The communicative approach to teaching speaking pupils at the intermediate level of high school

Communicative Approach to ESL.

The Communicative Approach to ESL is an approach to language learning that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s as the emphasis shifted from knowledge of language forms, meanings and functions to the use of language, the ability to apply the knowledge acquired.

Principles of the Communicative Approach to ESL

A brief analysis about the function of the communicative approach.

The Reasons for Classroom Anxiety.

Some findings come from the present study. Firstly, the study shows clearly that pupils experience fairly high levels of classroom anxiety, especially when they are called on to respond orally in English. Just as Allwright and Bailey (1991) have claimed, language learning is an anxiety-breeding business since language teaching deprives pupils of their normal means of communication and also of their ability to behave fully as normal people. That is, language learning and language classes take something away from the learner's humanness. Indeed, one of the subjects' main worries is, when asked to speak, they constantly feel they are presenting themselves badly, showing only some of their real personality and only some of their real intelligence.

In addition, they express that performing in a foreign language class is somehow more stressful than performing in other subject classes. In comparison with the communicative class, a traditional teacher-centered class is more stressful because: (1) the teacher dominates the class by talking all the time while the pupils are only passive listeners; (2) little time is spared for the pupils to practice speaking since the aim of teaching is to inform learners about language knowledge instead of developing their communicative competence; (3) the classroom is usually quiet and orderly with the teacher being the only person who knows the answer. Therefore, once a pupil is called on for response, she/he tends to get nervous since others are all watching him. Besides, she/he is not sure of the answer, nor does she/he know whether the words or sentences are pronounced correctly. Therefore, the lack of opportunity to practice speaking, the lack of real and meaningful communication, and the lack of a safe learning environment all cause the pupils' high anxiety in the traditional teacher-centered class.

Evidence in present research appeared first in the FLCAS (Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale) when learners were asked to choose from five choices and tick the one that best fit their situation. Then, the result is that both male and female pupils underwent a large amount of anxiety in classroom activities, especially when giving a presentation in front of the whole class. In addition, the study also shows that both males and females experience more or less the same level of speech anxiety and fear of negative evaluation as well as total classroom anxiety.

In real life, males' social role requires them to look strong and masculine. Therefore, it is possible that even when they experience certain difficulties or worries they tend not to wear these negative feelings on their faces and are less willing to admit these or discuss them with others. However, this does not necessarily mean they experience less tension or anxiety. The present study shows male pupils experience almost the same level of anxiety in language class as their female counterparts do, which is contrary to the stereotype that boys are stronger and less worried.

Teachers' Role.

New teaching models call for new roles for language teachers. As we all know, the traditional teaching models are closed and at a standstill. The teachers occupy the commanding position and dominate the progress of all the teaching activities. But according to the new concept, the teaching models are open and multiple. The teaching contents are open. The scope of the activities is open. So, language teachers must make a role transfer. They should change from dominators and commanders into organizers and explorers. This finding is important in the way that it helps teachers to understand how to give pupils a hand to reduce classroom anxiety and make pupil's have a wonderful performance in language learning. Hence they should spare no effort in reducing classroom anxiety and creating a less stressed, more comfortable and enjoyable learning environment in order to get the learners actively involved in language learning class. With a safe classroom atmosphere, learners will contribute more, so the language teachers should make it possible for anxious pupils to maximize their language learning by building a non-threatening and positive learning environment. A comfortable classroom atmosphere facilitates language learning. The more comfortable the learners feel, the better they learn. If a language classroom turns out to be such a pleasant and inspiring environment that the time spent there is a constant source of success and satisfaction for learners, they will be eager to have the class, and effective learning and teaching will be the only outcome.

So the writer finds that the communicative way of language teaching not only reduces pupils' classroom anxiety but also stimulates their interest and evokes their enthusiasm in communication, and hence can lead to their class performance improvement. The reasons are as follows: First, communicative approach takes its primary purpose as the development of pupils' ability to do things with language. It is both pupil-centered and task-based. In the class where pupils are provided with plenty of opportunities to be engaged in real-life communication in the target language, the teacher is more a patient listener than a talkative speaker. Instead of the teacher talking all the time, pupils take the initiative in class and actively indulge themselves in carrying out meaningful tasks with their partners or group members. Second, in communicative class, pupils are frequently encouraged to discuss questions or fulfill tasks in the form of pairs or groups. Therefore, language learning activities are interactive and interpersonal rather than individual and personal. Learners' dual roles as listeners and speakers are emphasized in the communicative approach. Often a typical task requires pupils to take both roles in conversation and not only to understand information they are listening to but also try to express it themselves. Pupils learn to see that communication failure is a joint responsibility while similarly successful communication is a jointly-achieved accomplishment.

Third, in communicative class, the error correction is absent or infrequent. With a cooperative rather than an individual approach to language learning, learners feel safer and less stressed since a good group atmosphere relaxes them and releases their tension. In addition, it is easier and more comfortable for them because they are speaking in a familiar and private environment, knowing that the communication and interaction are genuine. As a whole, group and pair work in a communicative class not only offers pupils enough opportunities to learn to speak and learn from each other but also provides them a supportive and enjoyable learning environment. During the cooperative pair and group work, learners get relaxed and can, to a large extent, reduce their classroom anxiety and help them concentrate more on the talk at hand. In the condition where learners are under the least communicative stress they are more likely to participate in classroom activities and more likely to produce the best that they are capable of in a foreign language.

Besides, teachers also need to be more aware of their new roles. Three major roles have been identified for teachers working on SALL (Self-access Language Learning): (1) the teacher as facilitators, (2) the teacher as counselors, and (3) the teacher as resource. Although most EFL teachers hold positive attitudes towards learner independence, they seem to have only inadequate knowledge about how to help in SALL. There is a need for teachers to upgrade themselves theoretically and pedagogically, so that they can acquire new skills to function in new ways.

Learners also need to change their traditional beliefs about EFL learning and become more aware of their central role in learning. According to Gardner and Miller (1999), learners in SALL should take on these new roles: planners (of own learning), assessors (self and others), evaluators of SALL, motivators (of self), administrators (of own learning), organizers (of own learning) and advisors (to other learners).

2.3 Teaching speaking of high school pupils at the intermediate level using the communicative approach during the teaching practice.

Teaching speaking of high school pupils at the intermediate level using the communicative approach was applied by us during our teaching practice.

The theoretical results of our research were used in the teaching practice at school-lyceum №48 in 9^th grades.

We had two grades - the 9 “a” and the 9 “b”, one of them was taught according to the teaching programme, while the second one was taught by communicative approach. It means that the first grade read the texts, got acquainted with the grammar, made the exercises according to the theme of the lesson; and the second grade answered for the questions for the text they had read, retold it, gave their own opinions about it, there were the kind of exercises that could be employed to teach learners about the cultural background of the target country, and of course simply introducing а few new rules, е.g. а limit on the number of questions or a time-limit they are transformed into games. We used some activities that help us to achieve the results and to prove the effectiveness of the communicative approach in teaching foreign language. We want to share our experiences with you. Here are some of them.

Holding communicative activities aimed at the development of communicative skills, was a significant event in the life of this class, since it is, on the one hand, the culmination of a lot of work of class, and with another - a serious test for pupils on self-reliance and resourcefulness. After all, along with the implementation of predefined communicative acts, they had more than once during the lesson to respond to the communicative actions of other characters, most often produced, but often quite unexpected for the other learners.

During the practice, as well as in the process of training for foreign language was drafted by the characteristics of the above class. But due to the fact that the lessons were conducted in only one grade over which the experiment was conducted, consisting of 24 persons, it is this grade we have developed a detailed description.

A grade of 24 people consisted of 14 girls and 10 boys. The class observed the community of social interests, not only on training activities, but also the visits to various clubs and sections. It turned out that most boys attend martial arts circles. And the girls attend the language courses.

It was determined that the group has no obvious leader, and this contributed to the cohesion and organization of the class in the implementation of general affairs, how to collectively plan and distribute tasks among themselves.

The overall level of behavioral discipline is high, and to the individual violators of discipline the grade is negative.

It should be noted also that each pupil has a free moral-psychological position. All the above was taken into account in the preparation and conduct of the class in different communicative activities.

The lessons significantly increased the interest and the personal ownership of pupils to attend classes. It should be noted also that, focusing primarily on the pleasure derived from the process of the communication, the pupils can aware of the inherent purposes, directed at developing the skills of dialogic and monologic speech, consolidation of vocabulary and grammar on new topics, training, interpersonal communication.

Communicative activities were held in class on a regular basis and pupils are accustomed to them, so at the beginning of the new topics they found out the prospect of a new activity.

Communicative activities we used during the lesson of English language helped to develop pupils' cognitive skills, the ability to independently construct their knowledge, analyze information and make the learning process creative, concise and focused as the pupils relaxed and lively.

In our work, we often ask pupils to hold impromptu “radio - TV” on certain subjects, to serve as a guide or a travel agent (the study of so-cultural character), replacing the original game such a boring monologue utterance, using the mini-quizzes and mini - contests. For example, when fixing vocabulary theme “Country and the City” and testing designs there is \ there are, we have pupils prepare a "radio - television program" whose purpose was to attract tourists in any city at any resort or in some any country. Also with this game, pupils consolidate the skills of the education degrees of comparison adjectives and use of comparative constructions.

The competition consisted of several tasks: 1. For a limited time to make the largest possible number of proposals with a comparative constructions, using adjectives in the comparative degree, of course, defend the advantages of living in their city, country, region. 2. Make a mini-description of “their” city, country, region, using superlatives and designs there is \ there are. 3. Think of the quatrain of “his” city, country, region, etc., using the vocabulary on the topic “Countries and cities”, and construction there is \ there are.

During the teaching practice we have regularly applied also to role activities. Analyzing the methodological literature, we selected the following types of role-playing activities:

* communication games;

* communicative situations in role-plays and problem-solving;

* socialization.

1. Activity Based essence of the communicative-based language teaching is implemented in the "here and now". The situation "here and now" is carried out if the lesson: * Create opportunities for speech-cogitative creative learners; * the process of foreign language speech-cogitativeness materializes directly at the time of the speech situation; * foreign-language communication is a spontaneous experience.

Along with this increased the importance of the methodical organization of the learning process (it's-the-process-that-matters). At the present time three-part form of communicative performance-oriented tasks are becoming more common (three-phase framework). Almost any task can be done (and it increases the efficiency of work) in 3 phases: preparatory (pre-activity), executive (while-activity), outcome (post-activity). Work-based tasks, including execution of tasks - the isolation of the desired language material - the inclusion of new material in the practice of speech (Fulfillment-Focus-Facilitation of use).

The humanistic approach to learning creates a positive environment for the active and free development of personality in action. In general terms, these conditions are as follows: * each participant group communication remains the focus of attention than others; * contradictory, paradoxical, even the "wrong" judgments, but showing the independence of pupils on their active positions let be encouraged; * academic norms are considered separate violations of language rules (errors) and random errors (mistakes).

It should be noted that speech errors in communication not only possible, but normal. Conversational Grammar (spoken grammar) permits certain deviations from the grammar of writing. Communicative-oriented teaching IYA means forming a school of communicative competence (CC). As its components can be distinguished linguistic, discursive, conversational, pragmatic (practical), socio-linguistic, strategic, thinking competencies (L. Bachmann).

Communicative-oriented teaching FL possible in an authentic process of socialization of the learners. In this context, the notion of "authentic" involves not only the use of the lesson "taken from life" of educational material, but also create appropriate conditions for natural methodically study communication. To this end, training is provided under a rehearsal of real use of language - rehearsal of actual language use.

The principle is carried out: 1. using tasks of speech interaction (interactive activities); 2. with tasks involving the "digital divide" of participants (information gap). Assignments can take various forms: picture gap>> matching tasks; text gap>> jigsaw reading; knowledge gap>> complete-the-table tasks; 3. with the use of problem-speech-cogitative mental tasks (sequencing, cause-and-consequence reasoning, guessing, comparison and contrast, discovery ...); 4. using organized role-based communication; 5. with the use of spontaneous communication.

During the FL lesson we used organized RPG communication. It allowed us to build the trainees' communication skills in a number of specially selected "real life" situations. Role-playing organized in accordance with the developed plot, distributed roles and relationships.

These and some other tasks form the trainees have the necessary social skills of communication. For the success of role-playing games pupil must learn at least a minimum of dialogue unity in the English language, which develop during the exercise. Before you enter the reception given in the educational process, it is necessary to work hard. Consequently, to organize the communication within the role-playing you should build those skills in the learning process. To achieve these goals are used:

1. a) exercises to practice expressions of the etiquette character; b) exercises aimed at developing skills in talking on the phone. 2. Exercises to train pupils in the preparation a microdialog in pairs within the proposed situation. 3. Pupils are invited to a dialogue sample, which is the basis for drawing up their own dialogue. Work is conducted in stages: * read the dialogue on the roles, paying attention to the replica to be assimilation; * read the dialogue, in order to restore the missing replica; * staging of a dialogue with the reproduction replicas for his roles; * separate compilation of dialogue, similar to this, but in other situations of communication.

Useful Shopping Phrases

There are personal changes of pupils (they become more sociable, easier to go to a frank conversation, more independent in making decisions, etc.) The activity level of pupils of 9b rose to 39%. All this shows a good performance role-playing games in class English. Thus, the opinions and interests of pupils contributed to an atmosphere of cooperation, which, in turn, was an important condition for increasing the motivation of pupils to study a foreign language and, in general, improved learners' achievement. Each student, even the weakest, shows off his skills and abilities. Excitement of competition leads to achieve better results. These lessons are aimed at achieving a positive result, improves the quality of education, raise the motivation to study a foreign language. Today we should keep pace with the times and it is these methods of teaching, we believe, helped us make our lessons effective, exciting, colorful etc. Therefore, we believe that the modern English lesson should be progressive, interesting, informative and creative. And this requires a great desire, creativity, knowledge of information technology, faith in themselves and in their intelligent and inquisitive learners.

Diagnostic quality of knowledge held in the form of final testing. To do this, pupils are asked to perform a test in English. Test results showed the growth of pupils' achievement. Growth of the quality of pupils' knowledge in 9 "A" in English was 100%. You can track and see how much has improved pupils' achievement in the diagram shown by us below. This results of the five week study.

Diagram № 1. The progress of 9 "A" grade's learners.

Comparing the results of testing the 9 «B» grade, where we have not conducted any research, we can trace the following results:

Diagram № 2. The progress of 9 "B" grade's learners.

In reaching the conclusions we can certainly say that our research is successful. So, with the help of communicative technology, we managed to make our lessons interesting, useful, effective and contributed to improving the quality of pupils' outcomes.

At the end of our study the pupils were offered the questionnaire to identify the relationship to the English language. Q: What subjects do you like to learn, and what not to like? A positive response on the English language gave 99% of the pupils. Application forms suggest that there is a comfortable situation for English lessons and an interest in the subject for most pupils. The second questionnaire was aimed at identifying preferred forms of work in the classroom of English language learning of new words, i.e. a new lexical material, and grammar. Q: What forms of work in class do you like? The results show that the communicative activities are the favorite form of pupils in class in English.

Diagnosis of learning outcomes showed that in the parallel grades the grade, where classes are held regularly with the communicative activities, pupils' performance is higher. At the end of the study were the sectional works, testing to determine the level of assimilation of the material. The results showed that pupils significantly better able to absorb those subjects were used the communicative activities. Performance on lexical and grammatical topics studied in the traditional manner, were significantly lower.

Conclusion

In the early lessons of many language courses, pupils are encouraged to concentrate heavily upon pronunciation and grammar, while vocabulary is introduced only very slowly. The idea seems to be that even if one has very little to say, that little bit should be said correctly. Pupils can worry a great deal about the machinery of language, but they worry rather little about real communicating much of anything. Under such circumstances, learners have to think about an awful lot of things in order to construct even a simple sentence. They are supposed to force their mouths to produce sounds that seem ridiculous. They have to grope desperately for words that they barely know. They have to perform mental gymnastic trying to remember bizarre grammatical rules. All these challenges are a fatal distraction from what skillful speakers worry about - the message that they want to convey. If early learners have to worry about getting everything correct, they cannot hope to day anything very interesting. They simply cannot do everything at once and emerge with any real sense of success.

We are definitely in favor of the communicative approach. However, we have seen very competent teachers who don't follow it. For example, they teach grammar the old-fashioned way by giving example sentences and explaining the meaning of the structure, formation rules, etc. They use colors and examples from the pupils' lives, and eventually they have some drilling exercises.  

The teacher's personality and effectiveness plays a central role in the method's success. Nevertheless, we think the communicative approach is a theoretically sound but that doesn't mean the traditional grammar drilling exercises are not effective especially if used after a communicative activity in which pupils might be later directed to an important structure that they should have used or did not use correctly. Many ESL/EFL authors argue for a mixture of focus on grammar and also focus on communication.

Challenging yet pleasurable communicative approach promotes positive attitude toward the daily study in language learning. Pupils working in groups have comprehension activity, journal sharing, question discussion and role-playing of the characters in the books or plays. Communicative approach not only lightens classroom anxiety but also promotes pupils cooperative learning and enhances their communication abilities.

A predominantly communicative activities produce fluency but not accuracy. And a predominantly grammar course produces accuracy but no fluency. Therefore, a peaceful merge produces the best results.

In the course of this work we investigated the theoretical framework of communicative teaching methods speaking, and provide practical examples from our practice. It was made an attempt to reveal the communicative method of teaching, with a view to its practical application in teaching English. In order to ensure the mastery of the English language as a means of communication and learning tool, to develop skills of understanding speech in English at a normal pace with unlimited topics.

In the theoretical part of the work the next points are considered:

1. the basics of speaking, as a means of communication, as a kind of verbal activity: there were considered the most common difficulties in auding and speaking, the types of speech and its characteristics.

2. the origin of the communicative approach, its features, its use in teaching speaking and its pros and cons.

According to the theoretical study on the theme of this thesis allowed to make the following conclusions:

1. The advantage of the communicative teaching method may include the following: pupils are still supposed to interact with each other, they are given a chance to speak and this is what should be of primary importance.

2. The disadvantages of the communicative teaching method may include the following: giving pupils the possibility of uncontrolled practice may result in lack of discipline and disorder during the lesson. If the pupils are required to communicate with each other it always produce a certain level of noise, and this not tolerated by all teachers as it goes against their traditional belief that a good class is a quiet one.

During the passage of the state teaching practice in school-lyceum №48 in high school we made the following findings that the main difficulties in teaching speaking should include motivational issues, such as:

· pupils hesitate to speak a foreign language, afraid to make mistakes, to criticism , afraid to make mistakes, undergo to criticism;

· students do not understand the speech backside;

· pupils have a lack of language and speech resources to the task;

· students do not involved in brainstorming the subject of the lesson, for whatever reasons;

· students do not withstand the required number of lengthy communication in a foreign language

The communicative methodology is centered in helping the pupil develop certain skills and abilities: oral interaction and expression, hearing and reading comprehension, and writing expression. In each class pupils will be lead to practice English in contextualized, practical and everyday situations through activities with predefined goals.

In conclusion it should be said that the communicative teaching method views language as a medium of communication. It recognizes that communication has a social purpose: the language learner has something to say or to find out. In this teaching method importance is placed on helping the pupil get the message delivered. This is what really matters: if the pupil can understand and be understood. So we hope that we proved the usefulness and the effectiveness of the communicative approach in teaching speaking at the intermediate level at a secondary school.

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