Communicative Competence: A pedagogically motivated model with content specifications analysis

            The development of English language has been successfully improved by educational models which were applied, not only in a native language speaker environment, in an ESL as well in many countries. In the area of language acquisition, communicative competency and communicative language teaching are key concepts. Parks (1985) emphasizes three interdependent themes:  control, responsibility, and foresight; and argues that to be competent, we must "not only 'know' and 'know how,' we must also 'do' and 'know that we did'" (p. 174).   He defines communicative competence as "the degree to which individuals perceive they have satisfied their goals in a given social situation without jeopardizing their ability or opportunity to pursue their other subjectively more important goals" (p. 175).  Instructors as well as the students may want to keep in mind the goals of communicative competence, learners should be able to make themselves understood, try to avoid confusion in the message (due to faulty pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary); to avoid offending communication partners, and to use strategies for recognizing and managing communication breakdowns and develop a cognitive understanding of the language used in the communication process.

            Rubin (1985) explains that communication competence is “an impression formed about the appropriateness of another's communicative behavior” and that “one goal of the communication scholar is to understand how impressions about communication competence are formed, and to determine how knowledge, skill and motivation lead to perceptions of competence within various contexts” (p. 173). 

The Whats, Whys, Hows and Whos of Content-Based Instruction in Second/Foreign Language education Analysis #1

In the diverse linguistic identities, modules and minorities, there are certain questions about how ethnicity and native languages can affect learning other languages. This phenomenon of English as a Second Language needs further exploration, because there are certain challenges for Language teachers, for notions such as “native/non-native speakers”.  In theory, linguistic identities are constructed and perceived, particularly in a classroom, where different behavior can be seen. A teacher has the adequate access to the groups to analyze their behavioral patterns, to modify and receive feedback.

The fields of ESL are replete with terminology, looking forward to native and non-native speakers. All these modules refer to provide a full proficiency in two languages in both productive and receptive skills. This new paradigms should respond to the necessities and social identity or every individual. This means that the pedagogy should be a strong constructor of languages no matter the ethnicity or identity of the student.

This pedagogy should be intended to understand the great difference between the oral and written language minorities. It is also highlighted that both language and linguistic modules should be taken to a real-life classroom, where mostly the students share and develop ideas, not only the theories can be the solution, in order to success. Finally, I believe the key to teaching ESL students remains to meet the student needs, and providing a solid structure for the lessons by developing a known routine, combining conversations, vocabulary, and writing skills.

Suggestopedia

            Is a teaching method based on a modern understanding and was developed by Bulgarian psychotherapist Georgi Lozanov (1978).  Suggestopedia derived from suggestion and pedagogy if often used to refer to accelerated learning approaches. 

The method not only works at the conscious level of human mind but also the subconscious level.  Suggestopedia adopts a carefully structured approach:  presentation, first concert active concert, Second concert passive review and practice.  Presentation is the preparatory stage in which students are helped to relax and move in a positive frame.  First Concert (Active Concert) active presentation of the material to be learnt.  Second Concert (Passive Review) students are now invited to relax and listen to some Baroque music. Practice range of games, puzzles to review and consolidate the learning. 

These lesson of Suggestopedia have four phases:  Introduction were material in a playful manner instead of analyzing lexis and grammar, Concert session (active and passive) active session teacher reads with intoning as selected music is played and passive session the students relax and listen to the teacher reading a text  more calmly, Elaboration students finish sing classical songs and play games while the teacher acts more like a consultant and Production spontaneously speak and interact in the target language  without interruption or correction. 

The most important factors for teachers to acquire are covering a huge bulk of learning material, structuring the material in the suggestopaedic way, teacher shoulder be highly prestigious, reliable and credible, teacher should have a hundred percent of expectancy in positive result and teacher should love his/her students and teach them with personal participation through games, songs and classical type of arts and pleasure.

COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE AND COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING CRITICAL ANALYSIS II

Communicative approach to language teaching derives from a theory of language as communication. The goal of language teaching is to develop in learners what Hymes (1972) referred to as communicative competence, as opposed to Chomsky theory of competence (Linguistic competence vs. Performance).  Hymes consider necessary the difference between linguistic competence who take cares of the production and comprehension of the correct grammatically sentence and communicative competence take cares of the production and comprehension of appropriate sentences used on determine situation.  Community Competence as he defines it is knowledge of the rules for understanding and producing both the referential and social meaning of language.

Winddowson’s concept is that children’s can learn to talk and speck to whom and in what manner at the same time they acquire knowledge of grammatical rules.  He suggests that the classroom presentation must ensure the acquisition of both kinds of competency providing linguistic and communicative context.

Canale and Swain maintain that there are rules of language use that would be useless without rules of grammar.  They identified that at some point prior the final selection grammatical forms must be screened:  1) grammatical complexity; 2)  transparency with respect to the communicative function of the sentence; 3) generalizability to other communicative functions; 4)  the role of a given form in facilitating acquisition of another form; 5) acceptability in terms of perceptual strategies; and 6) degree of markedness in terms of social geographical dialects.

In the application of concept Rivers proposes methodological distinction between skill getting and skill using activities.  With skill getting the learners have the opportunity to practice separately and with skill using activities they can associate with learned elements (Rivers 1972).  Rivers point that rarely these activities passes beyond pseudo communication.

These concepts are hard to understand and apply, but the benefits in the student language are excellent. 

BENEFITS AND STRATGIES OF COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE LEARNING

             Communicative competence not only decode a language can begin to

manipulate the language in a private dialog.  This language will resist atrophy, longer than language learned strictly trough grammatical explanation and translation exercise.  

            There are some strategies in many modern language classrooms.

1.    Encourage private dialog among students:  where they can express their opinion, desires and have the ability to engage in private dialog.  In order of progress they have to move in three regulations:  objective regulation, other regulation and finally to self regulation.  Emphasis on communicative competence have to be together which the need of explicit training in grammatical structures.  The oral fluency provides a means of engraving the language to level of deeper retention.   Techniques as visual aids can also foster a desire to communicate. 

2.   Establish an immersion environment of instruction:  when the target language also serves as the language of instruction.  Learner is able to think in the target language and the language accelerates dramatically.  The immersion education has received increasing attention. 

3.    Aid retention by instructional songs:  selected components such as alphabet numerals, and grammatical structures with melody to aid retention.  Not only the visual learning process are used for the student learning, the songs can improved retention achieved when the information is transmitted.  When the students hear the language sounds they will be able to progress toward communicative competence.  Repetitive melody that can carry the desired word list or phrase into the memory of students. 

These three strategies are very useful when teaching and trying to get the

student attention.  Over the years teachers need more innovator techniques for the learning language. The students needs the way to learn more easier and faster so they can use it on the daily living.  

Journal 1

            The class started by discussing some theories that explain the language acquisition and different ways to transmit the message to the student.  The professor discusses the guidelines, Components of communicative competence in language, criteria points percentage and general objective of the class.

            We also discuss the different between many word usable in our diary living.  The first word we discuss was the meaning of use and usage.  Use is act or the practice of making that something to function and usage refers to how something is used.  Fluency and accuracy were also discussed at class.  When we are fluency in one language we have the ability to speak and foreign language easily and effectively, but, accuracy means there are no mistakes or errors in the ability to work and perform a language.  Also functional syllabus and structural one were discussed.  Functional syllabus is based on functions not grammatical structures and structural syllabus is a syllabus in which grammatical structures form the central organizing feature. 

Since this workshop was the first one and we were all adapting to each other. Everybody worked together as a group in giving their opinions on what was being discussed in the class. I liked a lot that my classmates have the experience in teaching; therefore they bring actual problems that are occurring and as a future teacher we learn those techniques that they are using to try to resolve those problems.