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WHAT IS THE COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH?

In the Communicative Approach, real communication and interaction is not only the objective in learning, but also the means through which it takes place. This approach started in the 70s and became prominent as it proposed an alternative to the then ubiquitous systems-oriented approaches, such as the Audiolingual method. That means that, instead of focusing on the acquisition of grammar and vocabulary (grammatical/linguistic competence), the Communicative Approach aimed at developing the learner’s competence to communicate in the target language (communicative competence), with an enhanced focus on real-life situations.

Excerpt extracted and adapted from: https://www.whatiselt.com/single-post/2018/08/23/what-is-thecommunicative-approach

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    Two concepts – acquisition and learning – play key roles in the study of language. Although there are people who use the two terms interchangeably, in reality they embody two different processes in the development of communicative competence. Language acquisition is an intuitive and subconscious process, similar to that of children when they develop their mother tongue – natural, incidental, and often unconscious. Language learning, by contrast, is a conscious process that involves studying rules and structures.

    Talking about the rules and structures of a language not only implies knowing the grammatical and spelling rules, but also understanding how that language is used in social contexts. For example, to show affection in a personal letter, we can say goodbye with “sending you hugs and kisses”, but not with “I would like to provide you with a hug”. Understanding which words tend to appear together and the level of formality they carry (known as “register”) is part of knowing a language.

    By understanding acquisition and learning, we can improve our performance as learners. Immersing ourselves in an environment where the language we want to learn is used can foster acquisition, as can classes that encourage more communicative ways of learning which replicate situations that could arise in real contexts. Nevertheless, a grammatical explanation will help us to learn the rules of the language. The key is to combine the two approaches.

(Vazquez-Calvo, B. 2023. Adaptado)

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    Disappointment with both grammar-translation and audiolingual methods for their inability to prepare learners for the interpretation, expression, and negotiation of meaning, along with enthusiasm for an array of alternative methods increasingly labeled communicative, has resulted in no small amount of uncertainty as to what are and are not essential features of CLT. Thus, this summary description would be incomplete without brief mention of what CLT is not.

     CLT is not exclusively concerned with face-to-face oral communication. The principles of CLT apply equally to reading and writing activities that involve readers and writers engaged in the interpretation, expression, and negotiation of meaning; the goals of CLT depend on learner needs in a given context. CLT does not require small-group or pair work; group tasks have been found helpful in many contexts as a way of providing increased opportunity and motivation for communication. However, classroom group or pair work should not be considered an essential feature and may well be inappropriate in some contexts. Finally, CLT does not exclude a focus on metalinguistic awareness or knowledge of rules of syntax, discourse, and social appropriateness. The essence of CLT is the engagement of learners in communication in order to allow them to develop their communicative competence. Terms sometimes used to refer to features of CLT include process oriented, task-based, and inductive, or discovery oriented. Inasmuch as strict adherence to a given text is not likely to be true to its processes and goals, CLT cannot be found in any one textbook or set of curricular materials. In keeping with the notion of context of situation, CLT is properly seen as an approach or theory of intercultural communicative competence to be used in developing materials and methods appropriate to a given context of learning. And contexts change.

(Celce-Murcia, M. 2001. Adaptado)

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    It happens that the publication of this edition of the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary comes 250 years after the appearance of the first comprehensive dictionary of the English language, compiled by Samuel Johnson. Much has changed since then. The English that Johnson described in 1755 was relatively well defined, still essentially the national property of the British. Since then, it has dispersed and diversified, has been adopted and adapted as an international means of communication by communities all over the globe. English is now the name given to an immensely diverse variety of different usages. This obviously poses a problem of selection for the dictionary maker: which words are to be included in a dictionary, and thus granted recognition as more centrally or essentially English than the words that are left out?

     Johnson did not have to deal with such diversity, but he too was exercised with this question. In his Plan of an English Dictionary, published in 1747, he considers which words it is proper to include in his dictionary; whether ‘terms of particular professions’, for example, were eligible, particularly since many of them had been derived from other languages. ‘Of such words,’ he says, ‘all are not equally to be considered as parts of our language, for some of them are naturalized and incorporated, but others still continue aliens...’. Which words are deemed to be sufficiently naturalized or incorporated to count as ‘parts of our language’, ‘real’ or proper English, and thus worthy of inclusion in a dictionary of the language, remains, of course, a controversial matter. Interestingly enough, even for Johnson the status of a word in the language was not the only, nor indeed the most important consideration. For being alien did not itself disqualify words from inclusion; in a remark which has considerable current resonance he adds: ‘some seem necessary to be retained, because the purchaser of the dictionary will expect to find them’. And, crucially, the expectations that people have of a dictionary are based on what they want to use it for. What Johnson says of his own dictionary would apply very aptly to The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (OALD): ‘The value of a work must be estimated by its use: It is not enough that a dictionary delights the critic, unless at the same time it instructs the learner...’.

(Widdowson, H. Hornby, A.S. 2010. Adaptado)