Essay On Communicative Approach

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Teaching English has experienced tremendous change for decades but especially during the twentieth century. Unlike other disciplines such as maths or physics, English language teaching is practiced in numerous adaptations in classrooms across the world. Teaching methodologies have remained constant for certain disciplines, this is not the case with English language teaching (Lestari, P. Rahmi, A. (2011). Teaching methodologies have changed throughout history and reflect the continuous needs of the learners, such as a more communicative approach with the emphasis on oral proficiency rather than that of reading and writing. Modern day methodologies take into consideration how theories have changed in language and language learning. Kelly (1969) …show more content…

The Direct Method suggests that there should be lots of verbal communication, no translation, random and spontaneous use of the target language and there should be little time given to grammar and syntactic structures (Lestari, P. Rahmi, A. 2011)
The Natural/Communicative Approach The beginning of 1960s saw yet another method which was originally the brain child of Tray Terrall and Stephen Krashen. This approach focused on three main areas; aural comprehension, early speech comprehension and speech activities. Students demonstrate comprehension in the form of speech, this is normally after the initial silent period. To enable the student to produce the target language it is of paramount importance that the Affective filter is low (Bull, W 1999)
Language-body conversations ‘Total Physical Response (TPR) The foundation for language body conversations are based on a physical response or action upon the student. If the caretaker utters a command or direction, the students follows it by doing an action. For example; Smile for mummy, pick up your teddies and put them in the cupboard. Total body response (TPR) is a powerful linguistic tool which helps the students to transition to more complex skills such as, speaking and writing (Asher,

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