К. О. Карагод м. Маріуполь (Методика викладання ІМ)

FROM COMMUNICATIVE TO “POST-COMMUNICATIVE” ERA OF TEACHING A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Due to a globalization we are witnessing the change of goals while learning and teaching foreign languages, which bring us to the obsolescence of the teaching methodology itself and diversification of approaches. That’s why in this research work our goal is to elicit reasonableness and appropriateness of existence of new post-approaches and due to it three main tasks were set up: to scrutinize the notion of approach; to examine communicative and post-communicative approaches; to highlight new tendencies of teaching foreign languages in the post-modern era.

A variety of terms are used in didactic issues to describe language teaching: approach, design, methods, procedures, strategies, techniques, and so on. Different scientists studied the concept of approach. Thus for Richards and Rogers an approach is defined as “a set of beliefs and principles that can be used as the basis for teaching a language” [6, 244]. Brown determines an approach as “the theoretical rationale that underlies everything that happens in the classroom” [6, 12]. Kumaravadivelu has criticized all these theories standing on their descriptiveness but not effectiveness in the classroom evaluation [4]. In other words, approaches are more flexible and do not have a specially prescribed set of techniques for language teaching. They are rather belief-systems that can inform methods or activities in the classroom [6]. In a certain sense, the approach itself determines the method, represents the component of a method [8, 45].

The principles of communicative language teaching are widely accepted and discussed around the world and its origins tend to the late sixties. The focus of attention was gradually shifting from the language as a systematic code to the language as a means of communication with the search for an effective method of instruction and consideration of the learner’s personality. The late 1980s and 1990s witnessed the development of approaches that emphasize the communicative properties of language, and classrooms were increasingly characterized by authenticity, real-world simulation, and meaningful tasks [2].

Language learning is understood as learning to communicate through communication. The emphasis is put on the motivated use of language by the people who communicate in order to achieve a certain goal. As it’s reckoned by Shu and Zhuang, communicative competence refers to the ability to use language to achieve some communicative purposes, including comprehension and expression. That is to say, “the cultivation of students’ communicative competence means cultivating all the four skills-listening, speaking, reading and writing” [9, 429]. According to Richards & Rodgers, this is due to the fact that teachers and language experts from “different educational traditions can identify with it, and consequently interpret it in different ways” [6, 157] and it can be best described by the following principles: learners learn a language through using it to communicate; authentic and meaningful communication should be the goal of classroom activities; fluency is an important dimension of communication; communication involves the integration of different language skills; learning is a process of creative construction and involves trial and error [6, 172]. Nowadays CLT is properly viewed as an approach, which understands language to be inseparable from individual identity and social behavior. Not only does language define a community; a community, in turn, defines the forms and uses of language [7, 217].

Post communicative turn in language teaching can be analyzed through a set of complex coordinates that include a lot of principles from previous well-known approaches in language teaching, at all levels. Basically, this means that we have to teach a foreign language communicatively, but in a highly-cultured way, because a well educated person needs more than sheer confidence in expressing himself through language for sheer communicative purposes. This approach does not have to mean only analysis, but also synthesis, it has to bring in the whole history of past or more contemporary language teaching and make full use of it, use its global view to create learner personalities, to direct them towards self-searching, reflection and discipline, towards strength of views, dialogue, partnership, challenge, originality, character. The post-communicative era is characterized by the fact that there is no single macro methodological approach that could claim to cover all relevant aspects of teaching and learning [1, 310]. That’s why post-communicative modes of teaching languages are focusing a greater attention on the role of learners and teachers and on the process itself, benefiting more psycholinguistically oriented strategies, that “open up new opportunities for the expertise of language teachers in periphery contexts to be recognized and valued” and “make it more feasible for teachers to work with the diversity of the learners in their classrooms, guided by local assessments of students’ strategies for learning” [3, 73].

Moreover, these new times have involved an appearance of post-modern society with an erosion of its conventional distinctions, an alteration of the sense of human identity, mass-madiating and even commercialization of education and learning. That’s why new post-communicative approaches are called upon preserving cultural diversities of learners. From unification and thus competition we passed to diversification and cooperation, from an unemotional, based on the product of learning to a culturally emotional learning focused on a process. A postmodern approach to language learning therefore challenges previous linguistic, cultural and even political representations. New macrostrategies promote collaboration, autonomy, student-centeredness, self-reflexiveness. Knowledge is now less important than the ability to access and use that knowledge. And these new tendencies approve the goal and tasks revealed in this research work. If education can be a machine for social conformity, it can also be a machine for the investigation of new horizons and new possibilities [5, 17].

References

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2. Karunakaran, T., Babu, M. S. English language teaching methods – an overview. // The Dawn Journal, Vol. 2, No. 2, July - December 2013. – p. 519-535.

3. Kumaravadivelu, B. TESOL Methods: Changing Tracks, Challenging Trends. // TESOL QUARTERLY Vol. 40, No. 1, March 2006. – p.59-81.

4. Kumaravadivelu, B. Understanding language teaching : from method to postmethod. New Jercy: Taylor & Francis, 2008. – 258 p.

5. O'Farrell, C. Postmodernism for the Initiated, in D. Meamore, B Burnett, & P. O'Brien (eds.). //Understanding Education: Contexts and Agendas for the New Millennium. Sydney: Prentice Hall, 1999. – p.11-17.

6. Richards, J. C., Rogers, T. S. Approaches and methods in language teaching. //Edinburgh: Cambridge University Press, 2002. – 270 p.

7. Savignon, S. J. Beyond communicative language teaching:What’s ahead? // Journal of Pragmatics, vol. 39, 2007. – p. 207–220.

8. Stančić, M., Mitrović, M., Radulović, L. From Glorifying Method Toward Post-Method Stance: Searching For Quality оfTeaching/Learning. // Contemporary issues on education quality. Belgrade: University of Belgrade, 2013. – p. 41-55.

9. Yuan, F. A Brief Comment on Communicative Language Teaching. // Journal of Language Teaching and Research, Vol. 2, No. 2, March 2011. – p. 428-431.