Communicative Competence (Canale and Swain, 1980)

1

• Communicative Competence (Canale and Swain, 1980)
  
• Grammatical competence words and rules
• What words do I use? How do I put them into
  phrases and sentences?
• Sociolinguistic competence appropriateness
• Which words and phrases fit this setting and
  this topic? How can I express a specific attitude
  (courtesy, authority, friendliness, respect) when
  I need to?
• Strategic competence appropriate use of
  communication strategies
• How can I express my ideas if I dont know the
  name of something or the right verb form to use?
• Discourse competence (Canale,1983) Cohesion/
  Coherence
• How are words, phrases and sentences put
  together to create conversations, speeches, email
  messages, newspaper articles?

2

• Communicative Language Teaching is best
  considered an approach rather than a method.
  Thus, there is much greater room for individual
  interpretation and variation than most methods
  permit (Richards and Rogers, 1986, p. 83)

3

• Common misconceptions concerning the meaning of
  CLT
• not teaching grammar,
• teaching only speaking,
• expecting too much from teachers
• Fluency at the expense of accuracy

4

• Q Ellis (1982) suggests that the communicative
  activities are sufficient for acquisition to take
  place. What do you think?

5

• Restructuring of "grammar" principally takes
  place when learners attend to and notice features
  in input (Schmidt, 1990).
• For L2 grammatical development to occur, learners
  must pay attention to form and notice gaps
  between the provisional state of their
  grammatical knowledge and the communicative
  demand of the context(Loschky and Bley-Vroman,
  1993).

6

• The idea of attention to form differs from
  explicit formal instruction. Long (1991)
  distinguishes between focus on forms and focus on
  form.
• Focus on forms---similar to traditional grammar
  teaching (primary purpose is to teach language
  forms in isolation).
• Focus on form--- attempts to draw the student's
  attention to linguistic forms as they arise in
  activities whose primary focus is on meaning.

7

• Q Are the authentic materials always good?

8

• In an ideal communicative language teaching
• Classroom goals are focused on all of the
  components of communicative competence.
• Language techniques are designed to engage
  learners in the pragmatic, authentic, functional
  use of language for meaningful purposes.
• Fluency and accuracy are seen as complementary
  principles underlying communicative techniques.
• Students ultimately have to use the language,
  productively and receptively (Brown, 1994, p. 245)

9

• When you apply Communicative Language Teaching to
  your own
• teaching, you might want to check these out.
• Does the format and material of the lesson not
  only provide useful "input" for the learner but
  also lead to "output" and language production by
  the learner?
• Does the material and the format help to generate
  spontaneous language use that is not easily
  predictable?
• Does your lesson contain something that helps the
  learners to improve their generative and
  pragmatic competence rather than simply use
  fossilised resources?

10

• The Characteristics of classroom activities
• To develop students communicative competence
  through linking grammatical development to the
  ability to communicate. Hence, grammar is not
  taught in isolation but often arises out of a
  communicative task.
• To create the need for communication,
  interaction, and negotiation of meaning through
  the use of activities such as problem solving,
  information sharing, and role play.
• To personalize learning by applying what they
  have learned to their own lives. Classroom
  materials typically make use of authentic texts
  to create interest and to provide valid models of
  language.

11

• Q Create a communicative activity that promotes
  both fluency and accuracy.