Friday, November 25, 2011

Reading is considered to be the most important skill for ESL students


There are some reasons why reading is considered to be the most important skill for ESL students. First, reading helps them to learn new vocabularies, punctuation, and grammar. It will improve their ability in writing. Second, reading helps them to develop their language skill. When they want to learn a new subject or find information, they will find it easy to understand both the subject and the information if their ability to read is good. The last is reading can enrich their knowledge. By reading, they can find anything about parts of the world through books. Those are some causes that make reading the most important skill.

COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING


Communicative language teaching is best considered an approach rather than a method. It aims to make communicative competence the goal of language teaching and develop procedures for the teaching of the four language skills that acknowledge the interdependence of language and communication.
You may have noticed that the goal of most of the methods we have looked at so far is for students to learn to communicate in the target language. Some observed that students could produce sentences accurately in a lesson, but could not use them appropriately when communicating outside of the classroom. Wilkins’s contribution was an analysis of the communicative meaning that a language learner needs to understand and express rather than describe the core of language through tradition concepts of grammar and covabulary.
There are two types of communicative meaning:
·         Notional categories
e.g: time, sequence, quantity, location, and frequency.
·         Communicative function categories
e.g: request, denials, offers, complaints, etc.
 In short, being able to communicate required more that mastering linguistic competence; it required communicative competence (knowing when and how to say what to whom) (Wilkins 1971). Communicative competence is the ability to engage in the interpretation, expresion, and negotiation of meaning (Savignon).
There are four dimension of communicative competence:
~        Sociocultural
An understanding of the social context in which communication takes place, including participants’ role, the shared knowledge/information and the function of the interaction.
~        Strategic
Coping strategies that communicators employ to initiate, terminate, maintain, repair, and redirect communication.
~        Discourse
The interpretation of individual message elements in terms of their interconnectedness and of how meaning is represented in the relationship to the entire discourse or text.
~        Grammatical
Focusing on sentence-level grammatical structures and includes the recognition and use of semantic, syntactic, morphological, and phonoligical features of the new language.

Non communicative activities
Communicative activities
No communicative desire
No communicative purpose
Form not content
One language item only
Teacher intervention
Materials control
A desire to communicative
A communicative purpose
Content not form
Variety of  language
No teacher intervention
No materials control

Characteristic of CLT
The followings are six interconnected characteristics as a description of CLT:
1.       Classroom goals are focused on all of the components (grammatical, discourse, functional, sociolinguistic, and strategic) of communicative competence.
2.      Language techniques are designed to engage learners in the pragmatic, authentic, functional use of language for meaningful purpose.
3.       Fluency and accuracy are seen as complementary principles underlying communicative techniques but fluency have to take on more important than accuracy.
4.      Students in a communicative class ultimately have to use the language, productively, receptively, in unrehearsed outside the classroom.
5.      Students are given opportunities to focus on their own learning process through understanding of their own styles of learning and through the development of appropriate strategies for autonomous learning.
6.      The role of teacher is that of facilitator and guide, not an all-knowing of knowledge. Students are therefore encouraged to construct meaning through genuine linguistic interaction with other.
Principles
The principles in CLT are:
1.      Learner learn language through using it to communicate.
2.      Authentic and meaningful communication should be the goal of classroom activities.
3.      Fluency is an important dimension of communication.
4.      Communication involves the intergration of different language skills.
5.      Learning is a process of creative construction and involves trial and error. (the teacher didn’t correct the student but simply noted the error which will be return to at a later point)
6.      Authentic language as it is used in a real context shoul be introduced.
7.      Being able to figure out the speaker’s or writer’s intention in part of being comunicatively competence.
8.      The target language is a vehicle for classroom communication, not just the object of study.
9.      The emphasis is on the process of communication rather than just mastery of language forms.
10.  They must learn about cohesion and coherence, those properties of language which bind the sentences together.
11.  Games are important because they have certain features in common with real communicative event so that speaker can recieves immediate feedback from the listener on whether or not he or she has successfully communicated.
12.  Students should be given an opportunity to express their ideas and opinions.
13.  Teacher have to establish situations likely to promote communication.
14.  Communicative interaction encourages cooperative relationship among students. (it gives students an opportunity to work on negotiating meaning.
15.  Learning to use form appropriately in an important part of communicative competence.
16.  The teacher acts as fasilitator in setting up communicative activities and as advisor during activities.
17.  In communicating, a speaker has a choise not only about what to say but also how to say it.
18.  The grammar and vocabulary that the students learn follow from the function, situational context, and the roles of the interlocutor.
Techniques
The techniques of CLT are:
·         Authentic material
In this lesson we see that the teacher uses a real newspaper article. He also assigns the students homework, requiring that they listen to a live radio or television broadcast.
·         Scrambled sentences
The students are given a passage in which the sentences are in a scrambled order. This type of exercise teaches students about the cohesion and coherence properties of language. They learn how sentences are bound together at the suprasentential level through formal linguistic devices such as pronouns, which make a text cohesive, and semantic proportions, which unify a text and make it coherent.
·         Language games
Games are used frequently in CLT. The students find them enjoyable, and if they are properly designed, they give students valuable communicative practice.
·         Picture strip story
In the activity we observed, one student in a small group was given a strip story. She showed the first picture of the story to the other members of her group and asked them to predict what the second picture would look like.
·         Role play
Role plays are very important in CLT because they give student an opportunity to practice communicating in different social contexts and in different social roles.
·         Presentation and discussion
Presentation of a brief dialog or several mini dialogs, preceded by a motivation and a discussion of the function and situation such as people, roles, setting, topic, and the informality and formality of the language which the function and situation demand.
·         Oral practice
Oral practice of each utterance of the dialog segments to be presented that day.
·         Questions and answers
It based on the dialog topic and situation itself andrelated to the students’ personal experience but centered on the dialog theme.


·         Basic communicative expressions
Study one of the basic communicative expressions in the dialog or one of the structure which exemplify the function.
·         Learner discovery
Learner discovery of generalizations or rules underlying the function expression and structure should include at least four point: its oral and written form; its position in the utterance; it’s formally or informally in the utterance; and its grammatical function and meaning. 
·         Oral recognize ( interpretative activities)
Two to five depending on the learning level, the language knowledge of the students, and related factors.
·         Oral production activities
Proceeding from guided to freer communicative activities
·         Copying of the dialog or mini dialogs or modules if they are not in the class text
·         Sampling of the written homework assignment, if given
·         Evaluation of learning (oral only)

Teacher Roles
Several roles are assumed for teacher in CLT:
1.      As a fasilitator
To fasilitate the communication proess between all participants in the classroom, and between these participants and the various  activities and texts.
2.      As a advisor
To answer student’s questions and monitor their perfomance.
3.      As a communicator
To act as an independent participant within the learning teaching group.
4.      As a guide
To guide within the classroom procedures and activities




Learner Role
Students are above all communicators. They are actively engaged in negotiation meaning even when their knowledge of the target language is incomplete.

Advantages and disadvantages of CLT
Advantages
Disadvantages
Ø  Language is acquired through communication
Ø  CLT allows learners to use the target language in meaningful context
Ø  CLT can be adapted to any level
Ø  Student may not see the value in learning English through group work, games, and activities.
Ø  CLT does not focus on error correction.
Ø  Students don’t feel challenged
Ø  CLT focuses on fluently not accuracy. Thus student may produce incoherent and grammatically incorrect sentence.














References

·           Richards, Jack C and Rodgers, Theodore S. (2001). Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching 2nd Edition. USA: Cambrige
·           Richards, Jack C and Rodgers, Theodore S. (1986). Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching 1st Edition. USA: Cambrige
·           Campbell, Rusell N. (2000). Teaching Techniques in English as a Second Language. UK: Oxford
·           Richard, Patricia A and Amato. (2010). Making It Happen: from Interactive to Participatory Language Teaching 4rd Edition. USA : Longman
·           Harmer, Jeremy. (2011). The Practice of English Language Teaching 4rd Edition. UK: Longman