Teaching Communication

Plan:

1. What is communication?
2. Difference between real life/classroom communication.
3. Major characteristics of C.
4. Principles of C.
5. How to create the atmosphere in the class.
6. Evaluation

Competence refers to the speaker-hearer’s implicit knowledge of the subject matter.

In the classroom situation CC works as a doubled-pronged arrow

Communicative

Teacher Student

Competence

Communication is a cybernetic process.

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Tony Wright’s communicative competence concept focuses on the participants in a classroom situation as complex individuals with personal, social, psychological and cultural characteristics.

He illustrates the role of teachers and learners by focusing on three areas:

a) language knowledge;

b) modes of behaviour and

c) modes of action.

Factors that influence CC are:

Ø interpersonal factors, including social roles and social distance;

Ø task-related factors, including interactivity and interpersonality;

Ø processes, including types of behavior, communication patterns;

Ø procedural and content topics and situations.

Conditions necessary for communication:

1. a special atmosphere at the lesson;
2. a teacher/partner as an interlocutor;
3. a correct choice of exercises;
4. the creative beginning.

Major characteristics of the communicative teaching:

· Sociological view of language - language is a means of communicative notions and functions.

· Learning by doing (using language communicatively);

· Goals - Communicative competence, social appropriacy, acceptability;

· Integrative approach to all four skills ( focus depends on learners’ needs);

· Typical exercise types (“information gap” activities, problem-solving tasks, role-plays, simulations etc;

· Typical forms of classroom interaction – (pair- , team- , group-work)

· Role of a teacher (facilitator, informant, consultant, manager);

· Attitude to errors (learners are encouraged to take risks, errors are inevitable as they are learning steps);

· Occasional usage of the Mother tongue, when it is really necessary

Principles of Communication (according to Keith Morran)

Principle I: know what you are doing. (Why am I learning this?) What am I learning and what to do with it?

Principle II: the whole is more than the sums of the parts.

Principle III: the processes are as important as the forms.The practice of the forms of the target language can take place within a communicative framework:

3.1. message-oriented communication (information gap/ opinion gap). The purpose of communication is to bridge this communication gap.

3.2. choice: the participants have choice, both in terms of what they will say and how they will say it: what ideas to express at a given moment and what linguistic forms are appropriate to express them.

3.3. feedback: what you say to smb depends not only on what he had just said to you but also on what you want to get out of the conversation.

Principle IV: to learn it, do it.

Principle V: mistakes are not always a mistake.

Four skills in communicative language teaching

I. Speaking. A communicative approach to speaking emphasizes the use of the language above the sentence level.

II. Listening. Listening and speaking are the 2 activities which often cooperate. That means that on-going speech reflects and requires the feedback given by the addresses and the process of mutual adjustment is evident

III. Reading. It needs the skills of interpreting information presented in printed form. The functions of reading:

· To obtain factual information (it is a referential function, e.g. how to use this or that);

· Intellectual function – to read so as more effectively manipulate ideas, with the aim of influencing the behaviour of others, making proposals;

· Emotional gratification or spiritual enlightenment for pleasure and self-improvement.

IV. Writing – communicative writing practice deals with conveying of information content. The main aim is to get the message across, that is why there shouldn’t be the “sea of red ink”

Date: 2015-02-16; view: 1510