On the Application of Communicative Approach to English Teaching in Middle School

1、on the application of communicative approach to english teaching in middle schoolcontents1 introduction.12 the communicative approach.2 2.1 the definition of communicative approach.2 2.2 the theoretical development of communicative approach.2 2.3 the principles of communicative approach.43 the curre

2、nt situation of our english teaching in middle school.63.1 the current situation of our english teaching.63.2 several typical problems74 adapting communicative approach to solve problems in middle school.104.1 the transformation of roles between teachers and students.104.2 communicative activities13

3、4.3 improvement of teachers ability154.4 integrating the four basic skills.18 conclusion.19notes.20works cited.22acknowledgements.23declaration of thesis originality.24on the application of communicative approach to englishteaching in middle school1 introduction it is well-known that the ultimate pu

4、rpose of learning a second language is to communicate one another. so that we pay much more attention to the development of learners communicative skills and put what we have learned into use rationally. however, in middle school teaching, teachers and students still concentrate on the language form

5、 rather than practical application. thus we should change their traditional teaching ideas, regarding the application of language as the most important one. in the english teaching, we must invoke students learning interests to make them study hard and speak more. based on the facts and authors obse

6、rvation, this paper will introduce a useful teaching approach (communicative approach). according to the communicative approach, the roles between teachers and students will be altered, and students interests will be improved to motive the classroom atmosphere. meanwhile, teachers are not only rich

7、their ability, but arrange the class to make it develop successfully. only those problems are solved, teachers would reach their goals and students would learn more knowledge and grasp the language really. so that the efficiency of english teaching will be improved. 2 the communicative approach the

8、communicative approach has developed for about fifty years since proposed firstly. during the process of perfection, there are many linguists who proposed new ideas about communicative approach, which paved the way for the communicative approach system today. 2.1 the definition of communicative appr

9、oach the communicative approach refers to the theory of teaching to the principles that the students and teachers should genuinely communicate with each other using the target language.1 it was brought up in 1970s in european, and it is one of the most popular and influential teaching approaches in

10、the world .the linguists have been enriching it by their opinions from their practices and research. the communicative approach is also called functional approach, which regards the function of language as the basics and pays much more attention to communicative competence.2 some linguists thought t

11、hat the communicative approach is much well than functional approach as it reflects the master of the communicative competence. functional approach believe that language is the tool of communication and that learning a language well is based on the application repeatedly.3 communicative approach ref

12、lects the transformation from emphasizing on language forms to communicative competence, meaning the importance is not grammar or vocabulary any more but the ability to apply language properly.4 linguists prospect the major function of language is to express oneself, while sociolinguists believe the

13、 main purpose of language is to keep the interpersonal relations. 2.2 theoretical development of communicative approach the origins of communicative language teaching are to be found in the language teaching in britain dating back to the 1960s. in the past years, the communicative approach has been

14、adopted in china, the teachers are aware of the need to update teaching approach for the existing problems during the process of teaching.in the late 1950s, chomsky brought up the term “l(fā)anguage competence” on the basis of investigating and expanding the mentalism, denying the structuralism. for him

15、, the “l(fā)anguage competence” is not the capacity to make use of the language but an abstract knowledge and principle system related to the target language. it also refers to the master of the language knowledge and is not restrained by the physiological conditions.5 furthermore, hymes proposed the te

16、rm “communicative competence”, which had developed chomskys ideas deeply.according to hymes , communicative competence includes not only the grammatical rules, but also the appropriateness to the contest. there are the four: “possibility-the ability to produce sentence. feasibility- the ability to p

17、roduce sentence which can be decoded by the human brain. appropriateness- the ability to use correct forms of language in a specific socio-cultural context. performance- the fact utterance is competed.”6 brecht and walton defined the communicative competence as the ability to use the native language

18、 and target language to exchange with those who have different cultures and languages, so as to accomplish a series of professional and occupational communicative tasks in 1973.7 the communicative approach can be summarized from the following aspects: the goal of communicative language teaching is t

19、o have one s students become communicative competent, the role of the teacher is a facilitator ( including a manager, advisor, and co-communicator of his students learning, the students are, above all communicators. the most obvious characteristics of teaching/ learning process is that almost everyt

20、hing that is done with a communicative intent and language functions are emphasized over forms.8 with the pace of development, there are many new achievements: cognitive approach, which is combination of communicative approach with some practical traditional teaching methods. according to ungrer and

21、 schmid, cognitive approach is an approach to language that is based on our experience of the world and the way we perceive and conceptualize it.92.3 the principles of communicative approach based on the communicative theories, there are rules while applying communicative approach such as: the most

22、important function of a language is applied in interact and communicate, and the unit does not only include grammar or structure, but the communicative meaning.10 among the numerous principles, there are two principles which are more important in chinas english teaching, first is to create more real

23、istic situation, second is that the class should be student-centered.how to make the class more realistic? in the theory of communicative approach, teachers would make good use of communicative activities. according to those activities, students would have more opportunities to speak and they can pu

24、t what have learned into use so that they can remember those grammar or vocabulary. communicative activities refer to those activities which are advancing between students and the teacher or among the students. in these activities, the students play the major role regarded as the important participa

25、nts while the teacher is the organizer or prompter. the activities break the depressed situation of traditional teaching, maneuver the activity, so that the students can well learn and apply the language. some foreign teaching experts divided the activity according to characteristics of teaching and

26、 the need of communicative activities into three kinds: discuss and decision; questions and answers; stories and scenes. a linguist defined an activity as one carried out by cooperating and competing decision makers, seeking to achieve, within a set of rules. according to the communicative approach,

27、 the students are the major participants, so the arrangement of the class must be based on the students. in other words, the students are the communicator, they are actively involve in trying to make themselves understood, even when their knowledge of their target language is incomplete. they learn

28、to communicate by communicating. students are seen as more responsible contributors or managers of their own learning. meanwhile, the students role is that of a negotiator between the self, the role of joint-negotiator with the group and within the classroom procedures and activities which group und

29、ertakes. the students are the main players in a class so that they should make sufficient preparations before class and have a strong desire to communicate with others. during the class, the students should coordinate with the teacher and keep the pace with the teachers steps seriously. only by doin

30、g this will a class be a successful class. meanwhile, there are many other requirements for teachers, for example, they should view listening, speaking, reading and writing as a whole, not being separate. so for teachers, they should have rich knowledge not just in profession but others. 3 the curre

31、nt situation of our english teaching in middle school english has become one of the compulsory courses, so we can realize its importance in the teaching. however, there are still some problems in the school.3.1 the current situation of our english teaching with the rapid development of science techn

32、ology and the strength of globalization in a step by step fashion, the world becomes much smaller and the connection among international countries is also strengthened. so, the english, as an international language, is more and more emphasized by all governments and educators. now, wherever in the d

33、eveloped countries or developing countries, english has been regarded as a compulsory curriculum since junior high school and most companies think highly of the english ability when employ employees. meanwhile, research on the english teaching is developing more deeply and widely. new approaches and

34、 concepts come about one follows another, which has a important role in the development of the students communicative ability. however, due to the limitation of our education system (exam-oriented education system), the teacher and the students pay much more attention to the language knowledge, such

35、 as, grammar and vocabulary and fix their energy on the entrance examinations rather than focus on the improvement of communicative competence. if most students of one teacher can enter the undergraduate school or even priority universities, he would be viewed as a good teacher. moreover, the concer

36、ns of the parents about their childrens study are always reflected on the concern of their scores. as the scores are much higher, they would consider that their kids perform and learn well in the school, and vice versa. on this basis, most of the students prefer to concentrate on the memory of gramm

37、ar, vocabulary and some dead principles, then they become good at examinations also examination genius, neglecting the improvement of linguistic communicative competence. so the “silent english” emerge as the times require. they cant exchange with others fluently in english except for some simple da

38、ily words and expressions. they cant exactly express themselves, and when they talk with others, they will be either nervous or wordless, sometimes, just even one word by word, which will cause the normal english teaching being hard to proceed and then influence the education of the school. although

39、 some students who are good at the linguistic knowledge and examinations have entered the university in which teachers just speak english completely in the class, they cant adapt themselves to the study atmosphere quickly. due to many reasons mentioned above, the students communicative ability have

40、not be developed in school and so they can t find good jobs owing to be short of communicative competence. even some domestic companies dont want employ national graduates. so it is imperative to solve the problems, to improve our students effective capability.3.2 several typical problems on the occ

41、asion of situation, there are several problems in english teaching in middle school. 3.2.1 the teacher-centered teaching in traditional classroom, the teacher often is the center of the whole class. they analyze the text and impart new knowledge points from the beginning of the class to the end. in

42、other words, what the students do in most time is to write down what the teacher have said and recite them before examination .as a result, the students are just listen to the teacher and absorb new knowledge passively and the whole class atmosphere is very oppressive, all these are not good for stu

43、dents to grasp and apply the points in real life.3.2.2 concentrating on language forms with the limitation of chinas educational system, teachers always ask students to remember some grammar principles and vocabulary, and students , in order to get a high score, also fix their efforts and energy on

44、the language knowledge. in the process of learning, students remember the rules and words greatly and enjoy themselves in the examinations as well, but they cant put them into use. once do they come across a communicative setting, they couldt exchange and express themselves influent. 3.2.3 using chi

45、nese rather than english whether in the junior middle school or senior high school, the teachers mostly speak chinese than english in the english teaching. it exerts negative influence on the students application of english. during the process of teaching vocabulary, the students often pay much more

46、 attention to the chinese meaning. they can remember the words well by means of reciting chinese. moreover, owing to the usage of chinese, students become less familiar with some proper nouns, which bring a great problem to students after entering university. meanwhile, students always prefer to thi

47、nk over all the problems in chinese and then translate them into english, which takes a great deal of time for students, especially during the examinations, students will miss much useful information. 3.2.4 separating the four skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing in the arrangement of c

48、lasses, many schools always separate the teaching of listening, speaking, reading, and writing, and different teachers teach in different ways. as a matter of fact, there are close connections among the four skills. it is impossible to learn them well separately. we can say listening is the most bas

49、ic factor in the study. if you fail to listen, so that you cant understand teachers meaning, how can you communicate or learn? reading can train ones pronunciation, which is good for listening much. meanwhile, writing makes you remember what you have learned. while speaking is the ultimate goal of l

50、earning the language and it is also the most important one. it not only put what have leaned into use efficiently, also the expression of the speaker. 4 adapting communicative approach to solve problems in middle school with the need of development of society, people are beginning to realize how imp

51、ortant it is to use a language rather than just learn the language knowledge. in the 1980s, the communicative approach has also been accepted and adopted in many middle schools, while there still exists some problems. we will not just emphasize the communication and neglect the basics: grammar and v

52、ocabulary, we would improve our communicative abilities on the basis of learning the linguistic knowledge well. the pupils are curious about the world, so they often behave actively in the class, being vigorous in answering the questions and cooperating with the teacher. however, after entering into

53、 the middle school, they begin to become more passive. they would prefer keep quiet rather than answer the question. although the application of communicative approach becomes popular in middle school in china, some teachers still make mistakes and the students have not realized the importance of co

54、mmunicative competence. the essential requirement of it should be taken note on the transformation of role between teacher and students.4.1 the transformation of roles between teachers and students in the traditional classroom, teachers are always teaching in spoon-feeding method, which means that t

55、eachers are making lectures and students are just the listeners. the transformation from teacher centered to student-centered (learner -centered) is needed owing to the application of communicative approach. in the traditional teaching, the teacher is the core of the class which takes a greater prop

56、ortion of the course. however students were just viewed as inferior to teacher. in the teacher-centered teaching, the interaction between teacher and student was missed and students real needs cant be satisfied at all. besides, the step-by-step direction of language classes may not always produce th

57、e desired effect because the learner has too little chance of developing his own learning strategies and because there may be a mismatch between the teaching style and learning style. so, there is a great need of changing, from teacher-centered to student-centered. owing to the focus of research shifts from teaching to learning, people place more and more focus on the individual language lear