Polytechnic University of the Philippines
Graduate School
Sta. Mesa, Manila
THE
COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING STRATEGY AS APPLIED TO FILIPINO SUBJECT
CLASSROOM: A CASE STUDY
Prepared by:
Mr.
Raymark D. Llagas
Master in Educational Management
major
in Instructional Leadership
Submitted to:
Dr.
Josefina U. Parentela
Professor
Education Models, Paradigms and
Procedures
(MEM 651)
April 2014
Introduction
Our students know that expressing ideas effectively and
efficiently is the key to success in their career. Some of them have brilliant
proposals, but they have trouble explaining them to others. The ability to give
a great presentation can be a tremendous career booster, while the inability to
do so can keep one on a dead-end path. No wonder real professionals, whether
experienced or new to the office are always open to honing their presentation
skills. The present paper aims at giving some suggestions on how to make
effective presentations. It offers some basic and useful ideas, tips and strategies,
which will help the presenter become more capable, efficient, and effective and
produce a good presentation.
In order to help language learners develop overall
communicative competence in their language of study, communicative language
teaching methodology was developed and introduced into language classrooms.
Communicative language teaching, with its focus on using the target language
communicatively, does not mean abandoning grammar presentations in the
classroom, although some teachers have tried to experiment with that. What it
does mean is that the focus of the classroom becomes using the target language
to communicate information to the teacher and, more importantly, to other
students in the class. In order for such a methodology to be implemented, a
fundamental change in the organization of the classroom must take place. Rather
than a teacher-fronted/centered classroom in which all the students
focus then attention on a teacher at the front of the class who does most of
the talking, there needs to be a shift to a student- centered classroom in
which the students interact with each other in pairs or small groups, with the
teacher taking on a less dominant role, perhaps as а organizer or facilitator
of group activities rather than as a leader. Classroom activities are planned
with the aim of getting students to communicate genuine information to each
other, not simply to practice grammar or vocabulary. Presenting a broad range
of these communicative activities so that teachers can use them as models to
develop their own activities designed with their particular classroom
situations in mind is a key aim of this article.
What is Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)?
Communicative language teaching (CLT) refers to both processes
and goals in classroom learning. The central theoretical concept in
communicative language teaching is ‘‘communicative competence,’’ a term
introduced into discussions of language use and second or foreign language
learning in the early 1970s (Habermas 1970; Hymes 1971; Jakobovits 1970;
Savignon 1971). Competence is defined in terms of the expression,
interpretation, and negotiation
of meaning and looks to both psycholinguistic and sociocultural perspectives in
second language acquisition (SLA) research to account for its development
(Savignon 1972, 1997). Identification of learners’ communicative needs provides
a basis for curriculum design (Van Ek 1975).
It
can be understood as a set of principles about the goals of language teaching,
how learners learn a language, the kinds of classroom activities that best
facilitate learning, and the roles of teachers and learners in the classroom.
Historical
Foundations of CLT
Influenced by the nature
of language and language learning, many approaches and methods in language
teaching are constantly changing corresponding to the need of era, all of which
contribute a lot in the history of mankind, such as the Translation Method, the
Situational Language Teaching, the Audio-lingual Method, the Communicative
Language Teaching, and other approaches although with less influence which can
also give us much inspiration. All of them were once quite the rage, but till
now, the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) is more and more popular and
becoming the mainstream in the language teaching classroom. It spreads widely
and constantly develops.
CLT can be dated from the
1960s. At that time, much more communication was required in the European
continent among the countries, and the formation of International Association
of Applied Linguistics was also promoted. Under these circumstances, the
Communicative Method emerged and was quickly welcomed. Besides these, at that
time, the notional syllabus published in 1976 which was proposed by D.
A. Wilkins had a significant impact on the development of CLT. Currently, CLT
is also greatly accepted and encouraged in language classroom, which actives
the class and gain great harvest in a communicative way whereas still some new
problems come along.
CLT appears as
a reaction to previous methodological principles, such as those underlying
Audiolingualism or Grammar-Translation. Scholars such as Candlin or Widdowson
now begin to advocate the development of communicative proficiency in the
target language, rather than knowledge of its structures, basing themselves on a
wide range of theories, ranging from those of the British linguists Firth and
Halliday, to those of the American sociolinguists Hymes, Gumperz, and Labov, to
those of the language philosophers Austin and Searle. Another strong
contributor to the Communicative Approach is Wilkins, with his proposal of a
notional syllabus, incorporated by the Council of Europe in its attempt to
facilitate the teaching of European languages in the Common Market. However,
none of these ideas would have prospered if they had not been rapidly applied
by textbook writers and equally quickly accepted by language teaching
specialists, curriculum developers, and even governments. This provided the
impetus for CLT, or the notional-functional approach or functional approach, as
it is also termed, to become an international movement.
What does CLT imply?
It highlights a
radical change of the traditional structured teaching methods which have lived
through history. Contrary to the teacher-centered approach, in which teachers
are regarded as knowledge givers and learners as receivers, CLT reflects a more
social relationship between the teacher and learner.
The learner-centered
approach gives students a sense of “ownership” of their learning and enhances
their motivation (Brown, 1994). CLT emphasizes the process of communication and
leads learners to different roles from the traditional approach.
The role of the
learner is negotiator between the self, the learning process, and the object of
learning. Learners are actively engaged in negotiating meaning by trying to
make themselves understood and in understanding others within the classroom
procedures and activities. In this way, they contribute as well as gain in an
interdependent way (Richards & Rodgers, 1986).
Teachers take
particular roles in the CLT approach. First, the teacher facilitates the
communication process between all participants in the classroom. The teacher is
also a co-communicator who engages in communicative activities with the
students (Larsen-Freeman, 2000). In addition, the teacher acts as analyst,
counselor, and group process manager (Richards & Rodgers, 1986).
Rather than
emphasizing the explicit explanation of grammatical rules, CLT pays less
attention to the overt presentation of grammar (Brown, 2007). However, CLT does
not exclude grammar. CLT suggests that grammatical structure might be better
understood “within various functional categories” (Brown, 2007, p. 242). In CLT
classes, both accuracy and fluency should be taken into consideration in
language teaching, but the aim is to build fluency. However, fluency should not
be built at the expense of clear communication (Brown, 2007). During
fluency-based activities, errors are considered natural and tolerable
(Larsen-Freeman, 2000).
It makes use of real-life
situations that generate communication. The teacher sets up a situation that
students are likely to encounter in real life. It can leave students in
suspense as to the outcome of a class exercise, which will vary according to
their reactions and responses. The real-life simulations change from day to
day. Students' motivation to learn comes from their desire to communicate in
meaningful ways about meaningful topics.
The ultimate role that
teaching must assume is to generate communication. A language communicates meaning.
Grammar instances should be presented and practiced in order to achieve this
goal. This is why I described the place of grammar in language teaching with
its four stages: presentation, isolation and explanation, practice and test.
We consider that knowledge
of grammatical rules is essential to the mastery of a language. The teacher has
to prepare an organized, balanced plan of classroom teaching/learning
procedures through which the learners will be enabled to spend some of their
time concentrating on mastering one or more of the components of the target
language on their way to acquiring it as a whole.
The practical hints and
communicative activities designed to stimulate conversation and communication
among students in the Filipino class, the activities and exercises should be
ranged starting from the ones applied to early students (in my case, grade 3
students) and moved on to more complex communicative activities, applicable to
older learners. Activities to present and reinforce language should be fun but
challenging and should follow a deliberate progression.
In a communicative
classroom for beginners, the teacher might begin introduction of their names.
The teacher then proceeds to model an exchange of introductions in the
language:
e.g
Teacher: Magandang umaga. Ano ang
iyong pangalan?
Reply: Magandang umaga rin po. Ang
pangalan ko po ay Justin.
Using a combination of the
target language and gestures, the teacher conveys the task at hand, and gets
the students to introduce themselves and ask their classmates for information.
They are responding in English to a question in English. They do not know the
answers beforehand, as they are each holding cards with their new identities
written on them; hence, there is an authentic exchange of information.
Filipino Subject Classroom
Activities in Communicative Language Teaching
Since the advent of
CLT, teachers and materials writers have sought to find ways of developing
classroom activities that reflect the principles of a communicative
methodology. This quest has continued to the present, as we shall see later in
the booklet. The principles on which the first generation of CLT materials are
still relevant to language teaching today, so in this chapter we will briefly
review the main activity types that were one of the outcomes of CLT.
Accuracy versus Fluency Activities
One of
the goals of CLT is to develop fluency in language use. Fluency is natural
language use occurring when a speaker engages in meaningful interaction and
maintains comprehensible and ongoing communication despite limitations in his
or her communicative competence. Fluency is developed by creating classroom
activities in which students must negotiate meaning, use communication
strategies, correct misunderstandings, and work to avoid communication
breakdowns.
Fluency
practice can be contrasted with accuracy practice, which focuses on creating
correct examples of language use. Differences between activities that focus on
fluency and those that focus on accuracy can be summarized
as follows:
Activities focusing on fluency
·
Reflect natural use of language
·
Focus on achieving communication
·
Require meaningful use of language
·
Require the use of communication strategies
·
Produce language that may not be predictable
·
Seek to link language use to context
Activities focusing on accuracy
·
Reflect classroom use of language
·
Focus on the formation of correct examples of language
·
Practice language out of context
·
Practice small samples of language
·
Do not require meaningful communication
·
Control choice of language
The following are
examples of fluency activities and accuracy activities. Both make use of group
work, reminding us that group work is not necessarily a fluency task.
Fluency Tasks
A group of students
carry out a role play in which they have to adopt specified roles and
personalities. These roles involve the drivers, witnesses, and the police at a
collision between two cars. The language is entirely improvised by the
students, though they are heavily constrained by the specified situation and characters.
The teacher and a
student act out a dialog in which a customer returns a faulty object she has
purchased to a department store. The clerk asks what the problem is and
promises to get a refund for the customer or to replace the item. In groups,
students now try to recreate the dialog using language of their choice. They
are asked to recreate what happened preserving the meaning but not necessarily
the exact language. They later act out their dialogs in front of the class.
Accuracy Tasks
Students are
practicing dialogs. The dialogs contain examples of falling intonation in Wh-questions. The class is organized in groups of three, two
students practicing the dialog, and the third playing the role of monitor. The
monitor checks that the others are using the correct intonation pattern and
corrects them where necessary. The students rotate their roles between those
reading the dialog and those monitoring. The teacher moves around listening to
the groups and correcting their language where necessary.
Students in groups
of three or four complete an exercise on a grammatical item, such as choosing
between the pandiwang naganap and the
pandiwang nagaganap, an item which
the teacher has previously presented and practiced as a whole class activity.
Together students decide which grammatical form is correct and they complete
the exercise. Groups take turns reading out their answers.
Teachers
were recommended to use a balance of fluency activities and accuracy and to use
accuracy activities to support fluency activities. Accuracy work could either
come before or after fluency work. For example, based on students’ performance
on a fluency task, the teacher could assign accuracy work to deal with
grammatical or pronunciation problems the teacher observed while students were
carrying out the task. An issue that arises with fluency work, however, is
whether it develops fluency at the expense of accuracy. In doing fluency tasks,
the focus is on getting meanings across using any available communicative
resources. This often involves a heavy dependence on vocabulary and
communication strategies, and there is little motivation to use accurate
grammar or pronunciation. Fluency work thus requires extra attention on the
part of the teacher in terms of preparing students for a fluency task, or
follow-up activities that provide feedback on language use.
While
dialogs, grammar, and pronunciation drills did not usually disappear from
textbooks and classroom materials at this time, they now appeared as part of a
sequence of activities that moved back and forth between accuracy activities
and fluency activities. And the dynamics of classrooms also changed. Instead of
a predominance of teacher-fronted teaching, teachers were encouraged to make
greater use of small-group work. Pair and group activities gave learners
greater opportunities to use the language and to develop fluency.
Mechanical, Meaningful, and Communicative
Practice
Another useful distinction that some
advocates of CLT proposed was the distinction between three different kinds of
practice – mechanical, meaningful, and communicative.
Mechanical practice refers to a controlled practice activity
which students can successfully carry out without necessarily understanding the
language they are using. Examples of this kind of activity would be repetition
drills and substitution drills designed to practice use of particular
grammatical or other items.
Meaningful practice refers to an activity where language
control is still provided but where students are required to make meaningful
choices when carrying out practice. For example, in order to practice the use
of pangatnig to connect words to
other words, phrases and sentences. They are also given a list of pangatnig such as at, o, ngunit, sapagkat, kung, dahil.
Sa ating pagpapahayag gumagamit tayo ng mga
salitang nag-uugnay ng mga salita, parirala, o sugnay na ginagamit natin sa
pangungusap.
Pansinin ang mga pahayag na nasa sanaysay.
1. Ang agham at teknolohiya ay pag-aaral
tungkol sa isang tiyak at mapaglikhang karunungan ng tao.
2. Sinasabi nating ang agham ay bahagi ng
pangkalahatang karunungan upang magsanay sa sining ng pag-iisip.
3. Dahil sa pumapasok na kaisipan, nagkakaroon tayo ng
tiyak na pagpapakahulugan.
Ano ang gamit ng mga salitang nakasulat ng pahilig? Ano-ano ang mga
bahagi ng pangungusap na pinag-uugnay nito?
They then have to
answer questions such as “What is the use of the italicized word in a sentence?
What are the parts of the speech that connect the italicized word?” etc. The
practice is now meaningful
because they have to respond according to
the use of pangatnig.
Communicative practice refers to activities where practice in
using language within a real communicative context is the focus, where real
information is exchanged, and where the language used is not totally
predictable.
Teacher:
Ang kahulugan ng pariralang “lamukot ang mukha” ay nakasimangot. Ngayon,
gamitin ito sa makabuluhang pangungusap.
Student:
Naging lamukot ang kanyang mukha nang
malaman niya ang masamang balita.
Teacher:
Mahusay.
Exercise
sequences in many CLT course books take students from mechanical, to
meaningful, to communicative practice. The following exercise, for example.
Uri
ng Pangngalan
May iba
pang uri ng pangngalan, kongkreto o tahas, di-kongkreto o basal, at lansakan.
Tinatawag na mga kongkreto o tahas ang mga pangangalan kung tumutukoy ito sa mga
bagay na material.
Halimbawa:
silid tao pagkain
aklat gamot mesa
Sumunod naman ay mga pangngalang di-kongkreto o basal. Ang mga ito
tumutukoy sa diwa o kaisipan.
Halimbawa:
kaligayahan ganda
pag-asa bait
At panghuli, ay tinatawag na lansakan na
tumutukoy sa pangkat ng iisang ui ng tao o bagay.
Halimbawa:
lahi buwig
hukbo kumpol
Gawain A:
Tukuyin uri ng pangngalan ng mga sumusunod na salita. Gamitin sa pangungusap
ang mga sumusunod na salita.
- Kaligayahan
- Mesa
- Tribo
- Ganda
- Pagkain
Gawain B:
Batay sa mga salita sa ginamit sa itaas, gamitin ito sa makabuluhang
pangungusap.
Gawain C:
Sumulat ng sariling talaarawan para sa isang linggo. Gamitin ang mga
pangngalang kongkreto, di-kongkreto at lansakan. Basahin sa klase ang
inihandang talaarawan. Ipatukoy sa mga kamag-aaral ang mga pangngalang ginamit
sa talaarawan.
Gawin D:
Magpangkat-pangkat at isulat ang naganap na pangyayari o ginawa ninyo sa
paaralan sa loob ng isang linggo. Isulat ito sa paraang patalaarawan. Ibahagi
ito sa klase.
If
students read and practice aloud the sentences in the grammar box, this
constitutes mechanical practice. Exercises A and B can be regarded as meaningful
practice since students now complete the sentences with their own information.
Exercise C and D is an example of communicative practice since it is an
open-ended discussion activity.
The
distinction between mechanical, meaningful, and communicative activities is
similar to that given by Littlewood (1981), who groups activities into two
kinds:
Pre-communicative
activities Communicative
activities
Structural
activities Functional
communication activities
Quasi-communicative
activities Social interactional
activities
Functional
communication activities require students to use their language resources to
overcome an information gap or solve a problem (see below). Social
interactional activities require the learner to pay attention to the context
and the roles of the people involved, and to attend to such things as formal
versus informal language.
Information-Gap Activities
An important aspect
of communication in CLT is the notion of information gap. This refers to the
fact that in real communication, people normally communicate in order to get
information they do not possess. This is known as an information gap. More
authentic communication is likely to occur in the classroom if students go
beyond practice of language forms for their own sake and use their linguistic
and communicative resources in order to obtain information. In so doing, they
will draw available vocabulary, grammar, and communication strategies to
complete a task. The following exercises make use of the information-gap principle:
Students are
divided into A-B pairs. The teacher has copied two sets of pictures. One set
(for A students) contains a picture of a group of people. The other set (for B
students) contains a similar picture but it contains a number of slight
differences from the A-picture. Students must sit back to back and ask
questions to try to find out how many differences there are between the two
pictures.
Students practice a
role play in pairs. One student is given the information she/he needs to play
the part of a clerk in the railway station information booth and has
information on train departures, prices, etc. The other needs to obtain
information on departure times, prices, etc. They role-play the interaction
without looking at each other’s cue cards.
Jigsaw activities
These are also
based on the information-gap principle. Typically, the class is divided into
groups and each group has part of the information needed to complete an
activity. The class must fit the pieces together to complete the whole.
In so doing, they
must use their language resources to communicate meaningfully and so take part
in meaningful communication practice. The following are examples of jigsaw
activities:
The
teacher plays a recording in which three people with different points of view
discuss their opinions on a topic of interest. The teacher prepares three
different listening tasks, one focusing on each of the three speaker’s points
of view. Students are divided into three groups and each group listens and
takes notes on one of the three speaker’s opinions. Students are then
rearranged into groups containing a student from groups A, B, and C. They now
role-play the discussion using the information they obtained.
The
teacher takes a narrative and divides it into twenty sections (or as many
sections as there are students in the class). Each student gets one section of
the story. Students must then move around the class, and by listening to each
section read aloud, decide where in the story their section belongs. Eventually
the students have to put the entire story together in the correct sequence.
Other Activity Types in CLT
Many other activity types have been used
in CLT, including the following:
Task-completion activities: puzzles, games, map-reading, and other
kinds of classroom tasks in which the focus is on using one’s language
resources to complete a task.
Information-gathering activities: student-conducted surveys, interviews, and
searches in which students are required to use their linguistic resources to
collect information.
Opinion-sharing activities: activities in which students compare
values, opinions, or beliefs, such as a ranking task in which students list six
qualities in order of importance that they might consider in choosing a date or
spouse.
Information-transfer activities: These require learners to take information
that is presented in one form, and represent it in a different form. For
example, they may read instructions on how to get from A to B, and then draw a
map showing the sequence, or they may read information about a subject and then
represent it as a graph.
Reasoning-gap activities: These involve deriving some new
information from given information through the process of inference, practical
reasoning, etc. For example, working out a teacher’s timetable on the basis of
given class timetables.
Role plays: activities in which
students are assigned roles and improvise a scene or exchange based on given
information or clues.
My Views in
Communicative Language Teaching as Applied in Filipino Subject Classroom
- Contextualization
is a basic premise and authentic material will be sought. Under this
circumstance, the teaching content and teaching activities will closely
link with students’ own experience, which can be helpful to reduce
students’ attitudes of being boring, more attention will be focused and
long-time memory can also be enhanced.
- Sequencing is
determined by any consideration of content, function, or meaning which
maintains interest. To this point, teachers can arrange their teaching
sequence according to their teaching needs and students’ response. Besides
the sequence, the quantity and quality of different teaching content can
also be added or lessened if necessary. All these acquire teachers’
observation to the whole class, especially the after-class reflection.
That’s to say, instead of following the text blindly, teachers should use
the teaching material flexibly.
- CLT emphasizes
learner-centered teaching process and more communication is promoted,
which may cause two problems. On the one hand, CLT over stresses the
function and meaningfulness of language on the largest scale, meaning is
the major object, but it excludes the role played by grammar teaching and
ignores the entity of the language system. On the other hand, how to
operate these principles effectively is still a problem hard to solve and
have some distance with the ideal state.
- Not less
people mistake that CLT applies only to the listening-speaking class, and
when we talk about the ability of communication, people usually emphasize
more on the oral aspect, which brings two limitations: 1) the ignorance of
the research on written communication; 2) the ignorance of the research on
the comprehensible ability. Let’s look at the first phenomenon; first, we
should make clear that the communicative competence we have mentioned
include all the four skills including listening, speaking, reading and
writing. In a traditional reading class, “bottom-up approach” is usually
adopted. Under this model, students usually ignore the understanding of
language meaning and the authors’ communicative intention. Of course,
Ferdinand de Saussure distinguished the difference between langue and
parole, here we talk about the language meaning in a broad sense,
including the lexical meaning, grammatical meaning, figurative meaning,
collocative meaning, modal meaning and the meaning in a language system,
especially in the whole context. So, some problems occur, students take
the word and structure isolated, the thinking pattern and the reading
ability are held back. So, more meaningful communication should also be
encouraged when we deal with the reading material, such as the
communication between students and the reading material, the communication
between students and the author, the communication between students and
students, and the communication between students and teacher etc... The
second refers to the comprehensible ability; actually, this aspect is
quite important. Krashen’s Input Hypothesis emphasizes the importance of
comprehensible input. To solve this problem, on the one hand, teacher can
help students to form much standard target language; students can also
gain input through all round both in and out of the classroom. On the
other hand, students can use self-linguistic-feeling to monitor
themselves.
- In CLT, comprehensible
pronunciation is sought. Fluency is more important than accuracy.
According to Vivian Cook: “Training students to speak swiftly and
accurately may have helpful side effects on their working memory and hence
on their general ability to process language.” In fact, the neglect of
pronunciation in recent years has occurred and becomes worse and worse;
teachers give less attention to students’ pronunciation, even to the
beginners. However, the obstruction caused by inaccurate pronunciation can
also influence students’ listening more or less. In fact, we put the
fluency on the first place, which doesn’t mean that teachers can neglect
the mistakes students made no matter in pronunciation or grammar or
expression. So I hold the view from Cook and I think we should pay more
attention to pronunciation and take it seriously, especially in our grade
school.
Conclusions
Communicative approach is not just limited to oral
skills. Reading and writing skills need to be developed to promote pupils'
confidence in all four skill areas. By using elements encountered in a variety
of ways (reading, summarizing, translating, discussion, debates) language is
made more fluid and pupils' manipulation of language more fluent. It is
important not to be restricted to one textbook; text-book must not be used from
cover to cover. It can be considered only a tool, a starting-point. With a
little inspiration and imagination, text-books can be manipulated and rendered
more communicative. Teacher must free him/herself from it, rely more on his/her
own command of language and his/her professional expertise as to what
linguistic items, idioms, phrases, words, need to be drilled, exploited or
extended. Spontaneous and improvised practice helps to make minds more flexible
and inspire confidence in coping with unforeseen, unanticipated situations.
There is a need to use different registers and develop alternative ways of
saying things.
At last, I’d like to quote the four requirements put
forward by D. Brown applied in the Communicative Teaching Classroom, and I hope
our teachers can get some inspiration and know better about CLT.
- The purpose of classroom learning
completely concentrates on the parts constituted by communicative
competence, not limiting to the grammar or language ability.
- It is the function not the form to
organize or arrange the sequence of the class. The mastery of the form is
achieved through the embodiment of function.
- Fluency is more important to accuracy.
The final purpose of CLT is to make your statement expressive and
acceptable.
- In a communicative class, students
were encouraged to use language creatively in almost real context. Till
now, CLT has been constantly improving and become a much advanced teaching
method. But After all, to my view, different teaching objects, different
teaching aims, different teaching content and different teaching condition
acquire different teaching methods; we should flexibly use these methods.
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