Attempts To Teach English As Communication

                           By Huaiying

   Jesperson, Denmark famous linguist once said :”Language is the connection of souls.” That’s to say, language is the means by which people communicate with each other .One learns the language in order to express one’s thoughts and feelings ,to seek and give information , to establish social relations, to promote friendship and understanding ,etc. One’s communicative competence is getting more and more important nowadays. Communication is regarded as the major in foreign language teaching . It is obvious that the teaching approach should aim to develop students’ communicative competence.

   But what do we really mean by communicative competence in language teaching ? Different people have different ideas, and it is often confusing, especially in language teaching in China . Linguistic competence forms part of communicative competence . So our students need to acquire a basic knowledge of linguistic forms. But generally speaking, communicative competence should include not only the linguistic forms of a language but also its social usage, a knowledge of when , how and to whom it is appropriate to use these forms. For example, if you  were to ask a western foreigner how much money he makes or how old he is , he would probably consider you drunk or mad. Yet it is a highly polite question in many Asian countries . The social meaning of the equivalent linguistic forms for the social purpose of language.

But in China , the traditional method of teaching aims at mere mastery of structures. Many middle school students , especially in the countryside are loaded with a  whole set of grammar rules and crammed with various meanings and uses of word, but have few chances go get their English employed communicatively . As a result, students get bored and soon forget most of the irrelevant meaning and uses which have overfilled their heads. Worst of all , their ability to use English is very poor . They become horribly “deaf” and “dumb” in communication after several years of English study like that. Therefore, how to develop students’ communicative competence has become a great challenge to us teachers. Now more and more Chinese teachers of English are trying to teach their students in the communicative way. In this thesis I would like to discuss how we should make attempts to apply the communicative approach to teaching.

1.       Assembling reading, listening ,speaking and writing practice in a new next teaching.

 Traditionally, the whole text is always dismembered into several parts by which the teacher leads students to read new words and expressions then delivers knowledge from the text, explaining language points and grammar sentence by sentence and students receive it , notebook in hand only. As a result, after one class hour, the students still have no idea of what the whole text is about. This teaching method is not only unfavorable for students to raise the comprehension level in reading , but also disadvantageous for them to improve the ability in using the target language.

   How should we make good use of the text and assemble reading, listening, speaking and writing practice in the text teaching? The suggested procedures can be as follows:

1.       Before a new lesson, the teacher gives a few remarks about the background of the text to widen the students’ field of vision and naturally guides the students to a new text.

2.       The teacher raises one or two questions. With the raised questions, the students skim the whole text for the main idea in a limited time. Then answer the questions individually.

3.       The teacher instructs the students to read the text again more slowly and more carefully for main details in a limited time , After that, the teacher reads out some sentences and the students tell what is true and what is false quickly and correctly according to the text sentence by sentence in groups or individually by competition. The questions should not be too difficult so that the great majority of students will always be ready to answer and even the slowest students will have some chance to participate.

4.       The students listen to the recorder paragraph by paragraph , then the teacher elicits them to summarize the general idea of each paragraph, construing the language points as concisely as possible.

5.       The teacher provides some key words or phrases to the students, then assigns some students to retell the text.

6.       The students rewrite the text as an assignment.

The procedures above not only help to cultivate the students to raise the reading compre-

hensive ability step by step . The oral questions and answers practice also provides students a lot of chances to practice their listening and speaking. Retelling the text and rewriting it help the students to improve their ability to use English.

II. Creating language environments.

1.Organizing the class and imparting knowledge in English

Communicative approach emphasizes that language should be put in real language

environment, In class, we should tend to impart knowledge in English, actively conducting students to try as hard as possible to use English. At the beginning , undoubtedly, some students may find it difficult to adapt to. Language teaching can not exist in a vacuum,  so we can carry it out in all possible situations, always accompanied by the right gestures and facial expressions.

Once the students are familiar with the terms of English teaching and basic class English, they will feel more interested in class. Thus environment comes into being, and it enhances the students’

Interest and their sense of participating in communication.

2.       Free talk and dialogues

Free talk is better way for students to practise English more communicatively, and it plays an important role in the teaching, Before class, we can ask the student on duty to the front to talk in a limited time about whatever he /she likes to , such as something new or interesting, a story he /she has once heard, his/her own experiences and so on, employing words and phrases or sentence patterns which have been learned. Sometimes , every two of them may talk to each other. While they are talking, the teacher should listen to them with great interest , not interrupting them at all. After that, the teacher should make some encouraging comments to promote their confidence. By and by , to their enjoyment, the students will come to realize their own communicative competence.

A dialogue is a short conversation between two or more people present. The frequent use of a dialogue is the best practice in speaking English, the best way of acquiring correct structures of expressions. It is necessary for our students to learn how to express such speech pattern as greeting, partings , introductions, excuses, compliments, complaints, etc, in an appropriate manner. Dialogues provide all sorts of situations in which the various expressions can be used . We should do everything in our power or give them as many opportunities as possible for communication, no matter how simple a dialogue is.

The following dialogue (Knocking at the door )gives the sample.

Dad: Who is it? Go and see, Tom.

Tom: Oh, it is you! Jim, Nice to see you.

Jim: Hello, Tom. Nice to see you ,too.

Tom: Come in, please. This way.

Jim: Thank you.

Tom: Dad, this is my friend , Jim. Jim, this is my father.

Dad: How do you do , Jim.

Jim: How do you do .

When the students adopt roles and perform in front of the class, it is always amusing, It will help the students not only to memorize the dialogue but also arouse their interest to speak English.

3.       Singing English songs

Singing gives the students a chance to relax from the pressure of lessons and it can reinforce the students’ interest in learning English.

Eakersle pointed out , “ The best method of teaching English is one that arouses in a pupil a

love of learning English, and the worst is one that bores him.” In short, all possible language environments for students to be engaged in must be created by various means.

   III. Developing self-confidence

   Learning to use a language freely and fully is a lengthy and effortful process. Teachers can set their students on the road , helping them to build up confidence in their own learning powers ensuring that their language learning is an enjoyable experience.

Language learning is a creative process, a cognitive activity rather than a matter of habit. Errors are inevitable in the learning process itself, Without errors no true learning can take place. Students should be told that they needn’t be afraid of making mistakes or of failure. Everybody, including native speakers, makes mistakes . We should not always correct every error the students make so as to set up psychological security. Over emphasizing the correction of minor errors by the teacher not only interrupts the flow of speech and the train of thought, but also upsets the students and destroys their self-confidence. But we should not down the errors for later correction.

In all, the teacher is responsible for creating an environment that encourage students risktaking and that facilitates learning.

TV. Demands on language teachers

Though the teacher in the communicative approach is shifted from the dominating place to just a facilitator of his students’ learning , he has quite a lot of tasks to fulfil. The communicative approach sets very high demands on teachers.

Teachers required in the communicative approach are those who have knowledge not only of methodology of English teaching, but also of theories of language acquisition and learning. Now the conclusion:

 In one word, English teaching should serve the target of communication. Much attention should be devoted to develop9ing students’ communicative competence.