deal with one another. They do this in various configurations: pairs, triads, small groups, and the whole class.
One of the basic assumptions of CM is that students will be more motivated to study a FL since they will feel to do something useful withthe language they study.
The teachers give students an opportunity to express their individuality by having them share their ideas and opinions on a regular basis. This helps students "to integrate the foreign language with their own personality and thus to feel more emotionally secure with it" .
Learners' mistakes should not be constantly corrected but regarded with greater tolerance, as a completely normal phenomenon in the development of communicative skills. In short, communicative method leaves the learner scope to contribute his own personality to the learning process. It also provides the teacher with scope to step out of his didactic role in order to be a "human among humans" .
Finally, students' security is enhanced by many opportunities for cooperative interaction with their fellow students and the teacher.
Culture is the everyday lifestyle of people who are native speakers of the language. There are certain aspects of it that are especially important to communication -the use of non-verbal behaviour, which receives greater attention in CM.
Students work on all four skills from the beginning. The target language should be used not only during communicative activities, but also, for example, in explaining the activities to the students or in assigning homework. The students learn from these classroom management exchanges, and realise that the target language is a means and vehicle of communication, not just a subject to be studied.
The teacher supervises his students' performance at every stage of their work. He evaluates not only their accuracy, but their fluency and prosody as well. The student who has the most control of the structures and vocabulary is not always the best communicator. For more formal evaluation, a teacher is recommended to use a communicative test. This is an integrative test which has a real communicative function.
The teacher also assumes an integrated approach to students’ errors. Errors of form are tolerated and are seen as a natural outcome of the development of communication skills. Some students can have limited linguistic knowledge and still be successful communicators.
To substantiatiate and implement CM into practice means to go beyond its general description. It is important to take into account all methodological functions of these underlying principles, their content, and see what results could be anticipated in all four skills of activity.
Thus communicative competence entails not solely grammatical accuracy but knowledge of socio-cultural rules of appropriateness, discourse norms – the ability to sustain coherent discourse with another speaker, and strategies for ensuring remedial work for potential breakdown in communications.
Emphasis is placed on developing motivation to learn through establishing meaningful, purposeful, coherent discourses in the target language. Individuality is encouraged, as well as cooperation with peers. Who contribute to a sense of achievement and emotional security with the target language.
| Example of a conversation lesson: |
| 1. Preparation. Show the learners a picture of two people conversing in a familiar casual setting. (The setting will be determined by a prior needs assessment.) Ask them to brainstorm what the people might be discussing (i.e., what topics, vocabulary, typical phrases). |
| 2. Presentation. Present several video clips of small talk in casual situations. Have learners complete a worksheet in which they describe or list the topics discussed, the context in which the speech is occurring, and any phrases that seem to typify small talk. Follow up with a discussion of the kinds of topics that are appropriate for small talk, the factors in the specific situations that affect topic selection (e.g., relationships of participants, physical setting), and typical phrases used in small talk. Chart this information. |
| 3. Practice. Give learners specific information about the participants and the setting of a scenario where small talk will take place. In pairs, have them list topics that might be discussed by the participants and simple phrases they might use. Learners then engage in improvised dialogues based on these simple phrases. |
| 4. Evaluation. Give pairs a teacher-prepared dialogue based on their scenario from љ. Ask them to compare their improvised dialogues with the prepared dialogue, analyzing the similarities, differences, and reasons for both. |
| 5. Extension. Have learners go individually or in small groups into various contexts in the community (work, school, church, bus stop) and record the conversations they hear. Ask them to report their findings back to the class, and then have the class discuss these findings. |